Naples and the Amalfi Coast Blog

Dante's Inferno 

My sister now understands my pain.

We miraculously made it through customs and onto our flight from Paris’ Charles de Gaule Airport (CDG) to Naples with no problems and on time.  However, our luggage did not. We arrived in Naples two hours later – but our bags did not. We went to the missing bags office and filled out paperwork, despite the fact that I had lost my baggage tag at some point in transition I was still able to fill out my paperwork with the correct bag tied to my reservation.

 The woman working said they would be on the next flight that evening and we could pick them up before seven. We decided that was the best option and would take a taxi back to the airport at 6:15.

We checked into our hotel, Palazzo Salgar, and tried to familiarize ourselves with the area by walking around. When the time came, we asked the front desk to call a cab, and we made our way back to the Naples’s airport.  It was not far, but traffic in Naples is INSANE. Not like America rush hour insane, but the combination of scooters darting around cars and the drivers daring on the narrow roads was definitely a trip. Our cab driver was great and he said that he would wait for us at the airport to go in and get the bags, so we didn’t have to call another cab. We made our way to the lost baggage desk we had been directed to go to by the lost bag office.

There was nothing.

The plane was late. Luckily, our sweet cab driver was just infuriated for us. He gave us receipts for both trips so we could submit them to the airline. It was nice to know that even if the bag God weren’t on our side, at least our driver was.

Back at our hotel, Palazzo Salgar, we decided we could at least enjoy Neapolitan Pizza and Gelato since there was nothing else we could do.

My sister wanted to go to Rick Steve’s recommendation for pizza in Naples, La Antica Pizzeria da Michel. The line was out the door more than a block long. We walked across the street to Pizzeria di Angeli and it was just as good, I am sure.  Wine, a whole pizza each, and gelato that we are fairly certain was simply frozen Nutella from Al Polo Nord and we were exhausted.

We attempted to contact the lost luggage office, and they had no information for us. Again.

Not wanting to spend the whole day worrying about luggage while we were in Italy, we continued on with our plan to do Rick Steve’s Walking Tour of Naples.

We were staying near the end of the tour, and we chose to do it in reverse. However, Naples grid of streets stretch away from the port and make absolutely no sense. We finally decided to stop walking aimlessly through streets and take the train to the start of the tour and try again. The directions in the book weren’t great, but we managed to make it through the start of the tour and catch the 8,000 churches that we had missed the first time through our walk.

By the time we made it back to our hotel we had managed to work up a sweat, and we were running close to the closing of the missing luggage office at the  airport. We ordered a cab in an attempt to try to get to the bags as fast as we could, and thankfully it came quickly. Maybe too quickly.

 We hopped in the cab that stopped in front of Palazzo Salgar and the driver began to take a different route than the one we had used the day before and on our way in. He drove us, it seemed to me, what seemed like the longest way we had used and then got on a freeway of sorts. We were cruising along the outskirts of Naples…and then we weren’t.

We ran into a traffic jam--full on people stopped in the middle of the road not moving. We sat. And sat. Little mopeds kept flying by us as we sat stewing and watching the clock.

Finally, he either started to realize how irritated we were, or he was just as irritated. He started driving on the shoulder of the road and then eventually we got to the airport. I told my sister to run and try and make it, even though it was approximately 7:02. I said I would take care of the cab, feeling bad that my bag had arrived and hers had not. Just as in most cities, there is a set fee for fare from certain places in the city to the airport. I knew from the previous day this was €25.50.  I asked him for the fare, and he told me €40. I objected.

“Oh, no.  That isn’t the price we were quoted at the hotel. It’s €25.50. That is what this sign says in the backseat.”

“But no, that can’t be. All the traffic.”

I held firm. He rang in €30 and gave it to me. I simply paid for it and got out without tipping.

And, of course, when I arrived inside, there was no bag.

It was all gloriously good.

 Eventually we overheard the younger man behind my sister talking to someone on the phone in English, so my sister asked where he was from.

“Scotland,” was his answer and as we finished the wine and ordered some tiramisu to share, we compared itineraries with our new friend Ross and found out that he would also be going to Sorrento the following day.  He was going to visit Pompeii the day after us, so we were just a little out of sync. But as we wrapped up a long day, we said we would hope to see him in Sorrento.

The following day I ran and it fell so good…it also gave me a chance to check out some of the harbor views that Napoli offered that we hadn’t seen on the walking tour the day before…though I wasn’t sure how we missed anything with how far we walked. Returning to the hotel, we enjoyed our breakfast before meeting our driver to Sorrento in the Lobby. He was excellent. He was so friendly and talkative and had very good English as he talked to us about the area and where we were going. We commented on the driving in Naples, and he aptly stated that if you can drive in Naples, you can drive anywhere.

No joke.

