2 June 2015
 Amalfi, Italy: Hugging the Coast

By Corey Sandler, Destination Consultant Silversea Cruises

Around the corner and below Sorrento is the Amalfi Coast, the Costiera Amalfitana.

This is an especially beautiful stretch of coastline in a beautiful part of the world.

And it is a lot more relaxing to visit on board a luxury cruise ship than by car or coach.

The alternative is to go down the Amalfi Drive. I’ve driven the drive, and lived to tell the tale, although the experience aged me greatly.

The road winds back and forth, hugging the sheer cliff walls on one side and edging up to the sharp dropoff to the sea below on the other.

Oh, and the road is also heavily populated with…how should I say this?….Italian drivers and tourists. The locals drive with what seems to be total abandon. The visitors, like me, clench their steering wheels in a deathlike drip.

The most famous towns are Positano, which hugs the cliff walls, and Amalfi. Past Positano is the city of Salerno.

AN AMALFI ALBUM

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Positano was a relatively poor fishing village during the first half of the 20th century.

It began to attract large numbers of tourists in the 1950s.

John Steinbeck may have helped. In an essay in Harper’s Bazaar, Steinbeck wrote: “Positano bites deep. It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone.”

The church of Santa Maria Assunta features a dome made of majolica tiles as well as a 13th Byzantine century icon of a black Madonna.

According to local legend, the icon had been stolen from Byzantium and was being transported across the Mediterranean by pirates.

A terrible storm blew up near Positano and the frightened sailors heard a voice saying “Posa, posa!” (“Put down! Put down!”).

The precious icon was unloaded at the fishing village and the storm abated.

And so today,  I came back to Positano.  I skipped the beach,  the ships,  and the granita stands and climbed the hill on a photo safari.

A POSITANO ALBUM

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Text and images copyright 2015 by Corey Sandler. All rights reserved. If you would like to purchase a high-resolution image, please contact me.

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