Positano and Amalfi Coast
2:34:00 PM
After a time well spent in Spain, I flew to the South of Italy to spend the rest of my summer holidays there. I stayed with my Italian friend and her lovely family in Sarno, experienced the real culture of Southern Italians. I remember when my friend took me out at night, I was the only foreign-looking girl in town so I got some stare. It was a strange feeling as I wherever I have lived in before this I could blend in with the locals but here I can't. There was also a culture shock about the dinner there. In the south of Italy, people start having dinner around 10PM!! I was starving since 5-6PM lol
We spent two full days on the beaches on the Amalfi Coast at Positano and Erchie and a day in Naples(Napoli). The best place for me is the fashionable Positano. Despite being so famous Positano is not a big town, it was actually a poor fishing village on the Amalfi Coast in the region of Campania and started to attract tourist in 1950s after a famous American journalist, John Steinbeck, published an article about Positano in Harper's Bazaar. The coastline of the Amalfi Coast is so unique that UNESCO has to put it in the UNESCO World Heritage List. The sands here are black because of the volcanic minerals. The beach is full of sunbeds and umbrellas for rent.The sea here is not the most beautiful I've seen but the landscape is super charming. I love how there are hundreds of colorful houses on the hill. The houses sit so steep that I wonder if they will ever fall down. The unique narrow walkways around the village is full of shops where you can buy unique souvenirs like colorful ceramics or buy a bottle of Limoncello.
Speaking of the food, Campania is famous for having the original Italian foods like pasta, pizza, hams and because of the volcanic soil (Thanks to Mount Vesuvius), fruits and vegetables grow easily here. I had the best tomatoes of my life there just like when my friend said when she invited me to her hometown "You will eat pizza (the original one), you will eat
good fruits and cakes (Sfogliatella and something from the best pastry shop of
my region)." I think what make the pizza from Naples(Napoli) special is how fresh the ingredients are and how much better the tomatoes from Campania taste comparing to the normal tomatoes. When I return to Milan her mom also gave me fresh tomatoes and chilies from her garden. As a Thai, I'm pretty used to spicy food.The chilies were not as spicy as the ones from Thailand but they were much more spicy than the ones from Milan so I was happy.
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