The Amalfi Coast...

...is not all it’s cracked up to be. I’m so sad to write that, as it was one of the things I was most looking forward to on this trip. I’d read about the winding drive along the western coast of Italy just below Napoli, and I was so looking forward to taking the gorgeous drive in.

Well. We started on the south end of the Amalfi Coast and were going to go around the whole thing and arrive in Napoli where we had a hotel reservation. The winding roads of the Amalfi Coast are almost as unnerving as the crazy Italian drivers that shared the road with us. Around every turn there seemed to be a Vespa whizzing by, or a huge tour bus squeezing past. I spent the entire trip tense and gasping as we nearly grazed people and cars alike. Bill was driving (thank God), and he did a great job, but it meant that he couldn’t enjoy the views, and I was so white-knuckled and nervous that I couldn’t really either.

I made the executive decision to abandon our plan. I couldn’t imagine sitting through at leat another 2 hours of this mayhem, so I found an alternate route that would take us over the hill to Napoli. The drive managed to get a little worse at that point. The road seemed to get narrower, there were still little Vespas like annoying flies darting around us, and the path ascended very quickly. There were so many points where a ridiculous fence was all that separated the road from the sea hundreds of feet below. I was freaking out, and am so grateful that I had Bill to keep me at least a little sane.

So basically, if you ever want to drive on the Amalfi Coast be sure to have nerves of steel, a strong stomach, and try to come to terms with the very real possibility of a watery or car-mangling death.