Amalfi Coast Tour/Sorrento

19-20 April 2017

After a night in Sorrento, we did something we haven't done since the Vietnam trip - let someone else do the driving.  We paid a driver/tour guide for an 8-hour tour of the Amalfi Coast - 120 Euro for two including tip.  This place is just south of Sorrento around/over the peninsula from Sorrento.

Tour guidebook:  The Amalfi Coast is a popular tourist destination for Italy as a whole, attracting thousands of tourists annually. In 1997, the Amalfi Coast was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site as a cultural landscape.

The day began a bit rainy, but improved with the day.  We had an older couple with us from Dallas, and a single young woman from Portland.  Below, the road perched right on the cliffs over the sea.

Spring flowers in bloom.  To the right, a fishermen's roost - the men come from the surrounding villages and will stay here for days during the season.

What looks like graffiti is graffiti - but much of it is the result of romantic hanging out of the young-ins.  We left our spray paints at home today.

Two of the cliffside/seaside towns.

Interesting tile work.

What everyone needs - a mosaic lounger.

See the tower to the left - up until the 16th century pirates from North Africa and Turkey would come calling and attempt to pillage the villages.  The towers, many still standing, and many now nightclubs, were arranged along the coast, in sight of one to the next.  If pirates were spotted, vigilant villagers would set fires atop the tower alerting the townspeople to a possible attack and all the defenders would assume battle positions.  Other tower look-outs would see the fires and the alert would spread to the entire Amalfi coast.

 Sunny conditions "lighting" up the turquoise waters.

Portland girl watching out the tour van windows.

A church with a grand staircase.

Gerri:  "I give you the Amalfi Coast!"

Amalfi Cat

Mount Vesuvius - beckoning us onto Pompeii in the morning, and then Naples in the afternoon.