Weekend on the Amalfi Coast
- Morgan Bodenstedt
- Jun 20, 2018
- 3 min read
This past weekend a few of us travelled down to Southern Italy, specifically the Amalfi Coast, and it was BREATHTAKING. We left on Thursday night, arriving at our hostel in Sorrento around 3 AM on Friday. We got three hours of sleep before waking up to load the bus again, hop on a ferry, and travel to Capri.
First things first, Capri is expensive as heck. We had wandered around the shops for a little bit before realizing that us poor college students could not afford anything in any of these boutiques. We did manage to find some reasonably priced Capri souvenir shirts and tiny bottles of Limoncello, though!
We did have a delicious lunch at Isidoro. Our table was on the roof, allowing us a gorgeous view of the sea. I decided to try something new and ordered Spaghetti Seafood. I was a little nervous, not knowing what seafood would be mixing with my beloved pasta. It turned out seafood meant clams and mussels. I hesitantly tried them, worried that they were going to taste too oceany and slimy. However, I was very pleasantly surprised! They were fresh and a little salty, but not too fishy. I ended up eating every single one of them -- something of which I am very proud.
However, the island is absolutely gorgeous. The homes and shops are all along the cliffs of the island, overlooking each other and the Mediterranean Sea. The very sea that we got to swim in -- an amazing experience I would recommend to anyone. We had taken a boat tour around the island, getting to enjoy the beautiful views of the cliffs and water before anchoring ourselves and jumping off. I've swam in oceans before, but nothing will beat the experience of swimming in the Mediterranean. The water is so blue, so clear and so, so salty. Definitely the highlight of my time on the island.
Capri is a perfect little island with such gorgeous views that it broke my heart a little to leave it. But alas, we eventually did have to go back to our hostel.
Saturday we spent the day in Positano, another gorgeous village with a perfect black sand beach. We spent the whole day laying out, taking in the sun and the sand and dipping into the salt-water every now and then. Raelyn and I had drinks in hand nearly all day and it was perfect. My soul belongs on a beach.
Finally, Sunday was spent hiking up Mt. Vesuvius and exploring the ruins of Pompeii. Vesuvius also had gorgeous views (a theme for the weekend it seems) and it was truly a spiritual experience standing atop a volcano and looking down at the nature and villages below. Pompeii was great and I wish I could have spent more time there. It would have been even better with my father by my side -- he would have loved exploring the crumbled, historical village and hearing all about it from a tour guide.
Overall, I had an absolutely amazing weekend. It's difficult to describe how much this experience affected me or how spectacular everything was. I can't even properly describe the beauty of all the sights (hence the repetitive, basic word choices). All I can articulate is that this cannot be the end of my travels. I need to see more, do more, experience more. My soul craves new sights, new cities. But I also need to return to the Amalfi coast someday. It's just too magnificent of a place to not go back.
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