After 4 days, we had plenty of Rome, and wanted to see something a bit different. So we booked a hotel on the Amalfi coast in the town of Amalfi. The town was full of tunnels and hidden staircases and passageways carved out of or through the hillside. Hotel Luna was a 13th century convent founded by St Francis of Assisi, and then converted to a hotel around 1818. Apparently it also was the place that Ibsen wrote the Birdcage, and Wagner wrote some operas and was very popular with famous creative types and VIPs such as Sweden’s King Gustav VI. It was a very cool place (stunning Moresque tiles and architecture) but the advertised pool and beach were closed for the season (which was not disclosed on the Booking page for the place …).
From Rome, we took a train to Salerno (saw Mt Vesuvius from the train), and then a shuttle to Amalfi. The coast road is REALLY twisty, and we saw a lot of cyclists of all kinds enjoying the curves and the scenery. Unfortunately, the curves from the back seat of a van made for some pretty motion-sick people! H was really sick on the way to the hotel, and I was pretty bad on the way back. Which was a little unfortunate because the scenery was AMAZING. The sea, the little villages, the steep cliffs, and the lemon orchards were super-picturesque.
The day we arrived was New Years Eve, so we signed up for the NYE prix fixe dinner there. It turned out to be an 8 course monster where 2 courses would have been a full meal. It started at 8 and finished at midnight when everybody got a bottle of bubbly to pop at the same time for a toast. The kids made it to 10:30, but then had to bail out. Jen and I stuck it out. There was some cool music as well – a trio of musicians and singers that played and sang all night. We took a bit of video here.
Breakfast was tasty and coffee in the medieval cloister courtyard was pretty nice too!
On New Years Day, we took a taxi up to the clifftop town of Ravello and enjoyed visiting the grounds and museum at Villa Rufolo.
We had a snack at a little bar on the town square to fortify ourselves for the walk back down to Amalfi. We had heard about this route that was over a thousand stairs, and figured, as long as we were going down, it cannot be too hard, right? Well, it was pretty remote and sketchy in a few places, but it was clearly the path as we passed (and followed) a number of signs.
We finally made it back to Amalfi and had a bit of a lie-down, as we all had sore feet. For dinner, we had booked a table online at a place that turned out not to be open (kind of a flaw of the system to let you book for a closed restaurant …) but it was a really happy mistake as we were able to squeeze in at La Gemma, established 1872, which turned out to be the best food of the entire trip. Amazing pasta, risotto, bread, wine, dessert, the works! In a super-cute little setting and great staff.
We gathered lots of sea glass, tumbled rocks and tile fragments from the stony beach, but the water was a bit cold for swimming. The last morning in Amalfi was about getting back to Rome, and included the twisty, sickening van ride, and then a train trip that was already longer due to being unable to book on the fast train and then waiting for the ambulance for a sick passenger. Sigh. We ended up back in Rome about an hour later than planned, hungry and frazzled. But lo, what did we find in the Roma Termini? Five Guys? Greasy American burgers in the train station? Sign us up! It was just like in the US except for the pickles, which were not as good.
Our last night in Rome was pretty chill – a bit of shopping for H to pick out a birthday outfit and then packing/cleaning for our return flight to Sweden via CPH, no testing needed and the flight left 20 minutes early!
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