A day of thwarted plans

Yesterday was supposed to be our day trip in Amalfi, and we almost made it...and that sort of set the tone for the rest of the day.

We got the train to Salerno, which all went according to plan, walked out of the train station and found the bus stop for Amalfi right out the front of the station. Perfect. We double checked with information what time the bus came, and though we had to wait for 45 minutes for the next one, we were comforted by the presence of many other tourists all waiting for the same bus and assured ourselves we were in the right place. Finally the bus arrived and I asked the driver for two tickets to Amalfi. Negative: we were supposed to buy tickets from the ticket place (right behind us; the same people who had told us when the bus came but neglected to mention anything about having tickets first). I asked if he would wait 2 minutes for us to get our tickets. No, not possible, he said. By this time it was 11.30, at least half an hour to Amalfi, quite probably a lot more, and our train back to Rome was booked for 3.45. Realising that even if we waited for the next bus and did make it there we'd probably have to get straight on the bus back again to come back, we decided to spend the next four hours in Salerno and salvage something of the two and half hour trip there.

Salerno is not a huge tourist city - not a city at all, in fact, but it was quite pretty and was set on a beautiful cove, kind of like San Sebastian. We got a map from the tourist place and had a bit of a wander after a coffee to get our bearings. We found a really nice public park, went to a bar for a beer and then made the crazy decision to try to walk up this giant mountain to an old ruined castle that was 300 metres above sea level.

We found a crazy zig zaggy stairway that took us quite rapidly up the hill between apartments and kept us mostly off the roads. There were no signs anywhere to this castle; all we knew is that we needed to keep going up. At different points there was room to stop and look down over fantastic views of the Salerno gulf as we tried to work out which stairway to take next. Finally we reached the windy road leading up to the castle and after negotiating 100 metres of it while trying not to be knocked off the road by passing trucks, we were relieved to turn off on another road that actually had a sign. Here we found another stairway off the road, but our confidence began to wane as we walked up it and realised it was mostly overgrown and felt a bit like we were walking through private property. Nevertheless, we pushed onward until the pathway was finally blocked by what appeared to be a very messy and very smelly pig farm. After this we could find no further pathways there, and the road looked far too treacherous to risk walking on (plus it was very long, as it wound around the mountain). So we aborted that plan and began the walk back down. Nevertheless, we got fairly close to the castle and we saw some absolutely amazing views, so we weren't too worried about missing it.

On the way down we intended to visit this garden that was mentioned in the tourist brochure and sounded pretty cool. Unfortunately it had closed at 1.30 and we missed out on that too. Finally, we found a place to have lunch before getting the train back. George ordered the number 2 panini and I ordered a tuna salad, and mysteriously, two paninis with tuna and tomato came out for us... When things like this happen I wonder if it really was just a communication problem or the locals playing a joke on the dumb tourists to see if they'll say anything. They were tasty paninis though so we couldn't really complain!

Not wanting the pattern of missing out on things to continue, we made sure we got back to the station in plenty of time to get our train (and had a bit of stress when none of the info boards showed the platform we needed to be on - but after a bit of covert spying of other people's boarding passes and asking some other tourists we discovered we were in the right place, and the train was 15 minutes late anyway).

Last night we once again got a quiet dinner nearby to our hotel, which was OK, then returned to the hotel to down a bottle of sparkling lambrusco and play a few games of cards. Today is our last day here and we're determined to find some authentic pizza for dinner tonight rather than stay around the tourist trap here (hence the late start).

We're finally able to attempt to get our photos online today, so hopefully this will be followed by a link to them if I'm successful.

Arrivederci!