OK, first off, congratulations to Megan on the occasion of her passing the bar! WOOOOO! Go get 'em, legally of course!
I've just realized that we're only a little over two weeks from our trip to Florence, so I better get all these honeymoon pictures uploaded before we've got more travel to blog. I know, I know, the heart just bleeds for me.
We were pretty tired after all the travel involved in getting to Positano (planes, trains, ferries, and our poor lil leggies), so we set aside our first day as a rest day. It was definitely time to put our stuff down and figure out where the hell we were.
We got our clothes-shopping out of the way early. (No, not really... though apparently, at one time, Positano was really considered hot stuff in the world of fashion. ?!)
After this exhausting shopping excursion, it was definitely time to grab some wine and go down to the beach...
We considered renting a car during our stay, but decided against it. Though this car actually might have been able to make it up the narrow stairs.
The next day, totally happy and rested, we headed off to Amalfi... (here's a picture of us on the boat).
I liked Amalfi a lot, actually. It was a beautiful town, in a way that was actually different from Positano. Much more gently sloping, for one thing! We really couldn't see much of Amalfi's proud maritime history, though there were some lovely statues and buildings that showed there must have, at one time, been an awful lot of money 'round there.
The Duomo was stunning. It was really easy to see the influence the Moors had on the area.
And this interesting fountain out front was not to be missed. (Our guidebook called this graceful lady the "squirty-titted nymph". Not that I'd ever be rude enough to call her that. Especially not on the internets. Anyway, here's a closeup, for those of you who want one...)
The bottom part of the town, where the buses and boats discharged all of us day-trippers, was really crowded. In fact, by the time we fought our way up to the Duomo, I was feeling kinda overwhelmed by the slow-moving crowds, thinking "Man, did every tourist on the Amalfi Coast HAVE to come here today?"
I shouldn't have been so worried. We only had to get like a half-mile away from the beach, up the Via Genova, for everything to completely clear out. I was stunned at the difference such a short distance made, and the sights we saw just a little ways off the main drag were really, really cool.
First, we dropped in on the paper museum, which offered tours of the old paper-making facilities. Amalfi has been making paper for papal decrees for a really long time - 1500 years?
The tour was GREAT.
There were only two other people on the tour with us. We got to see papermaking equipment from the 1500s and an actual relic of the industrial revolution, which the terrifically animated guide was kind enough to turn on for us. It had been working since the 1780s! The machine he's standing on there was for pulping old white clothes with water. Their paper is actually made from cloth, not wood pulp, so apparently it lasts a lot longer. (Here's a picture of the guide making a new sheet of paper.) He showed us one of the last production sheets made by the factory, which was about 30 years old, and it was in really good shape. We bought some computer paper, which we've been meaning to use to print out wedding pics. (What? It was only like 18 months ago!)
We headed a little further up the main road, through the Valle dei Mulini (valley of the (paper) mills), until we began to run out of town. Then, we bought a bottle of wine, sat in the woods, and waited for our next stop to open. (This was the view we had.)
I like this picture of me... it's up in the forest, overlooking the valley.
Anyway, we headed back down the hill to our next destination... a limoncello factory!
This place was so, so neat. It didn't seem like they had had any out-of-town visitors for quite a while. I felt kind of bad interrupting, since everyone in there was bottling liqueurs for sale in the tourist shops down further in town, but this really nice gentleman took us under his wing. He walked us around the shop, pulling down open bottles of liqueur and proudly showing them to us, and gave us little sippy cups of each one. We played a game of charades to figure out what everything was, which was great. For instance, for the laurel liqueur, he said "Romans" and mimed a hat, then pumped his fist into the air in a victorious gesture. Ah, the universal language! (I really should learn some Italian!)
I'm pretty sure these are (l to r) mandarin liqueur, crema de limone, laurel (bay leaf) liqueur, a local citron liqueur, and a mixed fruit liqueur. (That word looks strange. Did I spell it right?) They were all so, so good. We left with light heads and lighter pockets. Totally wonderful.
We really liked Amalfi! It was a different kind of town then Positano, which was neat to see. There were still way too many photogenic scenes to put up here, though.
I don't know if I'd stay there, but it was certainly a nice place to go for a day. Of course, I'm sure it's totally different at night, when everyone leaves...
