Just to the northwest of Matera lay a trio of top tier Italian attractions – Pompeii, Naples, and the legendary Amalfi Coast. Our previous forays into Italy had not reached any further south than Rome, and all three of these places were a few hours south of Rome, making them the northern extremity of our current travels.

Basing ourselves in a wonderful little campground in Pompei ( a mere  stone’s throw from the famous ruins ), our explorations began there. Pompeii likely needs no introduction since most people will recognize it as the old Roman city that was completely covered by the ash from a massive eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius in ‘79AD.  Everyone perished in the disaster and the city was effectively lost for almost 2 centuries until excavations revealed what the magnificent city once looked like. It’s a truly impressive archeological site and reveals much about life in those times.

Given Naples’ proximity to Pompeii ( just 40 mins by train ) it made sense to leave our vehicle at the campground and head into this gritty port city by rail. In our advanced reading on Naples, one theme came across consistently-it’s often described  as a city that people either love or hate. It certainly was not a “love” for us, but nor would either of us say we hated it; but it’s dirty, busy, covered in graffiti, and definitely fell into the category of cities that we have no desire to return to. The windy and cold weather that day probably didn’t help our impression. It offers up some impressive public squares, the usual litany of historic churches ( common in most Italian cities ) and a good museum. Nothing here, though, that was more impressive than anything else we’ve seen anywhere else in Italy, so I suppose it just didn’t register as a “wow” for either of us. Some compensation came from the excellent pizza lunch we had in a nice little downtown restaurant and the artwork on the Toledo Metro station, which was exceptionally impressive.

Of all three attractions in the area it’s probably fair to say that we were most enamoured by the Amalfi Coast drive. Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997, the Costiera Amalfitana ( Amalfi Coast ) attracts tourists in their thousands every year, and has done for centuries. The weather was unexpectedly sunny and warm,  compensating for the somewhat miserable weather the day before in Naples and just brought out the absolute best in this stunning piece of Mediterranean coastline. We’d heard much about it; the limestone cliffs, the crystal clear water, and the postcard-like villages hanging off the aforementioned cliffs. It actually blew away our expectations and we have seen some pretty exceptional coastal regions in our travels. Being late March, not all attractions in the area were yet open, but in no way did that take away from the views that we enjoyed. I was a tad nervous about navigating this famously tortuous piece of the Mediterranean coast in our 7m long van and in fact had been advised by our Pompei camp host that it was actually not possible to drive a private vehicle on that part of the coast anymore. That actually contradicted everything we had read so we soldiered on and figured we would just drive until someone told us we had to turn around. As expected, no one did, and there were others in small vans like ours taking in the breathtaking scenery. It wasn’t easy – VERY tight in places but with due care and 100% attention at all times we made it from Sorrento in the north to just south of Amalfi at the other end before climbing inland to another great little campsite high up in the hills. As wonderful as the drive was, it was also a huge relief to finish it- there is literally nowhere to stop once you start so it was a few continuous hours of white knuckling without respite!

The Amalfi coast was always going to be hard to top but there were a few other little treasures as we continued down the west coast of the Italian mainland towards Sicily, with stops and visits made at the Greek ruins in Paestum, the historic mountain village of Maratea and on through to the beachside community of Scalea where we enjoyed a couple of days beachside. The latter part of this drive was mostly coastal, taking us away from the constant curves and tight switchbacks of the mountains just two days earlier – a nice change.

At this point we are close to the bottom of the “boot” of Italy and in the coming days we will continue on to Tropea and Reggio Di Calabria before crossing the Straits of Messina to Sicily.

Till next week….