Monday, September 23, 2019 - Docked in Salerno, visited Amalfi Coast, Italy

Today’s plan was to tour Amalfi Coast to visit 3 of the most beautiful towns in Amalfi Coast namely Positano, Amalfi and Ravello.  I was the one arranged this tour with an Amalfi Coast Tour in January 2019.  We had a total of 8 people for this tour.  Our driver picked us up on time and got on a comfortable Benz van.  During his introduction, he mentioned that this was our private tour and we can make changes to meet our requirements.  And Arlene’s friend wanted to add Sorrento to the list of towns to visit and the driver agreed.  

The first stop was Ravello which is closed to Salerno. It is a beautiful little and quiet town in the middle of the mountain next to the seashore line.  Its scenic location makes it a popular tourist destination, and earned it a listing as an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. When we got there, there were not too many tourists, therefore we had a nice walk in the town. One of the attraction is Cathedral of Ravello in the middle of the town. 

Mountain View from Ravello

The Cathedral of Ravello

In additional to the beautiful scenery, it has a lot of nice shops selling beautiful ceramic products with lemon and olive as part of the design.  We even wondered into a ceramic factory to see their exhibits.  We found a salt and pepper set and liked it very much, however, we decided to look around more and did not buy it right away.  Later, we were looking for something equivalent in other cities and could not find it. It was the only regrettable event in this whole trip.

Ceramic shop in Ravello

Then we drove to Amalfi which is so pretty and earned the naming of the whole coast line after it.  It is included in the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.  Right after we walked into the town, Duomo di Amalfi and the piazza are just In front of us with a lot of tourists in the whole area.  It was tough to get nice photos there, therefore we decided to walk further into the town.  The town was not much to see except shops.  However, we did run into a lot of local youngsters walking down from the mountain behind the town.  It was temped to do some climb, however, we did not have time to do it.

Panoramic view of Amalfi

View of Amalfi from the pier

View of Amalfi from the pier

Duomo di Amalfi 

Then we drove to Positano which is a picturesque town with splendid coastal views. The town itself is built on side of a hill all the way down to the seashore of Tyrrhenian Sea which is a part of the Mediterranean Sea off the western coast of Italy. Due to traffic situation in this busy tourism town, our driver dropped us off at the south end of the town and let us walk down to visit the town.  

Right after we got off the van, we started seeing this beautiful coast line and the picturesque town, we took many photos all the way to the town.

View of Positano from the top of hill

We walked down to the town and visited different interesting shops.  Finally we got to the beach.  From the beach we looked back and found the beautiful town just like we saw in many travel magazines.  

Positano from pier

Positano from beach

Positano from pier

Then we drove another hour to Sorrento.  Due to time limit, we only stay on top of the beach to take photos.  After the visit, we realized that it was a mistake to add Sorrento to today’s itinerary.  However, we all tried to accommodate each other and no one complained.

View of Sorrento from the top

After we got back to the ship, we realized that a tour driver was trying to contact us for the next day’s pick up time.  When we called back, no one answered and the answering machine answered with Italian which we could not understand.  At this point, all we could do was asking Holland America’s Customer Services Desk to help.  They did and got us in contact with Viator which was the company we booked the tour with. They promised to relate the pick up time info to the tour company who contracted this tour from Viator.