We awoke the following morning to this:
It was a beautiful Sunday morning and I had managed to find the cutest little motel on the side of a mountain overlooking the Amalfi Coast. It was an old, converted Monastery with acres and acres of citrus groves, grape vines, and lush gardens. It's often used to host weddings, so there was a little chapel set up, entertaining spaces, lots of little winding paths to quaint, tucked-away little gardens...it was heaven. We started off with an incredible feast in the main building and sipped cappuccinos outside on the terrace. We had granola, fresh fruit, sweets, omelets (made from the fresh eggs of a couple of fluffy hens in the most luxurious coop I've ever seen), yogurt, crossants...it was soooooo good. We've found that, the farther from the cities you get, the better the breakfasts are. Go figure.
Then we spent a while just exploring the grounds and taking in the views that we couldn't get the night before.
After checking out, we made our way to the coast and then along the water towards Positano. The scenery was breathtaking. The narrow road wound through a dozen tunnels and over a dozen bridges and right down the middle of a bunch of tiny villages.
We stopped along the road at a fruit stand and picked up some fresh peaches, plums, strawberries, and grapes for the rest of our trek. They also sold lemons that were the size of my head...which isn't very big for a head but is absolutely massive for a lemon.
Having this day land on a beautiful sunny Sunday was not great and everybody else in Italy apparently had the same idea. It was mayhem. Just solid traffic: huge motor coaches, scooters, classic cars, cyclists, pedestrians...we couldn't find parking to save our lives. It took us a couple of hours to drive just a few miles and then we couldn't even stop in Positano because it was so packed. I guess that mean just one thing: We're going to have to go back :)
We decided to just head for the inland mountains and towards Matera!
As has become the custom, we set our GPS to "avoid highways and tolls" and found a remote route through the countryside east towards Matera. That was definitely the right choice. We drove for hours through mountains and fields and Olive groves and wildflowers, along rivers and through tiny, abandoned villages.
