The Amalfi Coast

From Orvieto we drove another 400 odd kilometres to Ravello which sits perched up in the mountains looking over the stunning Amalfi coast. It's definitely a contender for the most beautiful of the Italian coastlines we've seen to to date which is really saying something.

But more importantly than that, we were reunited with Mikey and Wana!! How we'd missed our London (and Melbourne) partners in crime. So it was a boozy dinner while we caught up. The next morning we met for breakfast at the apartment Mikey and Wana were staying in then headed down to Villa Rufolo to have a look around. You want to look at the beautiful gardens but spend the time just staring out over the mesmerising coastline.

From there we drove to Amalfi for lunch then a hair-raising drive on to Positano. The roads are particularly narrow and the drivers on them are Italian. There was one occasion where were passing a bus that I really though was going to be the end of us and I was trying to calculate what our €1500 excess was in pounds. But credit to the Italian drivers - they are precision machines.

We really didn't get up to much in Positano other than having a bit of an explore which is exhausting in itself given the gradient that the city is built on. We had hoped to get on some sort of boat to get a glimpse of the coastline from the sea but the seas were rough and the only options available were exorbitantly priced (much like the rest of the town).

From Positano we drove up to Pompeii to see the ruins. Probably the most impressive thing about Pompeii is the sheer size of the place. It's a large city, completely preserved as it was in 79 AD. We'd been to a couple of large ruins sites - particularly in Turkey - but this make them all seem tiny by comparison.

Sadly, we parted ways with Mikey and Wana in Pompeii and made our way back to Napoli where we dropped off the car.