Our Greek Isles/Mediterranean
Crown Princess Cruise May 2009
Naples (Capri) Italy
Amalfi Coast
We
came into port at Napoli. We would not spend anytime in Napoli or Capri
as our tour was to drive the Amalfi Coast. Once off the ship we found our
tour guide, Katharine from Drive Amalfi.
The six of us, Tom, Kathy, Ron, Brenda, Jerry and I all climbed into the
van and off we went on another adventure.
Katharine
was great. She was from California but has lived here for 25 years. It was
great to get a fellow American's perspective. She once lived in Florence
and now in Amalfi.
They have had lots of rain in the winter months here in this area making it hard to see Vesuvius. We could see a little bit of an outline this morning.
Our first stop was in Sorrento, a restroom stop and a nice view. We were at a shop, M.I.S.S. Bellevue, where they do the inlaid wood furniture and things like that. We had a quick two minute demo on how they get the beautiful designs into the wood. All the furniture was beautiful! They will ship to the States if you purchase something you can't carry on the ship. They had a lot of nice small items. We found us something for our curio cabinet at home and then we were soon on our way again.
Here are our pictures of the port at Naples and drive to Sorrento.
We went through a lot of little villages. Katharine was really good about giving us history of the area and also answering our questions. She said she used to do this for her family who came to visit and then her husband got her to start doing this for a living. In the off season she also teaches English.
There
are a lot of terraces where they plant their vegetable gardens and such.
A lot of the locals grow their own grapes and olives to make their own wine
and olive oil along with their fresh vegetables they grow to cook with.
We stopped for quite a few photo ops which was great. We didn't get caught behind too many big tour buses which was good. We saw lots of lemon trees and lots of limoncello. We never did purchase any of the limoncello although I had planned on doing so.
At one of our photo op stops which was in Positano there were some kiosks selling different things. Jerry stumbled upon some packages of various dried items, we bought some dried tomatoes to make some Bruschetta and something else to make and put on spaghetti for when we get home.
Here are our pictures of our drive from Sorrento to Positano.
We stopped for another restroom break with a beautiful view at the Hotel Santa Caterina. What a beautiful 5 star hotel. It starts at 250 euros per night. The floors were beautiful.
Here are our pictures of our drive from Positano to Amalfi.
We stopped at Amalfi for some shopping time and to walk through the town. It was quite busy with tourists but also the locals. The little shops along the main road were not only for tourists but the fish market, the cleaners, wine store and forms of transportation.
Here are our pictures of Amalfi.
After Amalfi we drove over to Ponte for lunch at the Ristorante San Giovanni which is near Ravello. We walked up the hill and then up another short hill to the ristorante. What a beautiful place. Katharine had suggested some items for lunch if we were up for trying the local cuisine. Once we were seated she asked us what we wanted and we all decided on what she had suggested. We started with the white sparkling wine that I can't recall the name of at the moment but it was quite good.
Here are our pictures of our drive from Amalfi to Ponte.
Our first course was a cheese pizza, and a plate of antipasto. One of the items on the antipasto plate was a cheese that is wrapped in the lemon leaf and grilled. It was very good. The green olives were very good too, nothing like what we have at home. Everything was so delicious!
Our second course consisted of eggplant parmigiana, lasagna, and seafood pasta. This was excellent! The homemade pasta was out of this world.
We
all opted to skip the third course, dessert and had limoncello instead.
A liqueur that is made with lemon, sugar and alcohol. It was very good!
We all enjoyed this end to our lunch.
Here are our pictures of our drive from Ponte to Pompeii.
And now we are on our way to Pompeii. We will have a guide here that Salvatore arranged and scheduled for us. Our guide was quite interesting and dramatic in his presentation. We were all surprised as none of us expected to see some of the things we were able to see. In speaking with people on the cruise tour we were able to see some different things than they did.
We saw the fast food places and the bakeries. There were bath houses and even some brothels. It was quite interesting to see that there were still things painted on the walls here. So surprising to see from so many years ago.
Here are our pictures of Pompeii.
Our guide took us back to Katharine and soon we were on our way back to the ship. Our wonderful day had come to an end. What a day it was and I would definitely recommend you contact this tour company as they really did an awesome job.