Amalfi: a name to conjure with. This is the secret coastline south of Naples where movie stars used to visit to get away from it all, until their presence brought the rest of us panting in their wake. Amalfi, Positano, Ravello, small villages hanging onto small rock shelves above the Mediterranean Sea, and in all respects similar to the Florida Keys. The similarity grew on me, and surprised me as it did. Rocky coastlines, water, a single, narrow access road and in its own way quite picturesque:
Giovanni doesn't much like Southern Italy saying that if he wants to go on vacation he wants cleanliness and order. However we were having a rainy June so instead of heading north we went south for our short motorcycling break. Naples is currently in the middle of a garbage foul-up, with trash mouldering in the streets, but there were no heaping, reeking piles of trash where we went. Things were a bit Keys-ish, laid back might be a polite way to put it. Service was not particularly friendly, streets weren't particularly clean and public parks were run down. Yet we had a good time, our hotelier was funny and accommodating, the servers at the pizza restaurant were cheerful and Giovanni, despite his disdain enjoyed driving like a maniac (with me in tow on my rented BMW) and chatting up the locals as we went. He's that kind of hail-fellow-well-met guy that makes me crazy. I like strangers to stay strange. Giovanni even got chatting with the toll takers on the autostrada:
The plan was to have no plan. We rode the freeway south, ducking the electronic speed traps and enjoying the increasing temperatures as we rode. The speed limit on Italian autostrade is 130kph (80mph) which you'd think would be fast enough but Giovanni's idea of getting a move on is closer to the mythical 100mph and luckily we were riding machines that could hold that sort of speed easily. We arrived in the early afternoon to find ourselves on a slow winding road, clinging to the rockface over the water. It was like riding a very slow roller coaster:
Which on my K1200R was like trying to rein in a bucking bronco. The road was narrow enough to keep people sane but the locals were nuts especially on scooters. They'd see me crouched over the handlebars of this senior citizen's crotch rocket and they'd feel compelled to take me on, passing wildly and pushing through the traffic like it wasn't there. But it was, lots of it and sometimes too wide for conditions:
There were acouple of occassions we had to dismount and wheel the motorcycles backwards as tour buses shouldered their way through:
At other times we found stretches or roadway blessedly free of impediments and we'd wind our beasts up and spurt forward, only to find another apparent dead end, a wall with blue sky behind it, a hairpin bend turning in on itself and a descent with grinding first gear to avoid getting killed by oncoming traffic. It was exciting stuff. "I got third gear for a short burst,"I'd tell Giovanni as we stopped for a smoke break (him not me), and my four cylinder 170 horsepower beast would take a snorting breather:
A ridiculous machine for a stretch of roadway that allowed a 30mph (50km/h) average as we piled the gas on and took it off alternating with the curves. The view was tremendous, everywhere we went, much like California's Highway One through Big Sur, at least superficially:
Lemons are the big deal here, with terraces sprouting up and down the hillsides in the most unlikely places. In between the grapes there are not olive trees like the rest of Italy, but lemons, with languid salespeople parked beside the roadway:
We took a modest hotel room in the village of Minori for a modest 80 euros a night ($125), a bed each and a shower that struggled to supply an American style spray of water. We went around the corner at night to eat real Neopolitan pizza, as Giovanni put it. We sat on the waterfront and reminisced, our motorcycles illegally parked in the gutter, protected from traffic by a jutting pine tree sticking out into the street.
After a dinner of a Bismark pizza (ham fried egg and cheese...no really) and the local delicious delizia al limone, lemon delights made of sponge cake and cream in their particular shape:
We walked the waterfront as we always do and talk of the past and the present and the future. Giovanni asks about life in the Americas and tells me about life in the mess that he calls home. Italy is moving to two party elections and he is learning to find himself in the same pickle the rest of us have become used to- the lack of choice. " I won't vote for the Communists," he says even though he likes their leader Walter Veltroni. He won't vote for them because he doesn't trust the party apparatchiks. "I can't stand to vote for the clown Berlusconi" he groans with his next breath. "I'd vote for him if he were anyone other than himself." Better to ride a motorcycle.
We take off for the mountains and climb up to the tiny village of Ravello, the place where Greta Garbo stayed, in the English gardens created around 1904 by Lord Grimthorpe who fled England after his young wife died, and consoled himself building a splendid garden overlooking the Mediterranean:
Ravello, like the rest of coast was waiting for the tourist crunch of July and August so we had the mountain roads largely to ourselves, though locals were scooting all over the place:
I snapped this one local sitting on the church steps reading the paper. This is Italy's dolce vita in action. Don't tell Giovanni; he snorts in derision when anyone mentions the stereotype of Italians lounging around languidly seducing tourists. "I wish!" is his comment. "I don't have time to read the paper, unlike this guy" he protests.
