2019.April.15-18.Amalfi Coast hikes (Gulf of Naples, part 3)

I decided to pile all the hikes into one long post. Maybe a terrible idea, but this way, here are all the hikes and if you are not interested in pictures with beautiful views from or around mountains, you can skip this ;)

For trails, can highly recommend the local version of the italian hiking site.

Hikes (in order: Monday, Tuesday etc):

1. Vietri Sul Mare to Salerno (including a spontaneous guide dog)
2. Amalfi, path of the iron workers (water falls, lots of shade, most demanding hike) 
3. Maiori - Minori (Sentiero dei Limone): "Path of Lemons") then Minori to Ravello to Amalfi (somewhat gentle start, lots of fountains to refill water, which we needed)
4. Arbori - Dragonea - Monte Latari - Cetara (Arbori and Dargonea are part of 5 or so hamlets in the "Vietri sul Mare" district. Fewer stairs than other hikes)

Note: when planning to take the bus, one must buy the tickets beforehand (at a newsstand (Edicola) or tabacco shop (Tabaccheria)) because the bus driver does not sell them.

Ferry tickets can be bought at port. Every other boat trip goes directly Salerno to Amalfi, which we forgot when going to Maiori, so had an extra 20 minutes to kill waiting for the 9am ferry.

===============================================

1. Vietri Sul Mare to Salerno (incl. a spontaneous guide dog)

Overview of the hike (you can see the slight detour to go to the top of the mountain, where we were accompanied by a dog who clearly did this often). I think we took the train back to Vietri.

This hike was not too long and not too serious, mainly to get a feel for the local trails and to warm up. The most special thing is when we made it to a B&B that caters to rock climbers, two dogs came barking at us from behind the fence, and one made a decision, and ran to the side and jumped the fence, looking at us expectantly, then heading towards the path up the mountain, which it rather patiently lead us up (clearly understanding that we were suckers who would give the dog some sausage once we reached the top :) ).

The path up the last bit started off gently and normal forest, and turned into concrete and steps for the last part:

the final stretch

 The end of the path, before the (inevitable?) church had a big block (left) of stone which clearly had been used for climbing.

view of the path, rocks where people climb, and a little of Salerno's bay

View of said church, and the hills around Salerno:

view of the Church/Monastery at the top

A view of Salerno and its bay:

view of Salerno from the top

Once at the top, our furry friend looking forward to the trip back down:

our intrepid guide, deigning to look at the camera

===============================================

2. Amalfi to valley of the iron workers (Valle delle Ferriere) 

This was the most demanding hike, for several reasons. It was the first hike where we came across the ridiculously non-people-friendly stairs (which we figured out were clearly built for the mules, which we saw a few times in use), to get up and down. It was also quite long. And we had to re-do part of the hike which we had done wrong by following the signs (we opted for a higher-elevation version of the "standard" hike).





We took the bus at about 7:30 to Amalfi, which is about an hour from Vietri sul Mare. It was...adventurous. I have a mild tendency for motion sickness, and was not feeling great by the time we got off, and asserted that we would be taking the ferry back from Amalfi to Salerno and the train from there to Vietri. (Despite this, we did use the bus a few more times that week).

Amalfi is quite a transit hub, also a hiking hub, a tourist trap and home to a beautiful cathedral:

View from maybe half way up the stairs. You can see the upside of this route, which is that it was really well-shaded in the morning (also in the afternoon, and the middle), which made the hike generally pleasant.

View of Amalfi from the top of the stairs, as the trail switched to a normal trail.

Me, wishing there weren't so many steps:

As hinted, some pictures of waterfalls. Not mine, because I only brought my phone, not a real camera, and even if I had my real camera, I am really not good at that whole shutter-speed adjustment and so on necessary for things like effective pictures of waterfalls:

View on the way back down:

There are a lot of these around, this was the only one I saw as a fountain. They started off as a nativity scene, and then exploded into a diorama of some magical mini village>

As a reward after the hike, waiting for the ferry, a dessert which I later learned was invented in Amalfi: ricotta pear cake. We had 3 variants of this, all different, all good:

===============================================

3. Maiori - Minori (Sentiero dei Limone): "Path of Lemons") then Minori-Ravello-Amalfi 

We were originally going to go up to Ravello and take the bus back down, as I had turned my ankle coming down the infinite, mule-friendly stairs the day before. Trusting google maps led us to the wrong bus stop, the bus was super packed with people by the time it reached us (and so they kept going without stopping, making a sort of shrug/what can I do movement as he drove by), and we ended up hiking back down anyway.

This was a fun route, because the Path of Lemons was so pleasant, and also involved getting to try one of the Amalfi lemons (you can eat them almost like oranges, and should eat the pith as well as the rind, which helps balance out the not-too-sour flavor).

3.1. Path of Lemons: Maiori to Minori

A somewhat representative video of the hike (30 second snippets here and there along the path of lemons). This video includes much of the lemons, and some mini horses (at 3:21).

We went from Vietri sul Mare to Salerno to Maiori (train then ferry) as there was some kind of accident and the bus ran really late.

