Positano, Italy is the first village that you come to as you leave Sorrento on the Naples side of the Amalfi coast. Positano can be reached by bus along the cliffs. Alternatively, you can take ferries from Naples and Sorrento to reach it by sea. Positano is a layer cake of houses and shops and churches. They are built on a cliff side that reaches all the way down to the Bay of Naples.
The photographs and the short film that are part of this article describe much better than I can in words how beautiful and colorful Positano is. There’s one highway that comes into Positano and connects you with the rest of the Amalfi coast. There is one road that goes through the village all the way down to the shoreline. Yet Positano is a city of steps and stairways that lead in all directions as you walk through the village. These steps and stairways and paths lead to plazas, elegant shops, beautiful homes, small churches, large cathedrals and everywhere restaurants. Each one of these places has a magnificent view of the Bay of Naples.
I have two brief tales of things that happened to me in Positano Italy. As some of you who have read this blog before know, I am scared of heights. Not ones made by nature, but ones made by man himself. I am perfectly fine standing on a cliff or mountain. However, flying in an airplane or riding over a high bridge scares me something awful.
Taking the bus from Sorrento towards Positano, I had climbed on board and sat on right side of the coach. The Italian roads around the Amalfi coast are very narrow. However, the bus drivers speed around those corners and curves like it’s the Indianapolis 500.
To get from Sorrento to Positano you have to cross over a mountain and come down the other side. The views are incredible in Positano Italy. Yet you are literally traveling on a road that is suspended over the ocean anywhere from 500 to 1000 feet above the Bay of Naples. All the views were on my side of the bus. There was literally nothing next to us. We were completely supported on this tiny narrow road by Human made construction.
There had never been a road there before and there really should not be a road there now. It was breathtakingly beautiful and incredibly scary as we whipped around those corners in this 30-foot bus.
As we arrived in the village an incident that took place was right out of any classic Italian genre comedy. What took place was so cliché that you almost would not believe that it happened, but it actually did. As I stated before the highway is very narrow. In the village, people actually park on both sides of the highway in many places. So there’s only enough room for one car to get through one at a time. However, Italians don’t wait for anybody, they just keep going.
As we pulled into the village there was a small pickup truck in front of our bus traveling in the same direction. Coming from the opposite way was a very large Mercedes-Benz. They both arrived at the same place at the same time. Neither one of them would move out of the way for the other. What ensued was 10 minutes of Italian drivers standing in the middle of the road screaming at each other and waving their hands around. They used that secret language of Italian hand gestures that only they understand. Our bus driver also got involved. He got out of the bus twice and went over to the group of screaming Italian men. He proceeded to yell and scream while jumping up and down a bit. Then he came back to the bus.
With the cars stacking up behind us on the busy coastal road, drivers from 5, 6, 7 cars away would get out and come to join the loud discussion. Then they would walk back to their cars shaking their heads. Not knowing the language, I could only guess what the argument was about. It seemed that the driver of the Mercedes-Benz, a very elegantly dressed older man, seemed concerned that his Mercedes would get scratched by the pickup truck. The driver of the truck didn’t care and that seemed to be the main concern.
Finally, after 10 minutes of this comedy of errors in Italian, the elegantly dressed man got back in his Mercedes and actually could drive past the pickup truck. There had been really no reason for this entire kerfuffle to take place. However, it was exciting to see that the cliches that you think happen in other countries like Italian drivers screaming at each other in the middle of a road actually do take place. No one pulled a gun, no one threw a punch, and no one tried to stab anybody else. There was just a lot of yelling and screaming and gesticulating about who was supposed to go first or get out of the way.
It was a bright, clear and warm November day as I took my time wandering through Positano down staircases, across plazas, entering shops and the large cathedral there as I made my way down towards the shoreline. Arriving at the shore of the Bay of Naples, I turned around and realized what an amazing feat of architecture Positano Italy was. It was a layer cake of colorful houses and shops, churches and plazas that are all built on top of each other. Places where people live and work and shop and eat and live their lives. It is incredible to behold. Yet you wonder who was the first person to decide that we could build an entire village on a side of a cliff?
At the bottom of the cliff, the shoreline was filled with expensive eateries and restaurants that serve fresh seafood and amazing Italian pastas and wines. After lunch, of course, it took me a bit longer to go up the staircases to the road than to come down them. I almost missed the bus back to Sorrento. Because while there is a bus schedule, it’s a little bit flexible in an Italian way. Most of these villages don’t have a bus station. There’s just a place where people gather, and if you miss the bus you may be there for another hour or so before one returns.
Positano is beautiful, colorful, and certainly worth the visit.
Film and photos are by James Carey/Attic Studios. Copyright 2021, Carey-On Creative, LLC., Atlanta, GA. Tripswithjames.com is a trademark of Carey-On Creative, LLC.