The Ferries

Montepertuso

At the Naples waterfront, I felt like such a tourist, we bought tickets for the next ferry in an hour, but the vendor said if we ran we could catch the one leaving now which was just leaving.  Pam ran ahead.  I pulled the luggage scrambling after her.  She just managed to stop them from pulling up the gang plank without us.  This ferry was going to Sorrento which was on the way to our destination at Positano.  We were inside and it was hot, the windows barely opened.  It was not what I expected but it got us to Sorrento where we caught another ferry for Capri.  Capri was an unanticipated stop for us.  We had to leave the ferry and wait on the dock for the ferry to Positano.  There were a lot of wealthy tourists and young tourists.  There were pleasure boats in the harbor, hotels clinging to the hillside above the docks and farther up on the white cliffs there were villas precariously perched on the edges of the rock.  The tip of the island that we passed on the way out heading to Positano, had a monument high on the peak of the cliff.   I learned later that it is a statue of the Virgin Mary which is part of a church built on old Roman ruins. 

Passing along the Amalfi coast was one of the best parts of our trip.  The sea is beautiful and feels deep and massive, more so than I thought an arm of the Mediterranean possibly could.  White cliffs ring the whole Amalfi peninsula and built along the waters edge on are stone fortress-like towers.  We wondered if they were from Roman times or from the days when Amalfi was an important trading center. We sailed into Positano at the end of the day when the entire town is in the shadow of the mountains.

We left Positano several days later.  Our Airbnb house was in Montepertuso, right next to the Catholic church.  When we left we waited with our luggage for the bus down the mountain to the beach.  It came and we could barely fit it was crowded with so many people but the driver urged us to get on. We did. 

On the beach we bought tickets for the ferry to Salerno.  This ferry skirted the southern coast of the mountainous peninsula, stopping at the town of Amalfi.  In the middle ages Amalfi was a major trading port.  Today it is a major tourist destination.  It too is built on the sides of the mountains which soar overhead.  From there to Salerno, the land flattens and commercial ships begin to appear outside the port.  We walked with our luggage from the docks about a block into the city to find the train station to catch a train to Venice.