Ravello is beautiful enough, with trees and arches and happy people meandering:
But we have places to go, things to see, so we cruise back down the mountain towards something approaching sea level, Giovanni in front me blipping the throttle to keep close behind. Naturally there is a stretch of road that is measured to be especially narrow and is controlled by traffic lights. We cruise this section with our usual insouciance and our nerves are shattered once again when two scooters zoom round a corner in total defiance of the traffic lights. Not only that but they are going at full speed. We judder to a halt and let them by. At our next smoke break Giovanni tells a story about the time he was in Naples for a medical conference (he may be a chain smoker but he is also by trade a cardiologist). He took a cab to see the sights and to his consternation the cab driver regularly ran stop signs and crossed red lights. "They're just advisory in Naples" the cabbie told Giovanni who was gripping his seat, white knuckled. Then they plunged into an urban one way tunnel against the red light."Hey,"Giovanni shouted. "What about the traffic coming towards us on the green light?" he asked the languid cab driver. "No problem," he reassured Giovanni. "They know I've got the red light. They'll be expecting me." And so it is, chaotic Mediterranean style Keys disease. Nothing works quite as it should.Positano is a picture postcard pretty little town with a minuscule beach and a one way street that winds its way past tourist knick knack shops. We parked the motorcycles in a garage for $5 an hour each (Three Euros) and took an endless walk through the crowds:
Giovanni had half a mind to take a swim but the pressure to make miles kept us moving, lunch in Sorrento, the subject of a well know Neopolitan song was next and Sorrento (Surriento in the local dialect) was just a big city with thousands of crazed scooters and cars. We ate, we sipped coffee and Giovanni took a nap propped on his elbow at the cafe table much to the amusement of passersby. We rode home in the sunset to our hotel and our pizzeria where we had pasta and wine and the waitresses asked me about Obama and the next elections in the US and Giovanni about the condition of their heart muscles. Italians tend to be hypochondriacs, even the young ones.
I must have gone to Amalfi as a kid because my mother took us kids to the island of Capri when it was a hot spot in the '60's. I remember coming down with a fever in a Naples hotel and my mother hustling my sisters off to see Dr Zhivago at the movies, while the real doctor paid me a house call. In the early 21st century the bloom is off this short chunk of coast, the locals are tired of high priced real estate (sounds familiar!) and a lack of services(!) and opportunities(!!). And yet it retains the magic of those special places that mark themselves in our minds. I loved the fact that I saw more Vespas here, old and new, than anywhere else in Italy:
Like the Keys, the only road sucks, the beaches are non existent, the tourists overwhelming and life is a series of compromises. It had its magic all the same:
I saw it best when I got up and dawn and tip toed out of the room, leaving Giovanni snoring in his pillow (the next day he had the temerity to complain about my rumblings!) and I took to the empty highway all by myself. The air was cool and crisp, the road smooth and dry and the BMW as always was in perfect form. All vacations should be this good.
Giovanni had half a mind to take a swim but the pressure to make miles kept us moving, lunch in Sorrento, the subject of a well know Neopolitan song was next and Sorrento (Surriento in the local dialect) was just a big city with thousands of crazed scooters and cars. We ate, we sipped coffee and Giovanni took a nap propped on his elbow at the cafe table much to the amusement of passersby. We rode home in the sunset to our hotel and our pizzeria where we had pasta and wine and the waitresses asked me about Obama and the next elections in the US and Giovanni about the condition of their heart muscles. Italians tend to be hypochondriacs, even the young ones.I must have gone to Amalfi as a kid because my mother took us kids to the island of Capri when it was a hot spot in the '60's. I remember coming down with a fever in a Naples hotel and my mother hustling my sisters off to see Dr Zhivago at the movies, while the real doctor paid me a house call. In the early 21st century the bloom is off this short chunk of coast, the locals are tired of high priced real estate (sounds familiar!) and a lack of services(!) and opportunities(!!). And yet it retains the magic of those special places that mark themselves in our minds. I loved the fact that I saw more Vespas here, old and new, than anywhere else in Italy:Like the Keys, the only road sucks, the beaches are non existent, the tourists overwhelming and life is a series of compromises. It had its magic all the same:I saw it best when I got up and dawn and tip toed out of the room, leaving Giovanni snoring in his pillow (the next day he had the temerity to complain about my rumblings!) and I took to the empty highway all by myself. The air was cool and crisp, the road smooth and dry and the BMW as always was in perfect form. All vacations should be this good. 
