Italy: Vietri sul Mare

Vietri Sul Mare, Amalfi Coast. January 2019

Cold decisions

As per my transportation bad luck on that holiday to Naples, Trenitalia and I were not getting along. This time I found myself heading toward Salerno in January on a cold, overcast day in a train with no heat. I could see my breath. It was a slow, local train too. It just crept along. No worries though, I was heading for the Amalfi Coast.

Like Tuscany and Lake Como, the Amalfi Coast is one of those places that people go to and then act immediately like they have had some kind of epiphany. A jet-set spot in league with Nice or Carmel, it must be spoke of in a tiresome way all the while swooning over its natural beauty. I once met a ridiculous doctor in Singapore who just "had to" spend a week each year painting on the Amalfi Coast. The coast of Miyazaki, Japan in one guidebook was described as "almost as good as the Amalfi Coast" (??) My expectations were pretty damn high.

The train station is high above the town, literally just a small cleft in the mountains before the tracks slowly meander down to sea level and Salerno. I detrained. It was cloudy and cold. Amalfi was not calling to me - it was rather repelling me. Nonetheless I soldiered on. I had a coffee to warm up and lovingly remind me that I was in Italy. Then I asked about the bus stop to Amalfi or Positano and checked the schedule with the locals. Unfortunately, in early January buses were slim to none. Southern Italian bus schedules posted on the internet were not to be trusted! I had to ask myself - did I want to risk getting stuck somewhere on the Italian coast on a gray and gloomy day just to say "I had been somewhere". Well, "no".

Technically, Vietri Sul Mare IS on the Amalfi Coast, so I have actually been there. Add to that, Vietri is a sleepy little down that cascades very steeply down from the train station to the sea below. I imagined on a sunny day the views up the coast and down to Salerno were gorgeous. Vietri's claim to fame was ceramics. The town was decorated everywhere with statues or tilework. It was colorful and cheerful (and occasionally, whimsical). I had a nice little walkabout in Vietri Sul Mare.

I will admit to being disappointed about not making it up to Amalfi and Positano, but there was a silver lining. It pushed me to go to Salerno, just a 10 minute train ride away. That was a good decision, because I really liked Salerno AND as proof of the silver-lining being real, just before leaving I saw a long-distance ferry crossing the bay into Salerno and a glorious shaft of sunlight fell upon it for an instant. I knew it was a sign - a sign from St Matthew, I would later discover.