Positano

Today Benny and I rode a little further down the coast to visit Positano, the largest town on the Costiera Amalfitana.

Positano is much like Amalfi, only more so. It’s full of pastel-coloured building stacked up steep hillsides and crammed into every available space, with charmingly narrow and enclosed streets twisting up and down connecting them. There are more shops, but all of them sell useless tat to demanding Americans, imperious Germans and whining Brits, and in between, stolid Italians heave great sighs and remind themselves to think of the money.

It might have been nice wandering around and seeing the same fridge magnets, snow globes and penis-shaped novelty bottles of limoncello in different shops, but unfortunately today the heavens opened and it rained, densely, for several hours. Pretty, quirky little towns like Positano only make sense under vast warm blue skies: under cold grey rain, they feel claustrophobic and drab.

So we did a little bit of exploring, but spent a lot of time just sitting in cafes.

Something I’ve noticed in my wanderings around Italian cities is that they sell booze everywhere. You want to buy whiskey in the supermarket? Sure! You want to Irish up that first coffee of the day? Great idea! You want cognac for breakfast? Brilliant!

So my lunch was an arancini ball and a Bloody Mary, because I’m in Italy and apparently that’s what we do here, so to hell with all of you naysayers.

Italians are also pretty relaxed about food service hygiene, as evidenced by this cafe allowing local cats to drop by and visit. Benny got this selfie with one sitting on the main counter. He was very excited; the cat, somewhat less so.