Weekend in Amalfi

May 23, 2013 18:30

This weekend, a group of us decided to go to the Amalfi Coast. It's a big (and expensive) trip no matter how you do it, but I ended up booking the trip through FlorenceForFun. At this point, I have traveled on two FFF trips and many self-guided excursions on my own. There are definitely positives and negatives about both. I enjoy the freedom of independent travel, but for three nights, the FFF deal wasn't terribly expensive, and I liked the idea of having transportation and hotels taken care of. I was certainly looking forward to a more relaxing weekend without having to stress over Trenitalia. And when it comes down to it, what really matters is the people who are traveling with. That's what is going to make or break your trip.

We didn't have any Friday classes this week, so Thursday evening we left Florence on a crammed tour bus in route to Sorrento. I think it's about four hours from Florence to the Amalfi Coast, but I'm sure it takes longer on a bus. The bus ride was pretty uneventful – we watched a couple of movies and stopped for dinner at one of those standard rest stops on the way down. Although, the "standard rest stops" in Italy are certainly different than those in America. The food selections were set up like an à la carte dining hall, and everything was really expensive. I mean, a small ketchup packet was twenty cent euros. At least it was Heinz.

We didn't get into Sorrento until after midnight. For the next three nights, we would be staying at Hotel Spicy.

As a sidenote, the relatively nondescript photo included below was taken at the hotel on Friday morning. But, given the fact that I didn't take any photos on the bus ride, I needed some sort of placeholder.