When we arrived in Sorrento, it was even crazier. Tourists, who thought that they could drive mopeds, were out on the roads and not following the laws as they weaved in and out of the slew of vans delivering visitors to the area along the sinuous roads on the cliffs.

We said good-bye as we arrived at Sorrento Plaza…and were greeted kindly. It was only 11:30 in the morning, so our room was not ready yet. They took my bags and my sister’s backpack, and we went out to discover Sorrento.

We went one block from the hotel and turned the corner to the main street of Sorrento—filled with souvenir shops and overpriced boutiques. Having decided that it was time to put on some clothes other than those she had been in for over 48 hours, we started to look for affordable clothes as well as some essential bathroom products and a charger other than the portable device I had brought for my sister. Affordable clothing was laughable; the boutiques were apparently brand names so exclusive I had never heard of them and priced to exclude 98% of the population.

We eventually found a store that sold Sorrento print dresses and Claire chose one, and one for me as well. Her next necessity was underwear. I had tried to get her to buy a pair the day before in Naples  that said I        Sex but she didn’t listen. To be fair, they were on the street, and I am sure very dirty. As she didn’t have the option to wash them before wearing them, it wasn’t safe.  They would have been cheaper than the couple of pairs she found at a store that sold lingerie on the main drag, though!

We stopped for coffee and lunch and decided to head back to the hotel, where we would check on the room availability and if it wasn’t ready sit by the pool on the roof.

We had no reservation, so we chose to go to a restaurant that was fairly empty. The man standing out front had tried to seat us several times and after finding many restaurants already booked, we headed back to Ristobiblioteramuseo L'Osteria del Buonconvento and I told him he had won.

He loved that and kept telling all the other waiters. Their outdoor seating, which I really insisted on because it was beautiful out and fleeting summer nights are precious, was in an alley. We were alone except for one man with his back to us and then an Alley cat that continued to visit us. The food was mediocre, but our staff was wonderfully attentive and sweet. Plus, it felt like a private dining experience.

In an alley.

I had previously scoped out the gelato establishments in town and the one that was closest to us was—luckily—also the best, La Primavera Sorrento. The flavors were all homemade daily and it was owned by a little gal that had notes and pictures up all over the walls.

And the gelato was dynamite.

 Our van arrived and we hopped in with a couple that were pretty quiet. It wasn’t even ten in the morning, so I assumed they were tired. We stopped a few more times and a couple in their fifties or so joined us as well as two more couples at a couple of different hotel stops.

Our group made its way out of Sorrento and into Pompeii quietly.  My sister fell asleep, so I listened to my book as we drove. Arriving at the architectural hub, there were many people trying to buy tickets, get tours, or arrange audio tours. We had our tickets with a tour group and the driver was met by another “guide” as we arrived. We followed him to a large group of people attempting to find any shade.

He had a young assistant that handed us headsets that would be connected to our real guide for the English-speaking group as he took the Italian group. He was excellent for a pro tip, however. There were outhouses available for the masses that were visiting, but there was a hotel at the site and if you walked through the air-conditioned lobby there were bathrooms in the back. You didn’t have to tell me twice. I also took advantage of filling my water bottle again to make sure I was fully hydrated on the tour. We were called by our headsets to meet our guide, and we made our way through the gate and into the archeology site.

She gathered the group in the only shade, a paltry affair cast by the outer wall of the city, before entering the site of so much lore. As we entered she began the tour starting with what we would be seeing together that day.

I was fully prepared, and in fact the whole reason that we chose that region of Italy was to see  Pompeii.

At least I thought I was fully prepared. Our guide was amazing: intelligent, witty and knowledgeable about the site. So many of the artifacts in the architecture I had seen in my picture book from Scholastic growing up, and I felt as though I had seen them in some ways. However, as we walked through, she reminded me of the fact that the ocean actually used to rise to the gates of Pompeii. The city of Naples had been completely underwater before Vesuvius erupted.

She also said something about the date being in October of 79 A.D. I took exception to this as I had always read that the eruption was in August 79 A.D. She continued to explain that new writings from Pliny the Elder had come forward to prove that he had been to Pompeii after August of 79 A.D.

Fascinating.

 She also pointed out the chariot ruts in the paving stones that rolled up the hill away from the ocean. Along the way she mentioned that the idiom “shit rolls downhill” was based on towns like Pompeii, where the richest in town lived at the highest point of the city and without sewage, they would literally have the human waste in town rolling downhill after being dumped in the streets. Another fun fact that she was good for was the phrase “the short end of the stick.” It came from Roman baths. They had public bathrooms; however, they did not have toilet paper. Instead, there was a sponge on a stick next to the toilets that was used to wipe. Not very sanitary, and indeed, if you did grab the end of it, you would be getting a bum deal. Literally.

