The Amalfi Coast

Boat Ride * Atrani Beach * Amalfi * Paper Mill * Bus Ride along Amalfi Coast

14,379 steps

Our day started off with some anxiety as Eric tried to get our car out of a parallel parking spot on a steep hill. He couldn't get enough power between the clutch and gas to get the car going backwards and the car kept slipping forward within inches of the car in front of us. Stuck and without a solution we decided to abandon our plan A for the day, which required a car, and move onto plan B. We said a little prayer that we'd come up with a solution - or that the car in front of us would be gone by the time we got back.

We headed to the town of Amalfi via boat taxi from Salerno. The coastline of the Amalfi Coast was beautiful from the ocean and a few times our boat got close enough to the shore that we could see the rocks and caves on the steep mountainside. We arrived in Amalfi and decided to ditch the crowds and walk 15 minutes to Atrani. We walked up some stairs, through some narrow alleyways, around a seaside side walk with drops into the sea and down some more stairs to the free public beach. (Along the way we changed our clothes in a mostly private area of the walkway - better than on the beach though). We enjoyed the beach for a couple of hours, but without boogie boards or cousins, there wasn't a lot to do. The "sand" was really rocks and the beach dropped so quickly that the water was deep fast. We napped and relaxed and enjoyed the perfect sunshine.

Back in Amalfi we toured a paper mill that was built in the 1300s and was in operation until 1969. It is "powered" by water and the mills still work if the right doors are opened. The kids got to put the paste onto a screen and make some real cotton paper.

Our ride back to Vietri was via bus along the twisty, windy, steep Amalfi coast. I was anxious as I thought of the headlines back home "Bus full of Tourists falls into the Mediterranean". I can't believe the buses can go that close to the edge on one side and cars on the other and not hit something!

Back in Vietri Eric had the brilliant idea of putting big rocks behind the back wheels of our car as he gunned the gas and clutch and slowly backed up our car 3 feet - enough to pull it out of the parting spot. However, since there are not other parking spots in town - we left it there, hoping no one would sandwiches us in as we need to leave for church at 8:30 a.m.