Skip to main content

Oohs and Aahs - Amalfi kind

Some Hollywood types have filmed along the fabled coastline.  The Amalfi coast.  It is part of the southern province of Salerno along the Tyhrennian sea that seems to cling by its nails to the rugged rock face that drops into it for a visit.

Buildings jut out as the bus drive takes us from Sorrento (where we arrived moments ago by a narrow gage railway) to the once coastal village of its name sake, Amalfi.   It is a good 90 minutes of theme park like roller coaster.

There are thousands of oohs and gasps as the traveling tourists know not if they are stunned by the way the driver drives (seemingly reckless) around the hair pins on the treacherous terrain as it dips and leaps along the coast or the amazing emerald green waters and the bungalows that defy gravity and rise on the edges.

Those with a sketchy knowledge of the Hindu fairy tales aka Ramayana might be forgiven for remembering the Parmatma or praying to Sita (the bus company is called SITA and the approaching stops are identified as FERMATA PROXIMA).  Below are couple pics taken from our Sita Chariot.

Stop Stop

Was that a bania selling crap along the coast?

The first glimpses of the beauty and beast of a road appear almost 15 minutes into the hour and a half journey which I thoroughly enjoyed.  The initial part of the trip, as the bus climbs out of the western end of the mountain provides views of the famed Mt. Vesuvius that although diminutive in appearance destroyed the city of Pompeii in its turbulent eruption (which I will describe later) in the first century AD.



Tony estates line the choice cliff views all the way - the secret is out a while ago

Some parts of the highway resemble a neighborhood of San Francisco labeled as the crookedest street in the world.

Amalfi Cathedral facade

Beverage options

Fried sea food



Good news when you are not driving is that you can imbibe and entertain yourself in varying ways including and not limited to a consumption of above referenced items before and after a few gelatoes.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On the go(zay masta) in Japan again

Cool cat the Japanese are Tokyo at dusk  My second visit to this land of the rising sun after almost a decade. Back then clearly I was wet behind the ears product manager and likely didn’t pay attention to all (efficient) things Japanese. But today I did and of course continue to be impressed. It is as much the obvious stuff like on time travel that is both clean and comfortable and all that which makes it possible. The impressive landmark and landscapes that these humans have put together despite their cramped (or because of it) surroundings and precarious geological conditions could amaze a novice architect among us. But it’s also the little things that someone had to think about which have a phenomenal impact on day to day lives that make the Japanese stand apart. Below are few random examples- 1. Providing a very fine machined wooden toothpick in every packet of wooden chopsticks. The said chapsticks are simply set on the To Go counter of any food vendor/ convenience store wher...
Post a Comment
Read more

Presumptive Society

Today's world is hyper connected.  I am not so sure what it means but you hear it a lot.  It is probably hyper but not sure how connected it is.  Sugar (fermented or not) is available in many ways than before and so getting hyper is easy.  It is probably more a threat than cocaine since it is sold legally. And what is this connected stuff?  Most people I encounter seem disconnected from reality.  So going back to this assumption that we are connected there are subtle and no so subtle instances of how brands and companies and middle men try to portray someone - A linkedin profile for somebody working for X years at a place advertises to the connected network that so and so is CELEBRATING X years @ Such and Such Inc. Do we know if (s)he is celebrating or cringing?  Perhaps a better way to portray will be - So and So LASTED X years @ such & such inc. Then it exhorts the readership to go ahead and congratulate them for this lasting effe...
2 comments
Read more

Greasy Dra'ch'ma

With all the furor in the media around Greece for the past couple of years I thought it would be good to list all things Greek that people use in common parlance - 1. Some of us are familiar with Greek history as being where the world's largest organized scam was born - called the Olympics. At the time this courier delivered a message by running a large number of miles and that got converted into a spectator sport. Nobody thought about what this implied? Fedex does not use any of the marathon runners instead relying on bio diesel trucks so not sure where we went from courier delivery to extracting money for tickets to watch people balance themselves on a pommel horse - which by the way is quite different from a Trojan Horse - 2. which brings me to the next invention from Greek mythology that finds use today - except used in the computer virus arena. This innocuos program is accepted by a computer since it looks friendly only to unleash undesirable effects leading to loss of s...
2 comments
Read more