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| Ravello, Italy Copyright Andy Richards 2017 - All Rights Reserved |
NAPLES IS the port for the Amalfi Coast, among a great many other really great things to visit in Italy, including Pompei and Herculaneum, and the Isle of Capri. We have been to all of those places either before, or since. But we really wanted to do the Amalfi Coast again - and for Paul and Linda to see it. We hired our favorite "Rome in Limo" driver and guide company and had a great visit. We had been there in 2013, but because of the problems we had with that cruise, our visit was by hiring a cab driver to take us there. The positive was that it wasn't very crowded. The negative was that our cab driver was just that: a cab driver. So no guide. He drove us up to Amalfi and dropped us off there for about 90 minutes, which worked well enough for us at the time.
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| Ravello, Italy Copyright Andy Richards 2017 - All Rights Reserved |
THIS TIME, one of the places I wanted to see was a tiny little town way up in the mountains named Ravello. A friend of mine and his wife had spent an entire week in Ravello a few years back and had raved about it. Our driver took us the back way up to Ravello and we started there, and worked our way back up the coast back to Naples.
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| Catholic Church - Ravello, Italy Copyright Andy Richards 2017 |
WE WERE our day on the coast was a Sunday, and we arrived in Ravello in the early morning. It was everything I had imagined. Very quiet and remote, with incredible views and lots of very cool buildings and squares.
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| Piazza Vescovado - Ravello, Italy Copyright Andy Richards 2017 - All Rights Reserved |
WE PARKED on the road below the village and walked up into the main square (Piazza Vescovado), which is anchored on the west by the stately, Baroque/Romanesque, Catholic Church: Duomo di Ravello (Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta e San Pantaleone). Services were being held while we were there, so we did not see the interior.
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| Ravello, Italy Copyright Andy Richards 2017 - All Rights Reserved |
AROUND THE piazza, there were small, cafe's to one side, and a pretty nice view of the terraced housing across the piazza from the church. The entrance to the little village was at the other side.
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| Ravello, Italy Copyright Andy Richards 2017 - All Rights Reserved |
FROM RAVELLO, w headed south along the Amalfi Coast, to the town of Amalfi. As I mentioned earlier, our 2013 visit was nice, as the coast was not very crowded on the day we were there. Four years later, things had changed by magnitudes. The Amalfi Coast is one of the most visited vistas along the Italian coastline, and there can be times when the tourist attractions can be a sea of humanity. Amalfi and further south, Positano are a couple of those highly visited tourist sites. In 2013, I had no problem getting a nice view of The Cathedral of St. Andrew, the main architectural attraction anchoring the Piazza del Duomo, the main square in Amalfi, including the magnificent stairway up to the entrance. Not so much in 2017, and I concentrated my photos toward the top of the stairs, to exclude the huge crowd of onlookers.
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| Duomo di Sant'Andrea - Amalfi, Italy Copyright Andy Richards 2017 - All Rights Reserved |
OUTSIDE OF the walls of the city, there are popular beaches, resorts, and restaurants along the shore. While the colorful umbrellas shout "beach," they are quite different than the beaches we so often see with white sand. The "sand" along the Amalfi coast is black sand, and is very coarse. It almost made me cringe to see folks laying towels down and laying on these beaches. But it certainly didn't take away from their beauty.
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| Amalfi, Italy Copyright Andy Richards 2017 - All Rights Reserved |
AS IS often the case, by this time, the sun had grown very bright and "hot" for photography. The shot above was made in poor light, so I rendered it as a "high dynamic range" (HDR) image to make it more "artsy."
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| Amalfi, Italy Copyright Andy Richards 2017 - All Rights Reserved |
OUR FINAL stop along the coast was Positano. Having spent some time in both Ravello and Amalfi, we thought we had seen the best the coast has to offer. Positano is the more popular of the towns, and as such, also quite touristy. We spent little time there. Probably the best of Postitano are its views from outside and above the city. Our day had been fairly long, and with traffic we still had a bit of a drive back to Naples and the cruise port. Like our guide in Santorini earlier in the week, this guide had asked us about our meal preferences, and had promised us a better - of the beaten path restaurant that was local and locally owned. It was up the mountain a bit from Positano, and the photo below was made from the balcony of our the restaurant. Again, as promised, we were but 4 of just a very few patrons. The food was excellent as was the attention paid by the owner. It was a fun end to a fun day.
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| Positano, Italy Copyright Andy Richards 2017 - All Rights Reserved |
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