Our last hiking day -- Malacoccola

On Saturday, we climbed the Malacoccola (it means something like "unrequited love", as legend has it that spurned lovers would throw themselves off this cliff).  While we started off with a gentle climb, it then led to a real scramble, with some of the steps being high enough that my knee had to bend more than 90 degrees to reach the next level landing spot.  Gorgeous views, but steep drop offs.  I didn't capture a lot of views, as a) they were often just water -- still lovely, but not an interesting picture, and b) you had to get too close to the edge to get the picture.  I probably would have just rolled down 5-10 feet if I had fallen, but that's still unnerving to me. 

This is the Bay of Salerno from the top of Malacoccola

Another view of the Bay of Salerno, a bit in the haze.

These are out two guides, at the mesa on top -- that is Ulisse on the left and Vincenzo on the right.

As we head down the other side, we can see the Bay of Naples.  I forget what town.  

That is the "peak" we had just climbed.  It looks so harmless from this direction, but it was quite a scramble over those rocks.

Those rocks in the distance (they are called Li Gallos, meaning roosters, because in Italian mythology the Sirens were bird people, and they look like rooster combs) are supposedly the rocks that Ulysses had to go by tied to the mast, so he would not heed the Siren call to crash into the rocks.  There are hotels on these islands now (didn't look large enough for that to me).  At one point, Rudolf Nureyev owned them.

Donkey belonging to a local farmer.  On the highly terraced farms, these are their tractors.

We had lunch at an agriturismo farm, where they make a lot of liqueurs and preserves.  We got to taste limoncello and finocchietto (the fennel equivalent of limoncello -- I liked it better), and got to watch them make sun dried tomatoes with garlic and chili peppers (preserved in oil). -- oh was it good.  If only there had been more room in the luggage....  Lunch was about 15 different kinds of veges as hors d'oeuvres, and then superb gnocchi to follow up.  We were told that the owner's wife wouldn't sleep with him that night unless we finished all the gnocchi, so we willingly obliged.

Part of the farmhouse where we had lunch.

The way back started in a very peaceful and level forest, and then the usual steps and views down into Sorrento.

This is the plane of Sorrento, we walked down through these towns to sea level.

In Sorrento I met Jay, who had taken the van down to protect his knees, and we went strolling through the pedestrian shopping area.  We ended up buying him a leather jacket; it is quite lovely, though it was a challenge getting everything into our suitcases that night.  We started with full suitcases and ended with fuller ones.  Thank heavens for expanding zippers.

We had a great farewell dinner from a restaurant with views of the bay from above, then the next day shuttled to the airport and then flew to Frankfurt.  Spent the night at the airport after going into downtown Frankfurt so that Jay could get one last meal of Wiener Schnitzel -- we had never been in Frankfurt proper.  Now off to the US.

Amalfi was lovely, with breathtaking views all around, and our guides were very special characters, extremely knowledgeable about the sites we visited (they knew more about Pompeii than our official Pompeii guide did).  The hiking was longer and more strenuous than I expected (which is good; the literature made me think this would not be a very strenuous trip), and the weather couldn't have been better (temperatures in the high 60s and low 70s; we had rain at night and about 10 minutes while we were stopped for lunch under umbrellas one day), but this is not going to go into my "top 10 vacations I have taken" list.  It's an extremely touristy part of Italy, and even though the guides worked hard to keep us out of the chaos plus this is relatively low season, the fact that tourism is how these people make their livelihood, with all the pluses and minuses, was obvious.   It's also a playground for the "beautiful people"  (Jackie Kennedy, George Clooney, Bruce Springsteen, were among those that were long term visitors to various of the towns we were in, not to mention a large number of authors and artists of the last two centuries.), which makes it more focused on high end amenities we didn't value.  

It's been a great six weeks.  I'll pick things up again when we next take off on retirement adventures.