Sicily, the Amalfi Coast and Rome

Mike and Judy Henderson
September 18 - 28, 2018

I'm going to leave the map on each web page so you can see where we are.

9/21/2018 (Friday) We woke up to a magnificent sunrise over Amalfi this morning.

Here's a view of part of the town.  The houses are built on the side of the mountain and are very picturesque.

We did not dock in Amalfi but used the zodiacs to get to and from the ship.  This was our first experience using the zodiacs but everyone seemed to handle it well.

Here's a loaded zodiac coming in to port.

We signed up for the trip to Positano so we loaded into a small bus for the trip.  You can see our tour guide in the picture.  She was very good, but she never stopped talking.

The road to Positano was narrow and winding, built on the cliffs.   The road was only built after World War II.  Prior to that, people walked over the mountain to get to another town, or took a boat.  Life was full of ups and downs:-)

When we got to Positano we walked around the town but it was filled with tourists and tourist type shops.  We eventually found a coffee shop and just relaxed for a while.

For lunch, the tour group gathered at a restaurant on the beach by the name of L'Incanto.  The food was really excellent.

A few pictures of some of the people on the tour. Gracia and Nancy.

Ron

Larry

For our return to Amalfi Tauck chartered a boat, so we gathered at the dock.  Here's a view of Positano from the dock.  It looks similar to Amalfi.

The boats here have an unusual arrangement for taking passengers on and off.  The have a gangway attached to the back of the boat.  They come in to the dock and turn their stern to the dock.  Then they drop their bow anchor and reverse to the dock holding themselves off the dock with the bow anchor.  Here's a boat with the gangway down.  Note the anchor chain at the bow.

When they depart, they pull up the gangway and secure it.  The system seems to work well.

On the way back to Amalfi, the tour guide pointed out an inlet that had been used as a fishing village but was now abandoned because of falling rocks.

The captain pulled the boat into the inlet so we could see the beach and the abandoned houses.

When we got back to Amalfi, we took a walking tour of the main area of town, and came to the Amalfi Cathedral.  

There are a lot of steps to get to the cathedral.  You can see how high it is when looking down the steps.

I visited the church.  There's a crypt area under the main church where some relics of St. Andrew are kept.

This is a view of the main church above the crypt.  There's a colonnade on either side of this main area.

A closer view of the altar.

Then it was back to the dock area to catch the zodiac back to the ship.

That night was the Captain's Dinner, a dressy evening. Judy is talking with Nancy and Roland.  Nancy is a professional musician (violin) so she and Judy (cello) had a lot to talk about.

The captain talking to us before dinner.

Erica and Massimiliano (called Tato) gave us information about tomorrow's excursions.

Dinner was very good - after all, La Ponant is a French ship:-).  Then it was to bed for tomorrow's activities. 

Our adventure continues here