“Are you going to Positano?” This was the often asked question when I spoke about our upcoming trip here to anyone who had been here before. American’s really seem to love Positano. It was our first stop this morning, after the ferry from Sorrento.
The town is build into the cliffs, up and down. There are road tunnels through some parts of the rock, enabling cars to drive from one area to another, but this road must be pretty recent. It was another location for Roman vacation homes in ancient times, but was not necessarily popular with travelers until the mid-twentieth century. John Steinbeck wrote an essay for Harper’s Bazaar about Positano, and that made it popular with Americans and other Europeans.
We visited the Church of the Assumption, Positano’s main church. It has a Madonna icon as one of its most ancient artifacts. There are two legends about the name Positano. One is that a freed slave named Posit began to live in the area, and the name “Posit’s Town,” more or less became Positano. The other is that when the Madonna icon, which had been pillaged from the East, was being sailed up the coast by a group of monks, the figure began to say “Posta! Posta!” meaning “Put me down.” So they did, and the name of the town became “Positano.”
The best part of the morning visit may have been seeing and standing on the beach. I got to touch the warm Mediterranean water! It’s so nice to be on a shore; we’ve been in shore communities for days now, but more or less removed from the water– by piers or cliffs or roads or boats. In the summer, we would never have been able to have all this space around us on the small beach.
We had a little time for to browse shops in Positano. The shopping was fun: Mark had his eye on a linen shirt and since we were in the shop, I tried on a linen shirt too. I thought it was a little shapeless in the waist, but the salesperson said, “Don’t worry, we will fix it in ten minutes!” Out came a few pins, I took off the shirt and by the time we had paid for our items, the shirt had been taken in and was being ironed. They even threw in a scrunchie for a gift! It would change my shopping life if every store had a seamstress who said, “Don’t worry!” when I tried on clothing.
We took the ferry from Positano to Amalfi. It’s another seaside resort town, a little less vertical but still pretty vertical! We were here on the first leg of our trip, and pleased to have another tour of the St. Andrew’s Cathedral. This saint is interesting becauses ampules of his relics are suppose to liquify seven times a year! It is a heavy lift for a saint!
The cathedral has several parts: a cloister, a desanctified older church which serves as a museum, a crypt where St. Andrew is, and the actual cathedral sanctuary.
We spent our remaining time in Amalfi eating panini, shopping, and then drinking espresso and eating gelato! It began to rain as we waited for our last ferry of the day, to Salerno. We have changed bodies of water, and are now on the Gulf of Salerno rather than the Gulf of Naples. From Salerno we were driven to Cappaccio. It’s a small, quiet town, and since we arrived in the dark and rain, I don’t have much to report yet.
