JOIN USThe sweetness of doing nothing in Positano
Have you ever been to a place which makes you want to come back, even before you get there? Well then, you must add Positano to your Itch List now!
Of course, a benevolent, natural lemony air and Crayola blue water can be partially blamed for it. Just partially, as the sharp cliff sides with their beautiful mish-mashed houses, winding hilly lanes and timeless stone steps that are as old as the settlements themselves, add to everything that make Positano an Italian dream.
Add to that the people. Wine. Food. And the beauty of chardonnay sunsets that even the most driven is forced to stand and stare. Welcome to Positano, an Italian town located on the Amalfi Coast which took our cumulative breath away.
Well connected by train (up to Naples, or Sorrento) and taxis; many folks may also choose to drive down and enjoy the lovely view along curvaceous mountains. The five of us found an Antonio Banderas lookalike taxi driver at Naples, and after a pit-stop at the L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele restaurant for some Eat,Pray,Love pizza, we headed onwards.
Our conversation with him ran like this:
We: Can we have wine in the taxi?
Antonio-lookalike: This is Italy, you can have wine anywhere.So that was settled, just like that.Alternately, you can choose to take a ferry from Sorrento to Positano, which takes about an hour and offers a magnificent view of the town as it rises vertically from the sea. But this is subject to weather conditions and the location of your hotel. Travel light, as porter services for luggage from dock to hotel can cost around 10 Euro per piece!
Walk. Rent a Vespa. Take a boat to Amalfi. Eat at the beach side or the cliff-hanging restaurants or just browse in the eclectic stores along the walk to the beach. Positano gets as decadent as you would like it to be. Keeping the green theme in mind, there are small electric cars that can also be rented for a whiff of freedom.
Postino is a community of just 4,000, and pretty much all are involved in hospitality. The grande-dame Santa Maria Assunta church sits in the middle of the town’s hustle bustle. Our hotel, Hotel Savoia was family-run and superb, as were many local businesses we interacted with. A couple of restaurants that serve memorable meals include Chez Black, where you may end up rubbing shoulders with Denzel Washington and Co. and Casa e Bottega, which probably serves one of the most lovingly made vegetarians meals in all of Italy.
The fresh mountain air both incites you to walk and soak the ambience of the town as day turns into a balmy dusk and stop at any of the lovely restaurants that have strategically placed viewpoints on the side of the hill. The 300 metre long Spiaggia Grande, Amalfi’s longest pebble beach, plays a cool aqua orchestra of its own that can calm the most frazzled nerves. If dancing is your thing, plan to be in
Positano on a Saturday night and head to its only nightclub, Music on the Rocks by the beach.
Chocolate dipped orange slices, freshly made, divine-tasting waffles by Francesca & Roberta and the shops with the limoncello tasting booths are like a dessert connoisseur’s dream come true. Oh and don’t worry about the extra calories, you can take a few hundred steps to walk them off.
And if charm, both human and natural, was the one thing we forgot to mention, the conversation below is a perfect example of the Italian version!
We: What time do you close? We would like to come back later.
Italian hunk of a store manager: Madam, we will not close till you come back.
As an attempt to be adventurous, one of us headed uphill on a Vespa (what else!) with a local business-owner named Pepe (Mastercard moment, I tell you!), to a small commune called Nocelle, which has just a hundred residents. They enjoy the view of the entire Amalfi Coast, grow their own wine and the edges of the clouds merge with the tops of their houses. The ‘hill with a hole’ and the gorgeously green hillsides are like a ‘Sound of Music’ moment which is likely to stay with us forever.
Five women and no talk about shopping? It’s like going against nature. So, we did head into a few alluring stores bursting with Italian elegance. Apart from clothes and accessories, be prepared to pick up brightly painted ceramics unique to Positano, cheeses, olives, wine, truffle oil, pasta and spices as well as most of us did. Mariblu for beach dresses and Pepe for accessories (as well as a lovely view from his balcony) are must stops, even if just to browse for a few moments.
John Steinbeck, the Pulitzer Prize winning American writer once wrote – “Positano bites deep. It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone.” Like we said, it wants you to come back, even before you get there.
Pooja Mittal Aggarwal and Kavita Jhunjhunwala
The writers are bloggers at SisterHoodofTravel.com and storytellers at TheItchList.com.