Positano, Italy

As we left off in our Capri post, we were on our way in a taxi from Amalfi to Positano cruising along the tiny winding seaside road and started to hit some heavy traffic. Our taxi driver got a call then the taxi in front of us suddenly stopped and forced their passengers out and made them move into our taxi. Nobody knew what was going on, but everyone quickly got in the car because we were literally in the middle of the street on the side of a cliff.

Once everyone gave their awkward hellos, we continued a little farther until the traffic came to a complete standstill. Without saying a word (again), our driver hopped out of the van and opened the side door and told everyone to get out on the side of the road. Like the middle of the road… on the side of a cliff. He opened his trunk and tossed everyone their bags. We pulled out our phone that was navigating to our hotel and showed him that we still had another 31 minutes to go. He shook his head and just pointed ahead saying (in a broken English) ‘Eh, it’s not much further. Just around the bend-a! You go-a! First road on left. Take it down-a’. Say waaaaaa?

A couple of other tourists that were in the van with us just started walking down the road so we figured they’d been here before and followed behind them. We quickly realized they had not and were just as confused as we were why we were so abruptly thrown out of the taxi long before our stop. We walked a good mile with our heavy packs, nearly getting side swiped by cars, trucks, busses, and other slow walking tourists down the side of the road which has about two inches of shoulder.

We found the ‘road on the left’ and it just led straight down a series of stairs. We ended up walking over 20 mins down the steepest stairs we’ve ever seen in our life all the way down the cliffside until we got down to the beach. Based on the map, we knew our hotel was close to the beach, but we soon realized that we now had to climb back up the other side of the hill. Seventy five degree heat doesn’t sound too crazy, but with this humidity and after that insane hike, I was two seconds away from ditching my bag at the bottom of the staircase and being perfectly fine wearing the same sweaty outfit the rest of the trip. But Marshall kindly offered to carry both bags up what ended up being over 400 stairs to our next hotel, Casa Albertina! My hero. 😊

Meanwhile, on our walk up to our hotel there was a loud rescue helicopter hovering above us. Everyone in the town stopped what they were doing and just stared at the helicopter trying to figure out what it was doing. As soon as we arrived at our hotel dripping sweat and panting, we asked the receptionist what was happening. He said that a lady had fallen off the side of a cliff on her way back from the Path of the Gods hike. Wait, you mean the Path of the Gods hike we’d planned on doing the next day?? Yeah, that one! How terrifying!
 
Apparently that hike is a little sketchy in some parts and it’s not uncommon for hikers to fall off the cliff. We continued watching nearby and saw three rescuers drop from the helicopter and repel down the side of the cliff. After what felt like an hour, we finally saw the lady getting airlifted out. She’s so lucky to have survived because that looked like at least a 200 foot drop! I think we’ll go ahead and scratch that hike off the list for tomorrow and find something a little less dangerous to do, thank you. Definitely don’t need any broken bones on this trip!
 
After checking in, we headed up to our room to put our bags down and freshen up a bit. When we opened the doors to the patio we were surprised by the most jaw dropping view of Positano. We both agreed this has got to be one of the best views we’ve seen in the world. Pictures don’t even do it justice. We just stared at it and didn’t want to leave. Absolutely stunning!

We got so distracted by the view, we were 45 minutes late to our dinnere reservation at Da Gabrina (oops!) so they gave away our window table. All good, we still got a table with a nice view! We were both still stuffed from lunch so we just ordered a light meal and headed back to the hotel to hit the hay.

The following morning, we hit the streets of Positano and stopped in nearly every shop. The majority of the shops are women’s clothing boutiques, so I was loving every minute of it. After checking out nearly every shop we passed, we were ready to give our feet a rest and find a place to sit down and people watch. We passed a sign that said “Best Pizza” at a restaurant called Sado d’ Oro and figured we’d try it out. We shared a pizza and each had an espresso martini. The pizza was great, but the espresso martini was even better! I don’t know if it’s the type of espresso they use or the environment, but it was one of the best I’ve had! 

After lunch, we reluctantly checked out of our hotel and into the next one, Villa Yiara. I only reserved one night per place because, well, that was what was available and we really don’t mind checking out new places as much as we can. Makes it even easier having just our backpacks! Oh, our backpacks. We REALLY didn’t want to trek our backpacks to the next hotel…another half cliff uphill…so we spoiled ourselves and paid the porter 15 euros per bag to take it to our next hotel. We were in the middle of our day and didn’t want to get all sweaty before we went out that evening. We probably should have hired a porter yesterday instead of nearly breaking our backs. Lesson learned!

​Later that afternoon, we strolled along the beach over to Franco’s Bar, a super popular outdoor bar with a hoppin’ vibe and sweeping views of Positano. We got there 10 minutes early thinking we’d be first in line but there was already like 25 people waiting. Luckily, we ended up getting the last front row table along the terrace. Score! Another American couple sat down next to us that we enjoyed chatting with so we ended up staying there for three hours soaking in the sun and the views. Their cocktails were bomb and came in unique glasses. Highly recommend this place for a great time!

​Once the sun had set over the hill, it was time to tackle the crazy hike over to our dinner reservation at Orama Restaurant. We hiked down 500+ stairs, trekked along the beach and then hiked back up like 1000 stairs to the restaurant. Thank God we are in decent shape and this restaurant is semi-close to our hotel! To help make the hike more enjoyable, we turned on some party music to jam out to like Get Low by Lil John. I had an amazing chicken dish that was cooked with apples and orange zest and Marshall had spaghetti carbonara. Well worth the journey! After dinner we ended the evening with a romantic jetted bath on our patio overlooking the city lights.

​The next morning, we had a gourmet breakfast delivered to our patio, including a meat and cheese platter, fruit bowl, croissants, pastries, and cappuccinos. It was seriously enough food for like 8 people. We decided to take the morning slow and relax on our patio for a few hours. I spent time working on our blog while Marshall was hand feeding the local stray cats our leftover breakfast.

​Once we checked out, we hiked down to the ferry terminal to buy our tickets to Amalfi. The port had been closed the two days prior for repairs. It was still barely open and had fences and machinery everywhere. There were hundreds of people waiting in the ferry line for various ferries going to different cities along the coast. When we got to the dock to buy our tickets the cashier told us the next ferry was ours. Great!

So, we stood in the line with everyone else and waited for our ferry to disembark so we could get on. We waited for a while and realized the line in front of us hadn’t moved, but the ferry seemed to be full. We asked someone in line if people were still getting off and they said they thought that ferry had already boarded. No way! As soon as we realized we were in the wrong line, we pushed our way to the front only to get to the draw bridge literally as it was going up. It was like straight out of a movie scene. We seriously would have made it had we been there 2 seconds earlier. Are you kidding me?? I thought about doing a hop, skip and jump to see if I could land on the draw bridge, but realistically I would have landed in the water and Marshall would have to come rescue me.

We had to wait another 45 minutes for the next ferry in the hot sun so we went over to the nearby bar and grabbed a limoncello spritz while we waited. Once we finally got on the ferry, we ended up sitting on the bottom deck with over a hundred teenagers clapping and chanting Italian….chants? I’m sure there was some significance, but we just clapped along and talked about looking forward to hanging with our boys when they are teenagers. Oh to be a teenager again.

Next stop: Amalfi