Amalfi Coast, Aug 2022 - Day 3

See Italy August 2022 - Day 1, and Amalfi Coast, Aug 2022 - Day 2.

Monday 8th

Slightly different breakfast than ordered, got rusks and jam instead of muesli, and the orange juice was orange squash, but still got yoghurt and fruit. Left just after 8:30 to catch the ferry to Capri. No information at marina so we didn't know we were at the front of the wrong line until the ferry arrived. 

Got to Capri then got in line for the first available boat tour around the island. Really nice, good to be out on the water with the wind and to see the island that way, gorgeous place. Wished we could get off and swim in the lovely blue water. Was meant to be 2hrs but didn't stop at Blue Grotto so actually was only 1hr. Couldn't face idea of being on land and exploring in the heat so waited in the shade on the pier for next Blue Grotto trip.

The Blue Grotto is a sea cave, illuminated blue by sunlight passing through an underwater cavity. It's only accessible through a small gap just large enough for a rowing boat containing four passengers (who have to lie flat to get through the gap). So we waited outside for over an hour, along with a dozen other boats crammed with people. One passenger on our boat started having a go at the skipper demanding he take us back to port because we hadn't been informed of the long wait time and his girlfriend was becoming unwell from the heat. Parts of the boat were shaded, others not. The skipper argued back and refused to move but the couple and several other people who had had enough were eventually moved onto another boat that was heading back to port. We stayed as we'd rather be on water than on land. You have to pay to go into the Blue Grotto and when our turn finally came the skipper of that small 4-person boat would only accept cash, and we only had enough for one of us so my sister went in. Ten minutes later she was back out again and shortly afterwards we were on our way back to the marina.

After that experience we went to the first cafe we saw for some lunch. And then the one next door for some much-needed gelato before the ferry back to Positano. It's a shame it was so darn hot, as we didn't get to explore Capri at all.

For dinner we found Ristorante Mediterraneo, a short walk down the road. It didn't have much of a view, but did have a singing guitarist walking round entertaining diners with typical Italian music. The chefs in the open kitchen would occasionally join in. I ordered a dish of black-and-white pasta ribbons with fish and lemon zest, which was nice, and then a chocolate almond cake for dessert.

I ended up buying a gorgeous but expensive dress in a shop we passed on the way back. (It's too long and needs taking up so I haven't worn it since...) We had a little bit more of a wander and I bought a homemade lemon-orange-mandarin gelato from a little place down the street. Yum!

Amalfi Coast, Aug 2022 - Day 2

See Amalfi Coast, Aug 2022 - Day 1.

Sunday 7th

We have breakfast at the hotel then make the short walk to the train station for a shuttle service to Positano. The driver was intense. Lucky I checked my phone, as he wanted to leave earlier than the time on the instructions.

Good views on 2hr drive, including Vesuvio just outside the city and then the coast, Sorrento, and the hills. The four other people in the taxi were two couples who both happened to be from Pittsburgh and were going to the same wedding in Positano. 

Arrived, were a little early to check in but waited in hotel bar area for half an hour. Bar area was a lovely terrace/balcony with sea views - beautiful!

The hotel, as with most buildings along the Amalfi Coast, was cliffside, and so had stunning views. When we were let into our room it had a terrace/balcony looking out to sea, which was absolutely gorgeous.

After resting in our room/balcony a while we took a walk down to the beach. Steep cliffside path with lots of steps! The town looked pretty but it was too hot to want to explore away from the waterfront, even in the shade. We got caesar salads for lunch at a restaurant slightly back from the beach; the bread basket they brought out contained these delicious breadstick-like loops flavoured with fennel seeds, which I later found out are called tarallini (and you can get them in Waitrose, yay). After lunch we ended up going into another restaurant-bar at the other end of the beachfront to get out of the sun and try to cool down with a smoothie. Then decided to sit on the beach for a while and go for a swim. Most of it was private or covered in expensive sunloungers to rent, but there was a small area at one end open for free, which was of course very busy with people sitting on towels and in the sea cooling down. The sand was black from volcanic rock.