All along the coast, there are what clearly were old watchtowers. Here in Maiori, theirs was topped with a semi-castle looking building:

One can see Maiori has the same ceramics as Vietri (or they just buy from their neighbors):

Path of Lemons from Maiori to Minori:  so named because it wanders somewhat comfortably along terrace after terrace covered in amalfi lemon trees. It was explained to us that the black netting was to keep the frost off the lemons, and that they would be soon removing this:

"path of lemons" (Sentiero dei limone)

At some point, stopped to admire this beautiful tile (next picture, left), and noticed the offer of lemonade, which sounded pretty tasty. We were waved in to the courtyard and handed some (surprisingly!) unsweeted lemonade and offered some amalfi lemons, and explained that we needed to eat the pith (the white part) and should also eat the rind. Once having tried it plain, we then could try with some oil and salt. It was delicious, and our presence attracted some other people in from the trail.   We were offered a lemon or two (we took two) and when we asked how much, he shrugged and said grattis, "it is the easy life" (there was a little tip jar, I left him 2 euros).

Mules demonstrating how those stairs were built for them

3.2 Minori to Ravello (a cemetery, a lot of water fountains, posh views)

The next stretch of the path led up by the cemetery, which had great views, and was also terraced like the fields around it. The gravestones also sometimes used the same ceramics that decorated towns, which I thought was pretty cool:

ceramic gravestone, succulents as low maintenance flowers

great view from the cemetery

Just like the other hikes around Amalfi, this one involved some stairs. Here is a view looking down the way we had come from:

View looking back towards Minori/Maiori. About here we were overtaken by some British tourists loudly counting the numbers of stairs as they ascended.

One of the many water fountains

Ravello struck me as both posh and over-touristy. There was no place to buy groceries (the obvious previously-a-grocery-store place I saw had been converted into some kind of touristy shop) and the trip advsior commentary on restaurants mentioned dress codes (what?) They have a big concert series that starts around Easter and goes all summer. There is a small archaeological site behind a church you can see for 1-2 Euros (we decided against) and a fancy garden that you can see for 7 Euros (we also decided against that). You can see said garden and view in this video.

The righthand picture is from a concert hall at the edge of Ravello. The left view is through someone's garden.

some unnecessarily fancy signage in Ravello square

The left picture was the path leading up to the 7€ garden. The right is from a wall of a wine bar, which had a lot of sayings about wine and drinking, translated into 5 languages. I learned that (here displayed) Goethe is the one responsible for the quote "Life is too short to drink mediocre wine".

a great view from Ravello. By some church.

view from either the town square or where we waited for the bus

As we headed out of Ravello, instead of coming back to where we had entered town (it is entirely pedestrianized), we asked google maps where the bus stop was, which led us down a lot of stairs, out of town, and to a stop where the bus passed us by.

The rest of the way down started like this and, as you may have guessed, ended in a lot of stairs.

===============================================

4.Dragona -Arbori - Monte Falerno - Cetara

This walk made it very clear that Vietri sul Mare is the "big" town in this area. We got a bit stuck in Cetara because the Tabacchi closes at noon -- and does not reopen at 3pm (common practice for stores here to take a break in the heat of the afternoon) but stays closed. That meant there was no where to buy a bus ticket in the afternoon

We caught a tiny bus (half the size of the big buses that run along the coastal road) up to Albori and hiked from there. This was the warmest day and the least shaded hike, which was not great. The way down to Cetara was kind of steep and overgrown, but mostly without stairs, which was one of my goals.

4.1 The first noteworthy thing I took any pictures of was an abandoned house. 

Having spend some time not so long ago in Copenhagen, we were thinking about how this would make a great hippie squat and that the basic structure was quite nice and it was a shame that it had been abandoned. Clearly there were power lines, an old/abandoned mule stable nearby, and an awesome view.

abandoned-house view

leaving the house behind

4.2 Approaching Albori 

View of the "Mountain" we were approaching and would have to cross over/behind to get to Cetara.

the largest Rosemary bush I have ever seen

4.3 Albori 

Along the way, in some shade, an example of one of these expanded-nativity scenes. Somewhere here there were Mary, Jesus, Joseph. And all around them, a village:

figures

a clever solution to a lack of garden space

I like that they have a map of town (in tile) on this wall

4.4 Making progress past Albori up the mountain. View from the "top" and heading to Cetara 

You can tell this second picture is from a bit higher:

This is that thing we saw as the mountain at the beginning of the path, from up close. Too steep to scamper up without e.g. walking poles, so we enjoyed the view for a bit before heading down to Cetara:

View of the same thing, from further down, on the side heading to Cetara:

Final view of the mountain from the Cetara bus stop. Vietri sul Mare is a clear winner over Cetara (much smaller, and inconvenient if you don't have a car or a fist full of bus tickets or a desire to ride the ferry). 

a cute example of a common sign in the region

Previous two posts:

• Herculaneum! (like Pompeii, but smaller and nicer)
• Vietri sul Mare (home base for Amalfi Coast portion)

Next up: 

Pompeii! (after which I went home)