Buon Giorno From Italy!

Buon Giorno!

Hubby and I just returned from 10 days in Italy. We had a wonderful time, but it feels so good to be back home!  14 years ago we first travelled to Italy, and could hardly wait to return.  We saw so many amazing sites, but the highlight of our whole trip was the 4 days we spent on the beautiful Amalfi Coast. We wish we had spent our entire trip there!

I took tons of pictures, so I'll be sharing lots with you over the next week. For starters, here is a glimpse of gorgeous Amalfi.  

 This is the town of Positano, just down the road from where we stayed.  We were amazed at how everything seemed to be built right on top of each other, literally hugging the rocky cliffs!

 An adorable little shop in Positano.  I didn't buy much on our trip, as the US dollar is so weak compared to the Euro. We lost 39 cents on the Euro, ouch!

 The Tyrrhenian Sea was beyond gorgeous, and pretty as a postcard!  Notice the long, long flight of stairs on the right, which leads to the sea?  Climbing is a fact of life in Amalfi!

 This is where we stayed, the Hotel Open Gate in the cute little village of Praiano.  It's a small family owned and run hotel, and they really made us feel right at home!

 The view from our balcony.  Oh how we miss that view!

 Breakfast was included with our room, and here is where we ate each morning.

This was our view from our room!  We enjoyed many meals at the umbrella covered tables, perched right on the edge of a cliff!

 Our room looking out to our balcony.  Notice hubby waving in the chair?  Guess he was too relaxed to turn and look at the camera:)

Here we are in the town of Amalfi.  It is a beautiful town, just down the road from Praiano.  It's quite touristy though, as many cruise ship passengers arrive for the day on tour buses.

 You'll see many fancy boats and yachts docked here in the harbor, as well as fishing boats (like the one below), that look as if they came from another century.  Notice the old fisherman waving at me??

 Bouganvilla grows everywhere and is just gorgeous!

 I kept having to pinch myself that we were really here!  The entire area feels like it's right from a movie set, it's just so pretty!

 Lemon trees grow everywhere, and really thrive in the hot, sunny and dry climate.  This was a cute little restaurant in Praiano we had dinner at one night.

 This beautiful old church was also in our town. A bunch of young boys were playing soccer in front of it when I snapped this photo.

 Inside was nice and cool, a welcome break from the heat.

 My photos just don't do justice to how beautiful it was.

Driving in Italy is not for the faint of heart!  Not only do Italians drive very, very fast, but they also drive very recklessly as well!  Hubby did all of the driving, thank goodness, as I never would attempt it there!  Trying to understand street signs is also another challenge.  Signs leave much to be desired, and to us don't make alot of sense.  If you are looking for a town and see an arrow pointing right, well, you turn right, right? Wrong! 
We did that and ended up driving for a good hour down a narrow, never ending very rutted gravel path, which ran between fields.  We had no chose but to continue on. Thank goodness we finally found a paved road!

And driving along the Amalfi Coast is even more challenging, as the very narrow winding road runs along the edge of the cliffs, and hugs the jagged rocky mountains as well!  Needless to stay, it really was a white knuckle ride!  I snapped this shot, below from the passenger seat, going around the unending hairpin curves.  Yikes!

The best part of coming home was getting to pick our Katie up last night at the "pet resort".  We missed her dearly, and could hardly wait to see her!
I have lots more to share with you, so stay tuned for posts on our adventures in Rome and the medieval hill towns of Umbria.
Ciao!