Week 10: People

14 – 20 September: Croatia – Italy

I always thought Grace Kelly met her end along the Amalfi coast (but I checked, and she didn´t - it was somewhere near Monte Carlo) but this coast has always held some sort of glamour and nostalgia for me. However, I'll say, if the Princess got to see Ravello and Amalfi before she left this world, then she was indeed a lucky woman. The Amalfi coast is the stuff of dreams. It winds, it overlooks sheer cliffs, and sometimes the roads are so narrow, there is only room for one car, even though it´s two way. You have to honk your horn before the bend, especially if a bus is oncoming, and even though my knuckles tightened around the door handle so that there now is is an imprint of my palm, I loved this part of Italy. To our dismay, the road from Amalfi to Sorrento had been closed due to a landslide, so we couldn´t get to our campsite. We ended up staying at a bed and breakfast, invited by a dear nonna (actually, a great-grandmother). She told us about her youth, climbing the mountain to go to school, that even though she's a brunette her great grandchildren were all blond and her dismay at the seas being all fished out. Barely anyone spoke English at this B&B and we enjoyed our pigeon Italian conversations (Edwin's sounding suspiciously Spanish, and then he reverted to Dutch just because she'd have had just as much luck understanding that, as English!) We thoroughly enjoyed all the space on an double bed, with crisp linen sheets in mosquito-less, air conditioned comfort. I had two showers in the space of 12 hours. Edwin, three.