"Positano and small nearby village Praiano" Positano by edwis

One day we took a short drive from Amalfi town to see the picture perfect postcard setting of Positano, which is the largest and most popular seaside village. Along the way we decided to stop in a little place named Praiano, a very non-tourist small village up in the hills. We actually had to park along the highway road and then walk up about a ¼ mile up to find this little place. First we found the local cemetery which had about 8 flights of layered steps, each layer with cemetery burial graves, then more steps. The grave stones were interesting for many of them had an embedded photograph in the headstone. We found this stop to be very historic and imagined about the families buried there. Then we walked up a curved and hilly street some more not knowing where it would lead us, and we found a little town center consisting six-eight buildings. It was here that I got a neck / cheek shave by an old-time barber. Half way through it, all of a sudden his wife comes in from behind a drawn curtain with a tray of café for us. The barber tells me that he doesn’t speak any English, only a little bit of German. That’s seems Ok - but then I realized that he is telling me all of this while speaking in pretty good English! I still can’t figure out that conversation. From there we roam the streets a little and found a village grocery shop that sold white wine without any labels for about $1.60 US.

Positano

Positano is the gem and most famous spot of the area. This is where all the movie stars and beautiful people visit. There have been some major films with scenes from there, such as Only You and Under the Tuscan Sun .
The town develops in a very vertical way, following the steep incline of the mountains rising from the sea. The houses seem to lean towards each other, and are painted with gaudy colors, giving the impression of a precious stone with thousand facets that cause multicolor reflections. In fact, we learned that Positano is called the "Gem of the Divine Coast".

There are narrow streets, with boutiques made out from the basements of the houses, and you go down quickly among buildings as though they were streams falling in ravines. As you descend towards the sea, this place maybe the only case in the world where the panoramic view over the town on your back is more beautiful that the one you have on the front facing the sea. The other smaller beaches in Positano are at Fornillo, La Porta, Fiumicello and Arienzo. On the main square of Positano we found the parish church dedicated to Our Lady of Assumption, which originally was a powerful abbey. Inside this church there is also a relief of a fantastic monster, half fish and half dragon. But the most peculiar characteristic is the imposing dome. I took one photo from a bridge overlooking this Duomo and seaside that turned out to be spectacular. Later we saw postcards with the exact same scene. We couldn’t even tell the difference in quality of my photograph, even if I must say so myself. Besides all this scenery, we found “Posi” to be a little too commercialized for our taste, but it does have the most outstanding beauty of blue water and cliffs we probably have ever seen.

While walking down the steep pathway in Positano, Jovanna quickly realized that she probably had the only one-piece bathing suit in all of Italy. So we hit a couple of beachwear shops walking down the steps, and secured a quick bikini there off the rack. ($5 US on sale)! Walking around the beach later we follow a path which becomes a little rugged and around a big corner from Posi, we happened upon Fornillo Beach. This is the city’s main local general public, less ritzy swim area. We lay out and swam there in the Mediterranean Sea for our first time, then later we had a multi-course lunch sitting over the water on a deck overlooking topless sunbathers. Ah, yes, that lunch just went too quickly for my taste and of course we have some great scenery pictures.

we notice that the rocks and stones all about were really colorful. There were bright blues, oranges, yellows and reds. How can that be? Well, it turns out that this area is famous for all the ceramic shops and they must toss the old leftover materials into the sea. Then eventually they work their way up onto the shore as colorful little stones. So now in addition to the 13 bottles of wine we brought back, our suitcase had a bag of colorful stones from Positano. I can’t figure out why they made me put a ‘heavy’ tag on our largest suitcase.

The other good story while being on the beach is that we were laying there on our towels, a couple walks up, drops their beach items close to us, takes off their tops revealing only the skimpiest and tiniest little briefs. They proceeded to swim and then frolic all around us. One male and one female whose hair was in the Snead O’Conner shaved mode. But we could still determine she was a she.