Trip to Vietri Sul Mare (Salerno), Italy - 1st to 5th June 2008

A nice few days in a small town called Vietri Sul Mare, close to Salerno, in Campania. Which is in Italy. To get there required a trip through Naples airport, then Naples city, which provided a very rapid introduction to how utterly chaotic life in this part of the world generally is. The whole place just seemed to move at a million miles per hour, with people moving at speed in every direction around you. Even for somebody living in London, this was something to get used to! Naples, even on a Sunday, was an experience, if only providing a good lesson in how to avoid getting run over.

A hour or so on a train through the countryside and down the coast, with fantastic views of the coastline on one side, and Mount Vesuvius on the other, and we arrived in Vietri Sul Mare, which is a very picturesque coastal town near Salerno. Our hotel had an amazing view along the coast, and of Salerno in the distance. The town of Vietri itself had lots of ceramic shops, all of which were of course very keen to sell overpriced souvenirs to tourists. In fact, the whole Amalfi Coast looked to be completely designed to extract money from the thousands of (largely 50-something American) tourists that visit the place.

Despite it only being early June, the area was getting crowded already, making me glad that we weren't around in August, when it must be a nightmare. Many of the restaurants made it impossible to order what you wanted unless you spoke fluent Italian, "helpful" waiters directing you towards "special" menus, which you couldn't really avoid, even if you asked. Throughout the trip, I often felt like people were completely trying to rip us off, and of course, unless you speak good Italian, this is really difficult to avoid.

On numerous trips to Italy in the last few years, the place often leaves me bewildered. Getting around using public transport (outside a big city like Milan or Rome) is very confusing - it just doesn't seem to make sense like things do in France, Spain, Netherlands, Germany, in fact pretty much anywhere else. Things seem to be designed to be deliberately confusing to outsiders! Anyway, that is just a fact of life I guess - It shouldn't take away too much from the weather, food, and general style and pace of life. This part of the country is where buffalo mozzarella comes from, so after a few days, I was fully cheesed out!