The Amalfi Coast

I’ve been meaning to tell you about the bells that ring at the churches here. I know we’ve talked about the Sunday bells, but the church bells ring all day long giving you the time every 15 minutes. There are two different bells used. Every 15 minutes the little bell chimes off the number of rings for the hour, then a big bell chimes off how many quarters after the hour. One ring means 15 after, 2 rings means 30 minutes after, and 3 rings means 45 minutes after the hour. So ding, ding, ding, GONG, means 3:15. You’re on your own to figure out whether it’s AM or PM! Luckily, I don’t think they chime all night. They seen to turn off from 10pm to 6am (as far I know anyway!)


We decided to take the bus back up the coast to Positano (about an hour’s drive to go 15 miles). We have driven past Positano three times and decided we needed to actually stop there! It is just over the hill from Sorrento, where we were last week (about 20 miles away). It is probably considered the first town on the Amalfi Coast and possibly the most famous. I would say that it is only slightly larger than Minori, where we are staying now, but it much, much more developed. In fact there isn’t really anything to do in Positano except shop and “be seen”. The road is higher up on the mountain and so the bus drops you off away from the actual town. So if you consider the walk down to the beach as shopping, then we did our shopping. We didn’t stay long, just long enough to have our Diet Cokes, a cup of Gelato, and “be seen”. We decided to take the boat back rather than walk or bus back up the mountain again. (Boat rides are always nice!)


When we bussed there, we had to transfer in Amalfi and when we rode the boat it went back to Amalfi. Amalfi is probably the second most famous of the towns of the Amalfi Coast. It too is about the same size as Minori, but more developed. We have stopped there before and so didn’t need to wander too far. Its center square is dominated by a very large, different looking church, so we decided to explore it. Its uniqueness is attributed to influences by the Turks and the Moors (who are they?). We went inside where they have turned their old church (from the 900’s AD) into a museum with many artifacts from the 15th century. They also claim to have the remains of Saint Andrew (the apostle). Their “new” church is located right next to the old one and was built from 1000 to 1300 AD and is still used today.

From Amalfi, we are just a quick bus ride around the corner to get home again in Minori. All of these little towns along the Amalfi Coast are very similar. There are these huge mountains with steep cliffs that plunge right down into the ocean. It would be interesting to know just how deep they go under water. Every couple of miles, there is a deep ravine that runs down to the ocean where there is anywhere from 100 yards of beach to a quarter mile. This is where these towns are built, with their town squares down near the beach. As the towns grow, they start building up the sides of the cliffs. This is what makes for such picturesque and charming little towns. The city governments will not allow any changes to the outside of the buildings. Therefore it’s fairly common to have old, raunchy-looking buildings with very nice, modern interiors.


Because of the terrain, the Amalfi Coast drive is a very curvy road with many blind turns. Remember all the horn honking back in Paris? Well they have a totally different honk here! When busses go around one of these blind turns, they will give a little honk of the horn (which is usually a two-tone honk, like “HONK-honk”). This means, “I can’t see you but here I come around the corner”. Cars are usually very courteous to the buses and pull way over the right and stop way short of the turn to give the busses room to make the turn. These busses usually need to swerve over into the oncoming lane to make the tight turns. I have never seen such skilled bus driving as they have here. These big, full-sized busses can squeeze past double-parked cars, through the tightest, one-way only turns, past oncoming busses, all with inches to spare. I suppose that a near miss of just inches is still a miss! It’s pretty amazing. But some times there is a return honk from an oncoming car which means, “No, I’m coming through first!” Print this post