Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast

We left Rome today and stopped for a tour of another iconic Italian city, Pompeii, buried in lava in 70 AD from Mt. Vesuvius, which still looms over the city and is still active.  It was an on-going archeological site and discoveries are still being made every day.  We decided to leave the more slowly-paced tour we had been taking with another local specialist and went off on our own, and we were glad we did.  The sun had been shining when we left the coach and I had left my hat, rain jacket, and umbrella there, but it began to rain, for the first time since we had been in Italy except for an overnight shower in Florence.  We were able to take shelter under an ancient portico, wait until it let up, and then return to the place we were to meet up after lunch.  We would have been soaked to the skin (or not seen much of Pompeii) if we had remained on the tour.

The sun was back out, and we found a hotel with a dining room that was still open not far from where we were to meet up with the others on the tour.  We enjoyed some pizza with Buffalo mozzarella.  I had heard of this cheese before but learned only recently that it is made from the milk of the Italian Mediterranean buffalo, and it has a unique flavor and consistency.  We asked for a glass of the local red wine as usual, the vino della casa rosso, but realized from the first sip that, while delicious, it had a bit of a sparkle to it.  Our waiter explained that this was Gragnano wine, a dark red, sparkling wine local to the region. 

Late in the afternoon, our coach took us from Pompeii to one of the most beautiful regions in Italy, the Amalfi Coast, where we had plenty of time to visit the city of Positano.  This was some of the most stunning scenery we had seen thus far on the tour.  We were on a road too narrow and curving for the coach and had transferred to smaller vehicles for this part of the trip.

This was one of those places, among a handful on our admittedly limited travel in the world, where I thought to myself, “Wow!  I could live here!”

Our hotel was on the side of a mountain above Sorrento, one of the nicest places we had stayed since the Borgo di Cortefreda in Tuscany, and we had a splendid view of the Bay of Naples from our room.