Positano
Positano is the place of dreams. The kind of place that gets put in travel ads on TV and is all over Pinterest and you’ve probably seen a photo of it before. It is two mirroring walls of bright colored buildings down the mountain side separated by a beach. It is breathtaking and beautiful and expensive as all get out. This is the area where hotels are easily in the high hundreds and food can be too. However, if you do a little digging and are willing to walk a little bit you can experience life like the “other half” for half the cost as well.
We started the day off early with breakfast at the hostel and then made our way to the bus. Today the traffic was unusually bad and our bus driver was unusually aggressive. He drove super fast and was merciless to other cars and busses. More than once he would yell out his window at a passing by car or bus who had messed up on the road by not stopping when the bus had honked or just was too stupid to move. He would also do this thing where if a car needed to back up rather than wait and then go around he would push forward on the car backing up every inch of the way. Still though it took over an hour to get to Positano and the bus was super crammed.
Positano was beautiful, we took lots of pictures on the walk down to the center and then on the way back up. Consider the layout of the town like a U shape. The center of the U is the lowest point and the two sides slope up into hills. Then the town goes down through the white space in the center and meets the sea. We were dropped off at the top of the left side of the U, walked down to the center, and back up again into the right side to find Hotel Poseidon where we made dinner reservations. We then went down to the beach and laid out in the sun.
It was very luxurious. We also passed a small place to get groceries and bought some fruit, bread, and cheese for the day. The beach was nice, another pebble beach, but the thing is that it was so freaking hot that the short migration from towel to ocean was scalding on your feet and I guess I’m a wimp but also the texture of the pebbles hurt my feet. We only stayed at the beach for a few hours because it was seriously just too hot. I found out later that I even managed to get a little bit burnt. Also thankfully the water in our hostel sink is drinkable because I’ve been saving quite a bit of money by not paying for drinks when I go out to eat. It’s just not worth it. In the US water is free but here you have to pay for it and 3 euros for water, coke, or wine or whatever you get really isn’t worth it. There is one place around here though I’ve been paying 4 euros for this lemon soda stuff they make in the store and that’s worth it.
After the beach we walked around town a bit, did some shopping, and walked over to another more private beach off the right side of Positano. There we stopped for smoothies and then meandered our way up to dinner. We were early but they said we could chill at the bar and we both got pina coladas and looked at the spectacular view. We were also the first to be seated at dinner and even though the real guests pay 600+ to stay there we were seated first because we walked up first and got the nicest corner table in the entire place overlooking the entirety of Positano and the beach. It was better than we could’ve hoped.
We decided to live it up, it was Renee’s last day and it was such a beautiful place. Also since usually only hotel guests eat there this place gave free water (score) as well as not charging the customary but annoying cover fee that places tend to charge. 2 euro just for sitting there as if paying for food and drink isn’t enough.
We decided to split an appetizer of sea food on a toasted bread, each got our own appetizer, and then shared two deserts. We also got a “gift” from the kitchen.
The gift was a single small bread bruschetta style with anchovies (or was it sardines? is there a difference? And it was raw) and then little lemon peel pieces. I won’t lie that one wasn’t my favorite it reminded me of the raw herring from Rotterdam too much but was admittedly better.
Our appetizer had a tomato soaked bread piece with cherry tomatoes, clams, muscles, squid, shrimp, and fish. It was quite good.
My meal was the fresh catch of the day which was bass with potatoes and tomatoes and Renee had this fascinating dish with deep fried (think a lighter tempura) cucumber flowers (they looked like pumpkin flowers too) that had fresh ricotta cheese and some sort of dipping sauce. It was good and both visually and taste wise fascinating.
For desert we got two deserts. One was a chocolate “Mount Vesuvius” mousse and the other was a regional lemon cake and both were to die for. It was seriously such a nice dinner and we each only paid 49 euros which is amazing to me considering the view and what we got.
After that we started to make our way home which was difficult because we were nearing the time of the last bus. Last ferry is around 5 I think and really clears out the city which is really nice but we took last bus around 9:30 and it felt like everyone left was trying to get on that bus. Luckily we were able to get seats and the roads were way clearer than before so we were able to make it home without anything interesting going on.