Day 25

Buongiorno,

Today it was time to leave our little apartment in Maiori.

We have really enjoyed staying in Maiori. It is a quiet little village of 5,500 people. Very old, very beautiful, and still traditional. Most of the shops close after 1:00pm, and the town is like a ghost town. Then at 4:00pm the town comes alive again, with most of the shops staying open until 8:00pm. When we step out of the front door of the apartment complex to go for dinner we are stepping out onto the Main Street, which is beautifully lit. People are out and about, gossiping, strolling, kids running about and playing.

It doesn’t take us long to pack up, we are very practiced at it. Load the car up and off we go again.

We kept heading south, for the city of Salerno. We had one stop on the way. We accidentally took a wrong turn in one of the villages and ended up down at the waterfront instead of continuing along the Almalfi Coast road.

We stopped for a walk and weren’t really impressed with what we saw. The beach was very dirty, but despite that there were plenty of people sunbathing and swimming.

We continued to Salerno, which is a city of about 135,000 people. Our first impressions were of a busy city, not really a tourist destination, clean and attractive. Salerno has a large port and busy port. Lots of ferries leave Salerno for destinations throughout the Mediterranean.

We parked the car and went in search of food and something to do until our ferry sailed at 10:00pm.

Salerno’s business district was impressive. It was clean and the shops were attractive and varied. No souvenir shops! We found some lunch (pizza) and walked into the Old Town.

The cathedral in Salerno is very old. The foundations date back to about 1068, but as with all cathedrals it has been expanded, refurbished and modified over the years.

We were intrigued by one of the columns in the courtyard which had started to split down the middle. The column has been strapped with steel bands to hold it together.

The cathedral is dedicated to the apostle Matthew, and his remains are lurking somewhere in the crypt. Along with the body parts of various other people that were on display.

Some guide books and websites had suggested staying in Salerno and using it as our base for exploring the Amalfi Coast. We are very glad we did not do this. We had a far better experience staying in Maiori which was right on the middle of the Coast.

The Old Town quickly became the Dirty Town, as we moved into an area that was dirty and smelly, lots of very old unkempt buildings covered in graffiti. The town has been built on top of itself many times

over the centuries. One old church was made up of four layers - at the bottom of which was a Roman bathhouse. You could see the different building styles and materials built on top of one another as the layers went up.

We did some shopping, both shopping at Benetton. This is perceived as something of a premium brand of clothing in New Zealand, but in Italy we found it was more like a Hallensteins or Glassons, with prices to match. T Shirts for €13 and Merino wool jerseys for €40.

Yes, Koro did sniff out a couple of stationery stores. They were very small and pretty basic. We haven’t seen anything the size of Office Products Depot yet. We could have fit these little shops into the space of our office area in Te Rapa.

It was hamburgers for dinner (Italiano styles, not McDonalds), back to the car, and off to try and figure out how to get on the ferry.

All day we had seen a Grimaldi Lines ships tied up at the port. We were beginning to realise that this was our ferry. It was dark by this time and we had no idea where to go or what to do.

The port at Salerno is very busy. To enter Salerno from Almalfi you have to drive past the port, down a huge flyover packed with huge trucks entering and leaving the port area.

The men at the port did not speak very much English, but they certainly did their very best to help us. There were huge trucks constantly driving past where we were parked, making lots of noise. All the noise didn’t make it any easier to hear what the men were saying.

It was all very confusing, so we were watching the men and the other drivers in their cars very closely to see what we had to do. While the ferry sailed at 10:00pm, we had to check in no later than 8:00pm. We arrived at 7:00pm to make sure we were well on time, and we are glad we did, although we did end up sitting in our car waiting for a while. We had thought that we might hand the car over to someone and they would drive it onto the ferry, but that was not the case. We had to drive it on ourselves.

The ferry was huge. We drove onto it, up a level, then up another level to level 4. There were surprisingly few cars, maybe a dozen that come on with us. The rest if the space was taken up by huge trucks.

We have booked a cabin, which did not add very much to the cost. It has beds (single beds, not a double bed), and our own little

bathroom with a shower. Basically, it is like a little hotel room. So we are able to get a night’s sleep and wake up in the morning in Sicily.

Grandma, Koro and Buzzy Bee are all very excited, because none of us has been on a ship this big before. We’ve been able to have a drink at the bar, and now we are off to sleep.

Love to you all from Grandma and Koro and Sailor Bee. XXX OOO.