However, by the time the tour was over, it wasn’t a terrible hardship to find some shade and a cool drink. We hopped our van back to the hotel and realized that the couple sitting in front of us were the same couple that we had been waiting in line with at the missing baggage line at the airport after we arrived. They were from Arizona, and we chatted and made connections as we wound are way back to Sorrento.

The plan?

Pool time and, of course, Limoncello. We had arrived back so late in the day and had been so hot and we were very redolent to leave the pool area By the time we did clean up  to go to dinner it was right before sunset. We decided to return to the rooftop for more Limoncello and took in the sunset from the comfort of our roof. It was truly magical.

After the sun blinked below the horizon, we headed out to find dinner. It was busy, and we chose to simply head across the street to the restaurant Syrenuse. It was mediocre, and tightly packed. In fact, they tried to seat the two-top next to us at one point and the two women wanted nothing to do with that.

However, they then seated a Macedonian woman and her son next to us. We asked where they were from, and the woman, in marvelous English, answered that they were from Sweden.

I began to sing Happy Birthday in Swedish (thank you to my ex-husband, it was his birthday specialty) and the little boy broke into a huge grin.  The woman asked if I spoke Swedish, and I said no. My sister added that we grew up in a Swedish town.

We had a mediocre dinner but a lovely evening with this amazing woman and her charming son. Our one mistake? We did not get her name! As we parted that night, we said we would look for each other the next day but never saw her again.

Some gelato in hand, we made our way to bed.

The next morning, we had a boat tour of the coastal cities. I was angry at myself, because I thought it had included Capri – which I was dying to see. It did not.

I asked my sister if she wanted to switch tours to a Capri tour, she just wanted to stick to the plan, so I conceded.  We needed to catch our boat down at the docks. We had not really explored the ocean front yet and were not familiar with the different ports. I (mea culpa) assumed that the boat would depart from Marina Grande. We walked down the steep hills to Marina Grande to find…absolutely no large boats.  I looked again. Apparently, the Port of Sorrento is at Marina Piccola. So, we hustled our butts back up the hill, and in an attempt to save time, rode the elevator down to the beach.  We scuttled among the crowds to find the port and the correct boat company I had booked with…and made it to our ship in time. 

We saw open seats at a table next to a woman about our age and asked if we could sit with her. She said yes, although she didn’t really have much of a choice. But we started chatting and found out that she was an investment banker outside of New York City and she had been going up and down the coast all week with some girlfriends finding all the best beaches. She was staying on for a few more days, but her friends had to go back to their daily lives. She said that where we were stopping first, Positano, was her favorite place. The beaches were good and so was the shopping. We had planned to walk around and explore the stores and towns more than beach it, but she said we should have a drink when we got there. Since we were on the ferry’s schedule, we declined.

We roamed around the town shopping our way through the last of the souvenirs we wanted to buy before we had to board the ferry for our next stop…Amalfi. It was as beautiful as all the pictures people post. It was slightly less commercialized than Positano, simply because of the footprint of the beach area. Grabbing food, we tried to cool off from the heat before visiting the church of a million steps (my name…not the real one) and then heading to the black pebble beach to cool off until our ferry left.

Or A ferry left.

The ferry’s departing Amalfi were nothing more than mass chaos.

In theory, the idea makes sense. The ferries stop running at six, and all the tourists that have tickets need to be on those boats to leave. In practice, it is nuts. It looked like herds of people being sent to relocation areas as they literally looked to see if you had a ticket – didn’t matter the time or company – and directed you to a boat that would take you to your destination.

When we showed up to board the prebooked ferry, there was no boat from our company in sight. As the time came and went, we went towards the head of the line to show our tickets, and we were told to get on a boat, not run by our company, bound for Sorrento.

This is where the excitement occurred.

The boat was obviously packed, and we saw three seats towards the front of the ferry. They were in the middle and next to a very nice older couple. They got up out of their seats to let us in. I didn’t realize there was a support pole in the middle, and I climbed over the seats and sat in the chair. Meanwhile, a woman and her boyfriend had also seen the seats and the man on the end of that side of the row was letting them in.

All of this occurred as I sat in the seat.

“No,” the girl said. “No, those are our seats. There are two of us.”

My sister and I looked at her like, umm, well. Sorry, we were coming from the other side. The older couple and my sister tried to explain.

“No,” The woman said. “Those are ours.”

“Sorry,” I said, “We were already here.”

“Let me see your ticket.”

I looked at her like she was crazy but showed her the ticket.

“This isn’t your boat you need to get up.”

“Look,” I countered, “The man told us to get on this boat; our boat was scheduled for an earlier time.”

“No,” she said, “You need to get out of the seats.”

Finally, I just looked at her and realized it just wasn’t worth it.

“Fine,” I said, “It’s just a chair.”