Cooling down was much needed in 30-degree heat. Even with a breeze off the water we quickly became grossly sweaty. The part of the beach we were on was right next to the marina, and the area of water available to swim in was a triangle between the boats and the private section of the beach. It was very busy and very noisy and very very hot, so not particularly relaxing, but having not sat on a beach or gone swimming (especially abroad) for a long time that aspect of it was nice.

Next door to our hotel was Ristorante Caffe Positano, which had a small terrace with one of the best views in town. Happily there was a table on the terrace available when we turned up, perfect. We both ordered fish, and a side of grilled vegetables, and enjoyed a tasty meal gazing out over the sea as the sun set and the lights of the town and the boats came on. For dessert I ordered a creamy lemon cake, and my sister ordered tiramisu.

Amalfi Coast, Aug 2022 - Day 1

For my 30th birthday last year, my sister and a few other members of my family paid for me to join her in Italy for a few days during her summer Interrail trip. I would fly to Naples where she would meet me, we would spend the rest of that day and the night there, and go down to Positano on the Amalfi Coast the following day. 

Some of this was written as notes during the trip, some of it many months later using photos to jog my memory. The notes written during the trip are in italics.

Saturday 6th

After a 5am breakfast at the hotel in Stansted and an 8am flight, I meet my sister outside Napoli Centrale train station and we get a taxi to our apartment.

I've been to Naples before, again just for a day, and I didn't leave the hostel. It felt like somewhere I didn't want to walk around at night. 

The taxi dropped us off on a fairly busy street, and the directions took us down another side street, this one too narrow to admit cars and much quieter. Not in a good way. We eventually found the address and stood outside thinking Nope. Our Airbnb was a squat concrete shed-like structure on the ground floor of a residential building. Looked like it once had a utilitarian use like housing a generator or something, though it had been nicely renovated outside. It was quite nice inside too, small but clean and bright, and had the essentials including a little kitchen, it was absolutely fine for sleeping in on a short trip. Except for the location. Even though we knew the locks worked and I felt mean for feeling like it was a dodgy area and not entirely trusting the local residents, it felt exposed and we weren't comfortable. So we left.

My sister booked a hotel a 15-minute walk away... which turns out to be next to the train station, where we'd originally come from. Thankfully it is indeed much nicer, a proper hotel, and there's even a balcony with sun loungers, an outdoor shower, and a cool view of the city with a tantalising glimpse of Vesuvio just visible around the corner. And there's a restaurant and pizzeria immediately opposite, so we won't need to go wandering around to find food. I had thought we could visit the catacombs after lunch, to get out the heat for a couple of hours, but we were quite content to stay at the hotel! Also - so many swifts!

We went over to the restaurant - Gautani Adamo - for a late lunch, and ended up having a Caprese salad each and sharing some bruschetta and some fettuccine alla bolognese. They do pizza too so we might go back and get one to share for dinner later.

10:45pm: Dinner was an experience! We decided to go to what is perhaps Napoli's most famous pizzeria - L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele - as it was just a 10-minute walk away. Naples is generally regarded as the home of pizza. There was a huge crowd of people outside and a long line stretching back up the street. We thought getting a takeaway pizza would be faster so joined the line, about 4 car lengths away from the door (there were cars parked there), at 7:50pm, expecting a half-hour wait to order.

We finally walk away with our pizza two hours and ten minutes later! We finally ordered after an hour and a half, then waited another 40 minutes for the pizza. When one customer got theirs just a few minutes after ordering, my sister noticed their system through the open door, they just grab any of the order receipts instead of in the order they were made. 

So was it worth it? Well the pizza was really good but nothing surprising or particularly 'wow'-inducing, but it was worth it just for the experience, it's funny, and I can now tick 'eat pizza in Naples' off the travel list. We wouldn't have done anything else this evening either, just stayed in the hotel room. 

Oh and apparently it's common knowledge in the city that gangs let off fireworks to signal a drug shipment has arrived. That explains the ones this afternoon during daylight. Hahaha.

Yorkshire July 2022 - part 2

Please excuse the absurd lateness of this post, 11 months after the event. I wrote most of it shortly after the trip, expanding on notes I'd made during it. But there were a few things I couldn't quite remember, or was finding it difficult to translate photos from a walk into words, and I'm a perfectionist so just ended up not finishing it, till now. If you wish, you can remind yourself of the first part of the trip here: Yorkshire July 2022 - part 1.

