The Amalfi Coast - Praiano

From Sorrento, we headed around the other side of the penninsula to the Afmalfi coast. Steep cliffs that fall into turquiose ocean, craggy rocks with villages scattered in seemingly impossible positions, Amalfi was some of the most spectacular scenery that we had seen so far.

Positano is the main town here, but it was too exxy for us, and absolutely packed with people. It took us ages to get from one side to the other on a single twisty road, the only road in or out, that is barely wide enough for 2 cars. Nonetheless the Italians whip round bends overtaking on blind corners on their scooters with their helmets propped loosely on their heads, not done up. These were the roads that we had been warned about, but they were pretty fun in hindsight.



Mental roads on Amalfi coast


As the terrain is so steep, the gardens and vinyards are all terraced


The town of Amalfi


Looking back at Positano from the lookout on the other side. It looks like a bunch of matchboxes that have been thrown into the valley.

We stayed 2km or so further on from Positano in a place called Praiano. There was a really nice hotel that had some small camping plots out the back, hidden away like a dirty secret. The man gave us a distasteful look when we said we were looking for camping, and pointed us out back to the camping area. We were pretty amazed by what we found....


Best camping ever, they were really narrow little terraces, usually they are used for gardens on this part of the coast and they still grew grape vines above which offered some shade. On the other side of the fence is a sheer cliff down to the ocean about 100m.


Vines overhead. We also had a private stair that lead all the way down to the water and a little rocky ledge, with chairs, to swim from



Ange and I decided to treat ourselves and went off to find somewhere nice for dinner. We ended up down at the water where there were a few different restaurants, perched right above the ocean. We ordered a bottle of Spumante, hoping that the price was per bottle and not per glass. As with most food and wine in Italy, it was really good, and thankfully, the price was for the bottle.

The orange tables in the distance is where we had dinner

Inside the restaurant , the back wall was just the bare rocks of the cliff

View of the restaurant on the way back home...

That night there was a club around the corner pumping the worst kind of euro techo until 4am, there was also some sort of plague of tiny, bitting insects that massacred the lot of us and kept us awake until 6am when the sun came up and turned the tents into little ovens.

Ange and I got up early to escape the heat and go for a swim...

.... and I promptly got brutalised by a local jellyfish, they were big and browny yellow. Just another entry in the long list of stuff that has stung me.

Amalfi was beautiful but we couldn't take another night of stings and no sleep, and couldn't afford to stay anywhere else, so we moved on the next day and headed east across Italy.