Who decided to drive?

Sue, our exhausted and talented driver

Amalfi

After dinner shot

Once outside our cavern a nice calm Rome morning greets us, priests are in the streets walking to work at the Vatican. Our booked car arrives to take us out to car hire place at airport. During the drive we finally meet our other travel buddies properly, Phillip (the beautiful – as named the previous day after a Pope) and Jodi (the pelican whisper – as named from a funny story), they hail from Gin Gin in Queensland. The driver gives us some advice on driving in Italy, “there are no rules”. Then the fun begins. Our driver Sue is tired and emotional before she even gets behind the wheel of the car that drives on the wrong side of the road and is a manual. We set off on freeways, with a combination of luck and good sign reading we make it the first few hundred kilometers.

Then the fun really starts, by now we have given up on the google maps and are relying on Gina our GPS to navigate us through the hills to Ravello. The road is very narrow, there are big trucks, super fast motorbikes and the odd bus to contend with. It’s hair raising to say the least. Sue keeps repeating one word, a lot and loudly. We get over the top of the mountain and our first glimpses of the Mediterranean greet us, a great big blanket of blue. The scenery is breathtaking but we can’t really take it in with the team work and concentration it takes to will the car around the bends.

Finally we enter Amalfi, then the last 500m are up a very narrow street full of pedestrians and with a one way section. The shops are so close you can do your shopping as you drive. We stop at the first traffic light on the whole journey and the man from the gelato shop tells us to “calm down you are in Italy” and it works. We are here. All thanks to Sue’s expert driving. Not sure I am ever going to get in a car again, that road made Jenolan Caves look like a major freeway.

After a siesta, drinks on the roof terrace are just what we need. There are towering cliffs, houses perched on edges and a towering byzantine bell tower to admire. Out into the town we go and explore and a find a lovely fish restaurant for dinner. Back in the room and typing this blog to a symphony of snoring from my room mates.