Positano

We are on the Amalfi Coast right now for a bit of real vacation (i.e. Daniel’s not working either). As you can see, it is quite photogenic with nothing but cliffs dropping off into the sea and houses desperately clinging to the sides of the cliffs (and each other). Cute though it is, the geography does create some “altitude problems” in that there is no such thing as horizontal here, only vertical. No matter where you want to go, you will always be climbing on the way there or the way back. It’s about 600 feet straight down to the sea, and about 300 straight up to the main road. There’s really only one road that goes through town and it keeps zigzagging, one way, down the side of the mountains to the beach and then back up on the other side; there is no “turning around”, only following back up to the main road and starting the loop again. Oy. To compensate for the one road there are tons of streets of stairs that help hold everything together and get people to other places in town.

So perhaps needless to say, this is a place you want to visit while you’re young and your joints are still doing their jobs. There are some elderly people around, but I have no idea how they manage. My ankle started to mutiny on me yesterday and I hadn’t even done anything in particular to it. This is also a great place to be if you’re in to manual labor, as the majority of things (as in every single thing if you don’t live on the road) have to be hauled from the one road through the maze of stairs to the actual destination. And I’m not even going to talk about the driving. We’ve been taking “public transportation” (on which a rant later) and it’s still nightmarish. But it’s pretty.