Day 9 - 5/16/11: Ravello, Amalfi Town, etc.

9:30pm: phew, yet another long day!! Woke up early and caught the 8:30 amalfi coast bus again. It was even more full this time so I am glad I got there early and got a seat on the side not facing the cliffs :) It arrived a little after 10 and then I hopped on the bus to Ravello, another 25 minutes. Ravello is tiny and cute and thankfully mostly flat, up on a cliff, so the views of above and below are lovely. Wandered for a while, bought a cute little ceramic thing to hang on the wall that says lawyer in Italian with owls (yay Rice!). I wasn't in the mood to see the villas that you can pay to visit. So about an hour later I took the bus back down to Amalfi and tried to buy a ticket for the 4:30pm boat back. NO boats today she said. Ooooooooook I mean yeah it was breezy but hardly strong wind. Guess I'd have to deal with the bus, which granted gives more flexibility time-wise because there's one every half hour, but the buses are notorious clusters.

Anyway, wandered around. Snacked on lunch in stages. First got a little handheld pizza thing, like a small calzone I guess. Then a potato and cheese crochette that's deep fried and delicious. Made it up to the impressive Duomo, which comes with various things – cloisters, an underground chapel, and the cathedral itself. Amalfi was a very important trading down way back, so it has a Saint's relics and that's why its church is so impressive.

Then found a lemon shop recommended in Lonely Planet and the guy convinced me to have sorbet covered in fresh chopped fruit. The sorbet was AWESOME. I guess it's something for lemon-lovers because it wasn't sweet at all but mixed with fresh strawberries, pineapple, etc., it was pretty amazing. While I was eating that I made my way about 10 minutes at the back of town to the paper museum. Amalfi had a huge handmade paper industry in the medieval times and these factories in the back of town ran until only a few decades ago. When I got there they were just about to do a little tour in English so I hopped on that and the guide was one of the funniest people ever. He called us the paparazzi but said that the ladies had to be called the mamarazzi. I took some videos of the demonstrations just to capture how funny he was. It was interesting to see different machines that did different functions from different time periods and the museum is built in a medieval-era paper factory. The museum also has a ridiculously beautiful gift shop with some of the paper items, which are now pretty rare in Amalfi.

Wandered back down to the water and in and out of shops and decided to try to catch the 3pm bus. Of course at the time it was only 2:30 and one had just left but it was chock full and there was no way I was going to stand on THAT ride for over 90 minutes. Then the utter cluster began. No one could figure out which bus was the correct one and there were all these rude teenagers clamoring to get spots (it seemed like the kids took this bus home from school? The time of day was right). Anyway, I pushed and shoved my way onto the bus and managed to get a seat on the non-cliff facing side. In fact I think I managed to doze off for parts of it. This bus took a different route from the one I had taken in the morning – near Sorrento it went through a lot of lemon and orange groves.

It rained most of the busride back, but had stopped once I arrived in Sorrento. If it's going to rain while I'm here, it might as well be when i'm in transit! Made it back to Sorrento around 5 and wandered some more. Bought a wood inlaid little wall hanging thing of Sorrento. That's a type of art special to this town so I wanted to buy something and a lot of it was huge and expensive. I chatted with the guy in the shop, whose father made everything. He said for the big pieces (that cost like 2500 euros), it can take as much as 3 months because the wood is put in piece by individual little fragile piece. Really gorgeous.

Wandered around a bit more, came back to the B&B for a breather, and went back to dependable Da Gigino for dinner to have the gnocchi again before leaving Sorrento. It was especially busy tonight! By about 8pm there were no tables anywhere – inside, outside, upstairs, you name it. The food was just as delicious as the previous time and then I went to a little bakery around the corner from my B&B and got a couple of cookies.

Already finished packing up and tomorrow I head to the wild insanity of Naples – and lots and lots and lots of pizza (and hopefully not lots and lots of trash)!!!!!!!!!