A Warning About This Place

Nobody warns you that the Amalfi Coast will make you resentful. You spend three days neck-craning at pastel villages stacked against impossible cliffs, and sometime around the second afternoon in Ravello — sitting above the clouds with a glass of Greco di Tufo, the sea a flat blue geometry two hundred meters below — you start to resent every other place you've ever lived or visited for not being this.

The drive from Naples took two hours and required three years off my life expectancy. The SS163 is a two-lane road that regularly narrows to approximately one lane to allow buses to pass, above drops that local engineers have apparently decided require no guardrail. The driver seemed unbothered. I gripped the door handle and looked at the sea.

Positano: Photogenic Beyond Its Means

Positano is expensive in the way that very beautiful, very famous things are expensive — it knows what it is. The vertical town spills from clifftop to waterfront in cascading layers of terracotta and bougainvillea, and the only way through it is a network of stairs that will either improve your cardiovascular fitness or break your knees.

I arrived in early July, which is not early enough to avoid the crowds but early enough that the shoulder-to-shoulder density of August hadn't arrived. The beach is covered in smooth grey pebbles — not sand — and the water is cold, clear, and the precise shade of blue that Instagram has been trying and failing to reproduce since 2010.

The best meal I had in Positano was not at a restaurant at all, but from a hole-in-the-wall panino shop on the stairs near Via dei Mulini: mozzarella di bufala, prosciutto crudo, and fresh basil on rosemary focaccia, eaten standing on the step outside, watching a woman attempting to carry a refrigerator up the stairs while her husband gestured directions from below.

Ravello: The Intellectual's Retreat

Gore Vidal lived in Ravello for decades. D.H. Lawrence wrote here. Richard Wagner was inspired by the Villa Rufolo gardens to write Klingsor's magic garden in Parsifal. This is the kind of pedigree Ravello carries, with appropriate gravity.

The town sits high above the coast on its own ridge — you can't see the sea from the main piazza, only hear it — and has a quietness that the cliff-edge towns lack. The Villa Cimbrone and its Terrazza dell'Infinito (Terrace of Infinity) may be the single most spectacular garden viewpoint in Europe. I spent two hours there and left feeling like I needed to reconsider several life choices.

The Grotta dello Smeraldo and Swimming

The Emerald Grotto — a sea cave accessible by boat or elevator from the coastal road — is one of those tourist attractions that somehow exceeds its TripAdvisor rating. The water inside glows with an eerie bioluminescent green from an underground opening, and your rowboat guide will tell you the story of the submerged nativity scene at the bottom with exactly the same cadence he has used 8,000 times before.

For serious swimming, skip the main town beaches and take a boat to one of the offshore sea stacks or private inlet coves accessible only by water. Local boat rentals run about €80/day for a small motorboat with no license required.

Eating Your Way Down the Coast

The coastal cuisine is essentially an argument that tomatoes, olive oil, mozzarella, and fresh seafood require no further refinement. This argument is correct.

• Spaghetti alle vongole at any beachside restaurant with fishing boats visible
• Delizia al limone — a sponge cake soaked in limoncello cream that makes you question all other desserts
• Alici di Cetara — the anchovies from Cetara are considered the best in the world; the colatura di alici (anchovy sauce) is worth carrying home
• Sfogliatella — have this at 7am from a Positano bar before the heat sets in