Minori

Wednesday we went from Ravello down to Minori, a town in the next valley over. It's called the Path of the Mules, because mules were the only way to transport things into and around this area (other than by sea). The trip back was about 1 mile, 1000 feet of vertical and 1284 steps (Jay counted them).

Another influence on Escher -- look at the arches at the top of this photo and think about Escher's Ascending and Descending Staircases.

We visited a pottery workshop where we got to make real stuff.  The mascot of Amalfi pottery is the donkey head (which was a term for "dunce" in the old days), and this potter is doing a project where visitors customize molds of donkey heads, which he will make into an art installation.  The one on the left is mine (with a sombrero -- the best I could do to give it a California theme) and the one on the right is Jay's, with some other sort of hat on.

I rarely take pictures of food, but this was a famous pastry shop, Sal de Riso, and their most famous concoction -- ricotta and candied pears inside and dark chocolate outside.  We shared one.  It was excellent.

This is the harbor/beach of Minori.  It is one of the places that Jay's father made a beach landing onto during WW II.  Yes, it's about as narrow as it looks, and presumably the Fascists were shooting down at them from above (though the Italian locals considered them liberators).

I'd had some stomach pains all day, which I took to mean I had worked my abs hard the day before, but as we returned, it became clear that I had some sort of intestinal bug that I took to be food poisoning.  I spent the evening in the room, while Jay went out to a lovely dinner at a restaurant with a great view, which I don't have any pictures of.