I got up and exited the row the way they were entering, but I did not make it easy for them. I made them get out of the aisle so I could get by. I looked for a place to sit nearby and didn’t see one. I figured I would just stand towards the stern of the boat on the way back. However, the scene had caught the eye of …well the entire front half of the ferry, so other people kindly moved about to give me a place to sit near my sister. It was along the side on a bench at the end of her row, so we couldn’t talk. I tried to hold myself erect and proud; it had been such a silly little spat.  People around me apologized for the petty girl’s behavior and it was very sweet.

As we exited the ferry, together, my sister and I laughed at the fact that the couple didn’t even talk to each other on the entire ride to Sorrento.

Glad it was a big deal for her.

Giggling, and tired from being out in the heat and sun all day, we went back to the hotel and relax and start to pack. The next day we were headed back to Naples. Finally, we decided we had better grab dinner. We decided to take the advice of our friend on the ferry and go to the rooftop garden restaurant she had enjoyed, The Garden Restaurant de Genero.

We knew where it was, we had walked by it a few times on the main drag. We were seated quickly, and the service was fancier than what we were expecting. Our idea was that it would be fairly relaxed, it was a rooftop garden.

It was not.

We ordered a bottle of wine, and they brought some bread. It was terribly disappointing. Rather stale and just white sliced bread in a white bag.

The food came, and again it was mediocre. After a long day of sun and a bottle of wine, we were ready for bed…but of course we had to have  gelato first!

As we paid for our scoops, the girl at the counter said, “See you tomorrow.”

I said, “I wish, but we are headed back to Naples tomorrow.”

We returned to our room and tucked into the treat and a movie until we fell asleep.

The next day we had postponed our ride back to  Naples until two so we could do some final souvenir shopping before returning to the city. Our first stop, however, was the post office to send off a postcard home to my sisters’ boys.

Much to our surprise, returning to the main tourist area of town, we found yet another street of trinket shops. Of course they were all filled with the same trinkets, but we had to try one last time to finalize the things we still wanted: Limoncello, Christmas ornaments and a cookbook. We found that and much, much more.

A wonderful little food store filled with candy and other treats as well as tapenades.

Then we got lunch, with the best iced coffee I’ve ever had, and waited for our ride to  Naples.

Our driver was absolutely fascinating. He had grown up in Herculaneum and knew that the money was in tourism. He was driving during the summer and in two years had learned English on the job, extremely well. 

He planned to work as a driver for his company and eventually he wanted to branch out and start his own driving company. He was impressive in his planning, and at 27 seemed to feel like he was starting to put the pieces together. He was also full of a lot of local knowledge, having grown up outside of  Naples and inland from the shore.

He said the city of Amalfi was extremely hard to live in and most of the stores and homes were owned by generations of families, or by people who had come in and paid off those families handsomely for their right to the space.

We wished him well as he dropped us off at our hotel back at Palazzo Salgar. As we entered the woman behind the desk recognized us and greeted us warmly, glad to see we were reunited with all of our baggage.

We took a little time back in our room to unpack and get settled before we decided to walk along the harbor to the restaurants and shops at the water. I had run along the harbor earlier in the week, and it really was a  port that was focused on cruise ships and cargo freight. Where I had turned around earlier in the week was a ramp that I had neglected to go up. At the top of the ramp, right next to the absolutely most scary children’s carnival I’ve ever seen with knock off Disney characters painted on the buildings, we found…construction. But we continued on and found more restaurants and hotels.  Eventually we could see the fort on the island in the harbor that had protected the Port of Naples from invaders.

We wandered across an inlet toward the restaurants along the pier. As we approached, a couple of men gave us a coupon to a place almost at the end named Ristorante Lavius. As we had no plan or idea of where to eat, we decided to give it a try. As we approached, we were greeted by an extremely avid, but not aggressive, waiter who sat us. He gave us a table outside overlooking the boats that were moored in the small harbor. The restaurant wasn’t very full, but it was pretty early on European time.

He was the man sitting behind us.

I started chatting with the family and they were lovely and gracious and as we enjoyed some – admittedly not homemade Tiramisu—we chatted with the older daughter of the chef – our hostess, Carolina. She was trying to build the social media profile of the restaurant as they had just opened. We were happy to oblige, because we enjoyed the meal so much! We used her phone to rate them and leave raves – and I was happy to help!

Seriously, eat at Ristorante Lavius.—you won’t regret it!

We wandered our way back to the hotel along the pier and tucked into bed ready for a long hot day!

And it was a long, hot day. We attempted to make it a slow morning enjoying the free breakfast before we set out to visit the Naples Archeological Museum. My sister was bound and determined to follow the path that we had attempted on our first time in  Naples earlier that week.

We found the museum fairly quickly, although  Naples  makes zero sense in layout.