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Amalfi:
Paradise Lost or a Serene Landscape? |
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Not all of Paradise is
lost - a luxurious dollop of it lingers on in Southern Italy. Suspended
between aquamarine sea, blue skies, and rugged peninsulas, you will find the
Amalfi coastal route with twists and turns along the full
length of this extraordinary coast line. It offers breathtaking views at
fabled ruins, fantasy islands and sapphire-shaded lagoons. This coast,
generally acclaimed to be the most beautiful stretch of scenery in the
entire Mediterranean, has always attracted the serious traveller. Along the
scenic route, where one mountain after another plunges sheer into the sea,
there are a string of picturesque, brightly painted little towns.
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During
the autumn of 2005, we enjoyed this southern tip of Italy’s shoe with
our daughter and friend, who has been living in London for the past 6
years, Obviously, with the generation gap, everyone had their own
preferences and special places: it was a choice between limoncello,
a lemon-flavoured liqueur, and lacryma Christi, once
considered one of Italy’s best wines made for centuries by monks on the
slopes of mount Vesuvius, Capri or Ravello
to stroll around the many pedestrian cobblestone alleys, looking for
cute galleries and trattorias, known as vini e cucina,
where you can dine with the locals, quite inexpensively.
With the song Come back to
Sorrento
lingering in ones
ears, you cannot miss the beauty and melancholy of narrow streets and
popular spots of many decades in
Sorrento:
its streets seem like old sepia photographs, typical with its signboards
and shop fronts. Nothing is more rewarding than to sit on a sidewalk
restaurant on Piazza Tasso, right in the middle of town upon Via del
Corso. |
AMALFI COASTLINE: Picture perfect scenes of skies and seas and
cliffs |
DH Lawrence once called
Capri
“a two-humped chunk of limestone, that does heaven
much credit, but mankind none at all.”
Once you disembark the
ferry from Sorrento, you take the funicular up from the harbour marina
Grande, to the piazzetta Umberto, where it gets so crowded it’s
rumoured the local police only give you 20 minutes to sip your campari,
before encouraging you to move on. We stayed at the Gatto Bianco,
located just a few metres from the piazzetto.
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A friendly white cat greets you at the hotel’s entrance |
There is much more
to Capri, than only the grotta Azzurra, which owes its name to
the blue colour of the water and result of light refraction. One should
stay a day or two so as to have the opportunity to enjoy the Capriote
architecture, flower-filled window boxes as well as the rugged limestone
cliffs where herds of capre (goats) once roamed, hence the name
of the island.
Positano
is
arguably, the most picturesque and photographed of the coastal towns.
What however is not in question, is that you will need a sturdy set of
knees, for where most towns have streets, Positano has steps. Lots of
them! Make sure you have some comfortable walking shoes, and that your
back and legs are strong enough to negotiate those picturesque, but
daunting and ladder like scalinatelle. If not, ride the municipal bus,
which frequently plies the one-and-only-one-way Via Pasitea, hair
pinning from Positano’s central Piazza dei Mulini to the mountains and
back, making a loop through the town every half hour.
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The
author John Steinbeck wrote about Positano: “The town bites deep; it
is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes
beckoning real after you have gone.”
In her book of
memories, Happy Times, Lee Radziwill declares that when she
thinks of paradise, it is Conca dei
Marini,
which first comes to mind. If you stay overnight at the Belvedere
Hotel, you will surely agree.
The must-do is a
jaunt down the staircase to the left of the hotel: this leads past some
gorgeous houses to the dollhouse-size
harbour
of Santa Maria delle Neve,
one of the most idyllic sights along the entire coast. Closed because of
a major landslide several years ago, its beach and marina have now
reopened and the little chapel is also worth the many steps. |
Buildings are stacked to the cliffs like swallow nests |
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Closer to the sky than the sea below the sloping vines |
Just a few minutes
west of Amalfi, perched atop a ridge and closer to the sky than the sea,
the lovely town of
Ravello
gazes
down on the Bay of Salerno below and the humble towns surrounding it.
Positano may focus on pleasure, and Amalfi on history, but cool, serene
Ravello revels in refinement. It is a small stylish town that is largely
pedestrianised. A former playground of Jackie Kennedy, Ravello sits like
a natural balcony overhanging Amalfi and the other smaller towns below.
Ravello’s chief glories are its wonderful gardens. The Hotel Palumbo
is without doubt, one of Italy’s most beautiful properties, although
a bit on the expensive side for us ordinary travellers.
Further south, along
the Tyrrhenian coast, and bottom part of the heel of Italy, we visited
our last stopover,
Maratea.
Clinging to the steep hillside above, it is a charming village of very
old colourful houses and narrow cobbled streets. |
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We
stayed in the La Locanda della Donne Monache, an old monastery
completely refurbished to modern standards. Dinner was served on an
open-air balcony, under the stars and overlooking the pool and covered
by brightly coloured bougainvillea.
This beautiful
setting is carved into the rocky slope next to the tiny parish church of
St Maria. From our bedroom, we had stunning views over the relief of
clay tiled roofs and the blue ocean in the distance.
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To our surprise we
saw, on approaching the town along the winding coastal road, the huge
figure of Christ, blessing the quiet town below with His arms spread
out. Apparently it was donated by the Catholic church of Rio de Janeiro,
where the famous Corcovado statue of Christ the Redeemer has the same
prominent location. We had to race sunset to reach the summit in time
for a last photograph of this inspiring symbol. What a spiritual ending
of a journey along one of the most scenic natural wonders on earth!
- Johann Beukes
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