amalfi coast

Having worked once upon a time, a two week Easter break was a luxury. Tell a lie, it was a week Easter break and Reading Week. Conscious to make the most of my downtime, the mister planned a trip to the Amalfi Coast. This visit was some time in the making. Almost seven years ago, we were backpacking through Italy and stayed at the tiniest hostel in Naples, complete with coin operated lift. The hostel was on the 7^th storey of a derelict building and we were too cheap to take the lift. On a whim, we visited Capri from Naples for the day. It was winter and Capri was deserted. The seas were choppy, the Blue Grotto was closed and we were one of the few clowns on a traditionally summer isle. I think we even walked up from the port because we were counting our pennies and EUR1.80 was too much to pay for the funicular. Off season travel aside, Capri had a distinct charm and the mister said he’d take me back “properly” one day. And the mister, he’s a habit of making things happen. Like how when we first visited Iceland in summer 2008, we agreed that if we ever made it so far as to get married, we’d get married in Iceland. Not fake marriage where you register in one jurisdiction and do the whole shebang in another… I think signing the papers IS getting married and everything else is secondary. But back to Capri!

So it was really nice to be re-visit Capri a few years down the road. In (almost!) the right season too, throwing in the Amalfi Coast for good measure. The mister shrewdly planned the holiday such that we stayed in hotels that had just opened for the season, within a week of our arrival in fact. That way, we were paying the cheapest possible rates, got upgraded at every stop because the hotels were less than half-full and had lots of attention from the staff.  Also had most of the facilities to ourselves and um there are hardly any other tourists in our photos. The downside, though, was that it was a little colder than I’d anticipated and on more than one day, while the mister looked like he’d stepped off a runway, I looked like a runaway in layers of coats.

In a funny coda, our car rental was upgraded to fiat500L. We love the fiat500 and have always driven that on previous trips but this time when the mister put his foot down at the first car the rental gave us, all they had left was the massive fiat500. Did think the counter girl gave us a big car to take the mickey as we whizzed along the narrow coastal roads, but no. Will be posting some photos from our travels over the next few days. Do check back if you’d like to see.

 (not where we stayed this time!)