Monday 11th

We checked out of the B&B and hauled our backpacking rucksacks to the Yorkshire establishment Betty's for when their Cafe Tea Rooms opened at 9am. Dressed in walking gear, we were not exactly attired for such an elegant place, which opened in 1937 and was designed to look like the interior of the Queen Mary ocean liner. It reminded me of Viennese coffeehouses, too. Happily, they take any large bags to store out of the way.

I ordered the Swiss breakfast rosti: grated potato fried with gruyere cheese and cream, with bacon, tomato, mushrooms, and a poached egg. Yum is an understatement. And the bacon was done perfectly. Highly recommend Betty's Cafe Tea Rooms should you visit York one day!

We caught the 10:23 bus to Whitby. We were sat just forward of the open windows and there was a sunroof, so it was quite warm and stuffy - and the Coastliner bus takes two and a half hours to cover 60 miles - but the views were great, it's a very scenic route that skirts the edge of the National Park. We got off the bus at Goathland, just 20 minutes from Whitby, to go for a walk.

Goathland is a small village up on a hill, with a picturesque row of shops as its centre. It was used as the setting for the TV series Heartbeat, and the steam train railway station was used as Hogsmead in the Harry Potter films. For the walk, we'd decided on a 3-mile circular route that would take us through some woodland and to some waterfalls. Mallyan Spout was lovely, a tall vertical waterfall in a lush little valley. We took our shoes and socks off and went for a paddle in the stream, which was fun but the rocks were very slippery! After sitting on the rocks for a while, letting our feet dry while gazing around at the greenery, and watching and listening to the stream, we left and carried on to find Beck Hole... but we couldn't, which was a shame, especially as we could have spent more time at Mallyan Spout. 

After making our way back to the village we went into the tea rooms at the end of the row of shops. I had a slice of Yorkshire curd tart - which I hadn't heard of before, but it was yummy of course - and a refreshing glass of milk! Nice that they had the latter on the menu. The curd tart is a sweet pastry case with a filling of curd cheese, currants, butter, spices, and often a bit of lemon curd or zest.

We sat a long time waiting for the bus - the last bus of the day, even though it wasn't even 5pm yet - fearing that it had been and gone really early or had been cancelled, but thankfully it turned up eventually. When we arrived in Whitby we found the B&B, checked in and rested for a while, then went back out to get some dinner - which, of course, had to be fish and chips on the pier.

After dinner we crossed the river and explored more of the quaint, winding, cobbled streets, before climbing the 199 Steps up to St Mary's Church on top of the East Cliff. Wandered around the atmospheric clifftop graveyard, the stones weathered and pitted and largely unreadable from the salt spray. Whitby Abbey looming majestically in the background. Walked around the Abbey's perimeter wall as the sky darkened, standing on tiptoe to catch glimpses of the ruins. 

Tuesday 12th

We wanted to do a walk in the North York Moors National Park while we were up there, and see some of the high moorland. The Esk Valley Railway runs between Whitby and Middlesborough, through the NP, so we caught that line to the village of Danby. There's a National Park visitor centre there at Danby Lodge, which had a cafe, gallery, and shop. We didn't go in the cafe but the gift shop was wonderful and we spent quite a while in there. After doing so I didn't want to leave with nothing so bought a pretty card that I'll put in a scrapbook.

We walked across the moors from Danby to the village of Lealholm. The day was cloudy and as we got up onto the moorland the wind was chilly. But it was a beautiful place. It took us about an hour to reach Danby Beacon, the highest point in the area, and then another hour or so to move down from the purple moorland to the green valley where picturesque Lealholm nestled. The village has stepping stones crossing the river, so we sat down on those to eat lunch, absolutely loving being surrounded by the sounds of the water.

Returning to Whitby in the afternoon, we wandered the riverfront to the seafront and along one of the piers, and visited the Museum of Whitby Jet, before getting dinner at a busy pub overlooking the water. Then we boarded the 8pm sunset boat trip, which was lovely.

