Today’s big event was an all day boat tour. We met our guide, Carlo, at 9:30am and the other 9 people on the shore and walked over to the boat to meet our captain, Pacifico of the famous (or infamous) boat, “My Lova, Lova.” The tour started off by venturing east-ish back along the Amalfi coast. We stopped for our first swim around 30-40 minutes into our tour. The weather wasn’t too bad, but the sun made it super hot on the boat and swimming was the perfect antidote. After our swim, the prosecco came out (never too early when you’re on vacation), and never really went away…
We then stopped briefly at the Emerald Grotto, which was an extra 10 euros, and included a little boat tour inside by a very happy old man. He loved his life, and had limited English, but we filled in the blanks. He told us one centimeter of a stalactite growing, took 40 or 80 years (we aren’t sure which one, language barrier and everything, but either way, it took a long time!).
We made it to the town of Amalfi around 11 am and we had 2 options, we could spend three hours in the town, OR an hour in the town, and then take the boat to a secluded beach and spend 2 hours eating at a restaurant there and then sitting on the beach. When we asked Carlo about the food at the restaurant he said it’s not going to be the best meal, but we liked the idea of sitting on the beach and being out of crowds and chose to do the 1 hour in Amalfi and the rest on the beach.
Amalfi was crazy busy, like more than we had seen to date, and we wanted to get out of the crowds so we found a cute little pizza restaurant, and saw someone standing outside, and they said it’s really good so we checked it out. This part of Italy is all about trying to find the out-of-the-way places and that’s what this was, it was a cute isolated place and the pizza looked great so we sat down, and ordered a simple margherita pizza to share. Dave also saw there was a special strawberry/limoncello spritz, so he got that which was very refreshing.
The pizza came out quickly, and it was really good. We polished it off quickly and saw someone else ordering a large affogato, so we all got that to share as well. We got this all done in only an hour that we were in Amalfi, which was great, so we met the group back up with the boat.
We then made it over to the restaurant on the isolated coast, and headed to the beach, but were told we can’t sit on the beach unless we eat at the restaurant which we weren’t told from the get-go. So we had to pay to sit on the beach, which wasn’t a sandy beach, only rocks. The saving grace was that it was HOT out and we ended up swimming, which was much needed (although all the rocks to/from the water made us feel like toddlers trying to learn to walk)! After 2 hours, we made it back on the boat, and headed over to another swim spot near a cave which was cool.
We finally made it back to Positano around 5 pm. We found a lttle place up near our hotel overlooking the harbor and got some simple pasta, that got us back on track from the night before. Dave got a huge beer, which he very much enjoyed!
After dinner we headed over to the other side of Positano to the other gelato shop we hadn’t been to which was really good! Oddly enough, the other side of the island was much more chill, which we appreciated.
After our nightly gelato, we headed to bed on the last night in Positano. Tomorrow we’re headed over to Naples!