“Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, ‘I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station’.”~Lisa St. Aubin de Teran

Today was our first “unscheduled free day”, which seems like an oxymoron. None the less, we had no scheduled tours or agenda with the exception of dinner.  It was a lovely and scary day and yet everyone (even Skip Shaw) survived!

We started the day with a lovely breakfast buffet (it was no Vittorio’s breakfast!  Then Tom, Barbara, Skip and I headed into Praiano on the shuttle.  From the city you could see the Island of Capri.

There was a beautiful old church with images of the saints on the bronze doors and unusual but adorable baptism remembrances.

We attempted a walk through town along the narrow streets with no sidewalks, gave up and returned to the hotel to take the city bus to Positano. We were fortunate to have Diana with us as in Roman mythology she is the protector of the weak.

Diana, Roman Goddess

The bus ride both to and from Positano was an adventure.  The kind of adventure you do not want to repeat.  There apparently is no limit on the number of passengers shoved onto the bus. Traffic is a nightmare.  Large tourist buses can clog up the narrow roadway.  Scooters zip in and out of traffic.  Horns blare constantly.  You sway backwards and forwards on the bus while the driver navigates the twists and turns at random speeds.  Apparently it is accepted in a traffic jam for a bus driver to turn on the emergency brake, turn off the bus and go out the door for some fresh air, while the passenger stand inside sweating.

“Adventure, yea. I guess that’s what you call it when everybody comes back alive.”                 ~ Mercedes Lackey

We survived and had a delicious and relaxing lunch (with wine) in a peaceful setting in town. 

We shopped for a brief time in the sweet smelling limonchello, ceramic, and souvenir shops, and then having almost forgotten the nightmare of the ride in, boarded the even more crowded bus for our journey back to the hotel. Diana may have been correct (and had the best quote of the day) when she said that we were all so close on the bus that there might be babies born nine months from that day! We had another delicious dinner in a restaurant nearby and some wine and dessert on the rooftop overlooking the Bay of Salerno.