March 24, 2012 (Day 18)
With absolutely no plans for the day except to play on the internet and be lazy, we actually ended up getting quite a lot done. Our Hotel Pensione II Canneto is located on the outskirts of the main Positano area. We are up above the town looking down through a gorge with the main duomo down below and the ocean in front of us. We are very happy in the hotel. We have a large and very comfortable room for lounging about. Plus we have a great porch with a set of table and chairs plus a place to hang our laundry. The sun shines into our room from the balcony view pretty much all day. It was great to see the hotel by daylight.
I almost forgot to tell you the best part about arriving in our hotel last night. Since our hotel is situated on the side of a mountain, the road is actually at the top of the hotel and we have to walk down a very long staircase to get down to our room. But they had an amazingly simple little winch system with a little basket to carry our luggage down to our room! We were very impressed and watched it follow us down the stairs to our room.
View from our room down to Positano
The restaurant for breakfast is located above our room, so we walked upstairs to eat. Once again, we are the only people at the hotel, so breakfast was set just for us. We will be here for 5 nights total, by the way. Breakfast was mostly bread products, but it was tasty. We just need to visit a market and pick up some yogurt or something else to eat for breakfast.
The mini-fridge in our room was not working, but the hotel promised to fix it if we left the room at any point during the day. I spent the morning doing several loads of laundry in the bathroom sink and hanging our clothes out to dry on the clothesline on the porch. In the direct sunlight, the clothes were just about dry in an hour or 2! Mark did the right think and relaxed with his iPad and the internet, enjoying vacation to its fullest.
Eventually, we decided to head out for lunch and go for a drive. Pizza seems to be the popular lunch item, and we at leisurely in Positano and then took off driving down the Amalfi coastline in our convertible Smart car.
Smart!
Our Smart car is a perfect small size for parallel parking along the sides of the tight, tight roads and squeezing by between the parked cars and the oncoming traffic. The sun was out all day, though the horizon line was hazy. We noticed that during siesta time, traffic seemed lighter on the road, and I took the opportunity to drive slowly and admire the view. I’ve heard so much about the beautiful scenic Amalfi coast drive, but honestly I don’t think I would rate it all that high on a list of scenic drives. We are in the shoulder season still, but the traffic and the vrooming motorcycles really distracts from the scenery on the drive. And actually I wouldn’t rate the scenery all that high either. But, in any case, I’m sure glad we came here anyway.
We had a great drive before turning around before Salerno, south of Positano. We came back and parked for an hour in a town around Amalfi to walk around, find some gelato, and also do some grocery shopping. We might do some hiking in the next few days, so we bought items for a picnic lunch and then also some yogurts. Oh, and I finally found some chocolate milk!!
Positano, located on the side of a mountain
We drove back to Positano and parked at the hotel to freshen up. Then, we had this great idea that we would walk down into town for dinner instead of try to park the car down there. Parking is quite an adventure!
The walk down isn’t so bad, but we go down hundreds of steps to get to the pedestrian-friendly area of town. Once we were down there we couldn’t seem to find any open restaurants. I figured for sure we wouldn’t have a problem on a Saturday night!! We just kept walking downstairs knowing that after dinner we’d have to walk up, up, up. Finally we found an open place to eat and had a lovely fish dinner. For an appetizer, we ordered a roasted artichoke that came out pretty amazing as well. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a roasted artichoke before.
After dinner, as expected, we had to walk up millions of steps to get back to our hotel. Our fridge was now fixed after two replacement fridges and was keeping our food cold for us. Tonight is daylight savings time in Italy, so we lose an hour of sleep tonight. However, we managed to stay up way too late anyway. We are on vacation after all. =)
Tomorrow we don’t have many plans either, so we’ll see what happens then.