Category Archives: Amalfi

Hangin’ on the Amalfi Coast

Amalfi and the Cliffs

Amalfi is up there on my list of most incredible places in the world.  It’s kind of a combination between Sonoma/Napa wine country and Malibu but way better.  The architecture and construction is also amazing.  Picture cliffs and seventy degree grades with hotels and houses jutting out surround by terraced hillsides growing grape vines and lemon groves.  Maybe just look at the pictures.

The Hotel Santa Caterina is equally amazing.  Check the site because I can’t capture it as well as their photogs can.  Everything is white and it’s situated on a sheer cliff and it has two elevators that carry you from the hotel about 900 feet down to the pool, restaurant and ocean below.  Here’s a sweet vid of the elevator at work:

The town of Amalfi is a small hill town with lots of restaurants, limoncello shops and sweets stores.  We ate two nights at a restaurant called Da Mario right on the main street as you enter the town by the only stoplight near the Duomo.  Oh yea, and the Duomo is huge.  It seems so out of place and unexpected for a little town by the sea.  The chocolate stores sell all kinds of chocolates including chocolate covered oranges, my fav.  Amalfi must be pretty ridiculous in the summer.  Now it’s pretty perfect.  It rained a bit the first two days, really hard but it never got cold.  The last few days it was sunny and beautiful and I swam in the Mediterranean.  It was still warmer than the water in LA ever is and it tasted better.

The town of Ravello is just as amazing, stuck way up in the hills above the sea.  It’s a little quieter but there are just as many hotels and there is a huge live music hall.  It also is home to Villa Cimbrone, a small villa and a huge garden that borders on more sheer cliffs.  Pics below.

Also look out for tiny little cars driving down tiny little roads, beer by the sea, different makes and models of chestnuts, vistas, mists, beaches and frittura mista.