20 June - Salerno and the Amalfi Coast

June 20, 2019

We had planned to get up semi early and be off the ship between 8:30 and 9.  I think we got off around 9:30. Oh well was my thought. We have 3 hrs to check out the castle.

When the shuttle bus dropped us off, we started looking for the information center.  We had a really hard time finding it. We finally stopped at a bus stop and tried reading the schedule.  Somebody started talking to Aaron and directed us to the information place where we could buy the bus ticket.  We checked which bus it was and they confirmed it and told us where to catch it. When we got there, about 9:50, we found that the bus had come at 9:38 and won’t come again until 11:20.  Now I was frustrated because we had to be back to the ship by 1:00 for an excursion. If we had just gotten up when we had said we would. Oh well.

So we walked down the coast to check out another bus stop.  We walked probably a mile. By the way, this place is completely on a hill.  You can’t go anywhere but up and down. It’s really pretty, but exhausting as well.  Very hot and humid. So we opened our map and decided where we wanted to go. We headed for a church.  It was up hill. Down “alleys “. I feel like we’re walking in the road that is only 8 ft wide. Okay, maybe 10 ft.  Just enough for a person to walk with a car driving by. It’s crazy. Tons of motorcycles. Oh, the cars are tiny.

We finally found a church.  It had a giant court yard. It has been fun to go inside the churches and look around.  It’s amazing to me what people believe, what they put in their churches.

We then looked at our map and decided to go to the cathedral.  I figured it was straight across and wouldn’t be much up and down.  Well, we managed to go up MANY stairs and tiny tiny alleys. When we got done we wished we’d taken pictures of the alleys.  You wouldn’t have believed it. Anyway, we finally decided we had to go down the mountain. We ended up at a church. We don’t think it was the cathedral we were looking for, but it did the job. At this point we were hot, tired, and sticky.  Humidity takes getting used to that we haven’t quite done yet.

We didn’t know for sure where we were so we walked toward the water.  You can always find down in these towns. We found an elementary school, then walked through a “garden” then to a “middle” school.  Aaron asked which direction to turn. I said right. We went right and then full circle around the building because we should have gone left.  We had gone a bit past our pick up spot. Wow!! What a walk we took. We made it back to the ship around 12:15.

We got burgers on the ship for lunch.  We then took a small break in our room and then headed down to our excursion by 1:05.  It was crazy on the pier. A lot of people trying to get on the excursion. We all ended up with a radio and half a headphone so that we could hear Roberta tell us things about the coast.  We then got on a boat (Aaron and I made sure we were on top so as to not have anything obstructing our view) and road down the coast to the city of Amalfi. We got some great pictures. So beautiful.  Plus, it was cooler to be up top with a breeze.

Once in Amalfi, Roberta took us to the stairs at the bottom of the church and let us go for two hours.  We headed up the many steps, (about 70) and paid 6€ for the two of us to go in. Wow! I guess the apostle Andrew is buried there.  It was cool to see. I was so happy not to be one of the ladies carrying paper over my shoulders to cover myself up. It helps to already be modest.  We spent about 1 hr at the church. It was nice. We saw the crypt of Andrew. It was a huge church.

We then did a little shopping.  We started with a gelato of course.  I had Nutella and cherry (cherry was really good) and Aaron had Amalfi and lemon flavors.  Lemon is a “product” of Amalfi so the lemon was amazing. I should just get what Aaron does.  But I am trying them all. So far, gelato is just great. American ice cream isn’t nearly as good.  My opinion of course. We then bought a bag of lemon and orange hard candies for 5€. We looked at some other things and then made our way back to the pier.  We enjoyed Amalfi. It was filled with people but where hasn’t been?

After a wonderful half hour ride back on the boat, we showered and went to dinner.  We both had a honey glazed pork loin. It was great. We then went to the show. They did songs from Broadway.  Aaron really enjoyed that of course. After the show we went back to Salerno where we walked by the beach. The locals were out and it was fun to see them.  Aaron really enjoys hearing the children talk. After a 45 min walk, we turned and went up a couple of streets to the corso. Only the food shops were open. You could tell what was good because the places were crowded.  We finally caught the shuttle bus back to the ship around 11:00.

We went out front and tried to catch up on some blog info.  It was fun to be there and watch the ship turn around. It’s amazing what they can do in a tiny spot.  At midnight Salerno let off fireworks, we guess to send us off. We watched part of the coast go by. It was 1:00 by the time we went to our stateroom for bed.  A very long but productive day. So sad to see this part of our trip ending.