To continue the saga…late last night we found out our driver who was supposed to drive us the 3 hours from Monopoli to Salerno ditched us (NEVER use GetTransfer.com - HORRIBLE service and did nothing to help us), so we had to scramble for some other options. We originally were going to do a train to a bus to a train and hopefully get there on time for our 3:30pm ferry, but that seemed like too many things would have to right for us not to miss a transfer. Then we briefly talked with our favorite Uber driver (and her mama) about driving us, but 800 euro was too rich for our blood. Our last resort, and choice we ended up going with us was an early train to Bari, and then a 4 hour bus ride over to Salerno and be an hour early for our ferry.
We got moving from the apartment around 8am, and took a 30 minute train ride over to Bari where we walked about 8 minutes to the bus depot (just down the street, like South Station for all of you Bostonians) and waited for about another hour for the bus. None of us have taken the bus since our college days, and we weren’t super excited about it, so we all had our own rendition of our individual “bus faces.”
Our bus was a little late arriving, but luckily, our driver was dressed like Mario Andretti and got us to Salerno early. Other than the slightly unpleasant smell and the broken chair Dave (then Anna who switched with him) had, the bus ride wasn’t too unpleasant, but we will not be taking that again if we can help it. We finally arrived in Salerno where we then took an hour ferry ride over to Positano, and since our race-car/bus driver, who tailed people at 2 feet or less the whole time, got us there early, we got an early ferry! Wins all over the place!
We made it here around 3pm (the view coming in is amazing…see picture above) and hauled our luggage up about a gazillion stairs (not nice) to our hotel (very nice). We had a bottle of champagne sitting for us in the room, so Dave and Anna slammed that.
We needed a little drink/pre-dinner snack, so we found a cute restaurant not far away from our hotel. We met two lovely guys who happened to be from Boston (of all the gin-joints…) and chatted with them for about an hour before heading back down to our hotel. Upon leaving with our required limoncello shot, the server insisted Anna and Dave go behind the bar to get a picture of the drink WITH the scenery, as he took the phone from Tsana and said, “I do this for a living, my dear.”
We had dinner reserved around 7pm at the hotel restaurant, which we happened to reserve a month ago. After dinner we decided to call it a night since we were going to get up early for a quick workout before a ferry over to Capri the next morning. Oddly enough, it was June 15, therefore Festa di San Vito was today! This meant that there was a marching band going down the roads (to which Anna flew our of her room to look out of Tsana and Dave’s balcony screaming “I know this march!!!”) and fireworks - not only at 8pm, but also at midnight, which woke most of us up (except Tsana).
Either way, gorgeous views and more to come!
