Positano to Rome

We are posting this one slightly out of order. Some posts are much easier to write than others. This one practically wrote itself.

We only had 2 nights in Rome so we had hoped to arrive early in the afternoon of our first day, but you know what they say about the best laid plans. After dragging and carrying our luggage down to the ferry at Positano we discovered that the sea was too rough for the ferries to run. Hiccup number one. I won’t describe the trip back up to the internal bus stop. It is too painful to remember, especially for Peter who lugged both bags for the last 200 metres so that Claire could rush on ahead to check bus times and buy tickets.

Things were looking up as we didn’t have long to wait for an internal bus and the bus to Amalfi. We arrived in Amalfi 2 minutes after the Salerno bus left and had to wait an hour for the next one. Hiccup number 2. We enquired about the price of a taxi to Salerno, but decided that 90 euros was a bit over the top. We checked our Eurail timetable to find that there is a big gap in the middle of the day and the earliest train we could now catch to Rome was at 2.36, arriving at 5.30. At least it gave us a chance to have something to eat at Salerno. Luckily we hadn’t booked our tickets to Rome so we weren’t out of pocket for the missed train.

Amalfi

Finally we were on the train to Rome and all our worries were over. Ha! The first part to Naples was fine. We have never been so glad to have reservations. There were people in the wrong seats all over the train. After Naples someone decided that we should be in a sauna not a train carriage. The air conditioning had been turned off and to make matters worse the automatic blind control was broken. We thought we were going to cook. The corridors were full of people and luggage because a lot of people had got on without tickets. Finally a couple of enterprising Italian women went looking for the conductor and got the air conditioning turned on. The rest of the trip went without anymore hiccups. Our B & B Federici was right next to the Metro exit and joy of joys there was a lift so we didn’t have to lug our bags up 3 flights of stairs.

After a quick shower we went out to explore around our place. We weren’t very far from St. Peter’s Basilica so we wandered over to have a look in the fading light.

Close to the Basilica we found a restaurant and were seated next to a group of three couples from Denmark. After many lively discussions we all agreed that the Australians and the Danish were now cousins because of the Mary connection. Another fun night ensued from just randomly meeting people.