Today we went by ferry to the seaside port of Amalfi. What a hot spot! It was a quick half hour ride to Amalfi from Salerno and it was so worth it.

Im told that Amalfi was at one point the richest city in the world, and its easy to see why. There are some beautiful spots, but there are also some wierd things too. In the centre of the city there is an amazing church with a really beautiful enterance and stairs leading up to the doors, but there are other buildings built right over it. Sort of like they ran out of room or something. This seems to be the common practice every where so far I have seen, if you run out of room just build over the historical artifacts, trust us we have plenty more where that came from. Its pretty funny though.

We didnt stay in Amalfi too long as we had a bus waiting to take us to the top of the mountain to a town called Ravello. Now Ravello is everything you want in a small Italian village, a bautiful piazza in the centre, a couple of churches, small windey side streets that you can get lost in, and spring time flowers everywhere. Its beautiful. But the point of our visit was to see the Villa Cimbrone. The best description I have for Villa Cimbrone is a mix of A Room With A View and Enchanted April mixed together. Its stunning, it has lots of liitle spots to explore and get lost in. You enter the front gate and you are greeted with a really long pathway dripping with wisteria that leads you to the end of the villa which overlooks the ocean. I sat there for about an hour and loved it.

After the villa we went down te windey streets cut into the cliff face cack to Amalfi. We spent the rest of the afternoon there. Had an espresso, did a little shopping, and saw the amazing church. My words just wont do it justice so please google church and amalfi to have a look.

Tomorrow is all about Pompei, Oplontis and Herculanum - all three cities destroyed by the erruption of Mt Vessuvio.

Ciao
JR