Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Amalfi, Italy

Amalfi was so awesome. It was so nice to finally be in a relaxing place for a few days. We had an awesome view from our hotel room of the city below:


our balcony

our room - sweet tile floors



Our hotel had a bus that would take you down to the town and back on a schedule, so we hurried to hop on one and go explore. Turns out that it is WAY more scary to be on a bus on those roads than it is to be in a Ford Focus!! Our driver was crazy and wasn't stopping for anything. We made it down alive though!

Piazza del Duomo
the heart of Amalfi

St. Andrew's Fountain
also known as the "Fountain of the Population"

We ate at a sweet place and had some house wine and delicious pasta with pesto sauce.



Then we moved outside to continue the wine drinking and people watch before Joe had to get some gelato.

blue candles

great people watching

and great wine

We walked around and checked out all of the cute little shops and buildings.




The Cathedral of St. Andrew is located on the Piazza del Duomo. The remains of St. Andrew, the first apostle, are held inside the Cathedral. The next day, we saw people that had just gotten married standing on the steps to take pictures with a crowd of people watching!

St. Andrew's Cathedral

Porch of St. Andrews

We walked along the seaside square and saw this famous statue of Flavio Gioia, an Amalfi native who possibly invented the compass! 

Joe loves compasses

We caught the scary bus back to our hotel and were ready to hit the sack! The next day we woke up and decided to spend the day at our hotel's private beach. I could not have been more excited about the day!!


we took the bus halfway back down to our beach entrance, and then had to ride a tiny elevator down through the cliff to get down to beach level. We came out into this cave:


4 people max! Joe making pals

he couldn't wait to get some rays

our beach

standing on the rocky ground

taking a little walk in Toms

obsessed with hunting for beach glass treasures

inside a little cave

eating lunch at the beach club

final collection

After the beach, we went down to the town for a little bit to shop around and Joe had some more gelato of course. We discovered the coolest paper shop in town that sold stationary and bookmarks. Amalfi has a long history of paper manufacturing that is very important to the town. They still produce all kinds of beautiful artisan made paper.


Then we went back to take showers and catch the bus down to dinner. We were serenaded by a very Italian little band while we ate at a family restaurant al fresco..

definitely mad at me for taking pictures by now

always get the caprese and house wine

our waiter wanted to snap this pic

Later we sat in this cool little bar with SUPER fancy drinks being made and had some limoncello (and wine and beer.)

orchids hanging upside down from the ceiling! 

he loooooved limoncello! It tasted like lemon flavored moonshine and is all made locally from Amalfi lemons

yum yum

Goodbye Amalfi :( It was a blast

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