As we disembarked around 9:30pm and started heading back into the town, we saw the full moon rising low over the hill, so we stood to watch it for a while. It was a lovely warm summer evening and we partly wanted to make the most of it and stay out, but were also pretty tired and didn't want to go somewhere busy and noisy. So we headed back towards the B&B. But on the way we passed a small gin bar, the Arch & Abbey, which was almost empty (and therefore quiet), which specialised in local drinks, and decided to go in. I got a Whitby Bramble & Bay gin with elderflower tonic, which was nice... but we had to drink quite quickly as it was around 10:30pm and they closed at 11.

I wish there were more places for people like me, who don't like busy noisy bars and such like. It's nice to stay out late on a summer evening but I don't want to have to go to somewhere that is an assault on the senses to do so. There need to be late-night cafes, bookshops/libraries, and dessert bars. So-called dessert places that do waffles and crepes don't count. I want crumble, treacle tart, bakewell tart, fruit pies, sticky toffee pudding, rice pudding, cinnamon buns, fresh fruit with yoghurt, jelly and ice-cream, Viennese cakes, Indian ras malai and dudh jalebi, Indonesian dadar gulung, and other sweet treats from all over the world.

Wednesday 13th

After a very busy few days and a relatively late night, we had a more leisurely morning, taking the time to have a cooked breakfast before finishing packing and checking out of the B&B at 10am. The beach and the whalebone arch were the only things we hadn't yet seen in Whitby so we headed there. As the sea came into view just a few minutes after leaving the B&B we wished we'd got ready to go before breakfast so we could leave shortly after 9 and have more time at the beach before our bus at 11. It was gorgeous, another bright warm sunny day but with a fresh breeze from the north, the tide was out so there was a wide strip of sand sparsely dotted with people, white horses on the deep blue sea and lines of breakers on the beach, and a sharp horizon free of haze. After standing gazing at it for a while we reluctantly pulled ourselves away to walk back up the cliffs for a quick look at the whalebone arch, and the Abbey visible on the East Cliff, before heading to the bus station.

The bus journey back to York was long but fairly pleasant and uneventful, thankfully we were able to get seats towards the back of the bus so the air flow from the open windows reached us. We had two and a half hours before our train at 4pm so grabbed some lunch from the Shambles market and took it to the Treasurer's Garden. I grabbed a lemonade from a street vendor on the way too, which I soon regretted as it wasn't very sweet and just a bit too sharp even for me - that and the spiciness and tanginess of my samosa chaat lunch put me off wanting the lemon and basil sorbet we were planning to get from a parting visit to Roberto's.

After a brief but pleasant sit-down in the shade of the pretty Treasurer's Garden, we set off again to visit a couple of shops we hadn't had time to before: one selling infused olive oils and balsamic vinegars, which were yummy but a bit pricey as you have to buy the glass bottles too, and a tea shop (in my case, the bookshop next door). We each left the latter with a small purchase, then went to Roberto's. I still wasn't feeling up to another lemony concoction - the lemon and basil sorbet will have to wait for another visit - and sadly the yoghurt and mandarin gelato they had previously wasn't on today's menu, so I got a ricotta and honey gelato. It didn't have lots of flavour, which wasn't surprising, but it was nice and creamy. We ate them on our way to the Museum Gardens, where we barely had time to stop and appreciate the vibrant flowerbeds and ancient ruins before going to the train station. 

It was such a lovely trip, and we enjoyed York especially. We went back in January for a weekend just to the city, doing some of the indoor things it was far too nice to do in July - visit the Yorkshire Museum, the Railway Museum, wandering the streets  at a quieter time of year and mooch round the independent shops (I bought the most adorable teddy bear from the teddy bear shop). And of course we had to revisit Betty's. Sadly we still didn't manage to go inside the Minster!

Yorkshire July 2022 - part 1

Well, it's high time I finished this post - the trip was three and a half months ago! In early July I took a trip up to beautiful Yorkshire with my friend. We decided to spend two nights in York and two nights in Whitby, and get out into the North Yorkshire Moors National Park a bit. As usual, it's quite a long post, so I've split it into two - keep an eye out for the second one soon :) 

Saturday 9th

After a mildly stressful start to the trip due to a missed train and the worry of being charged for being on a different train than specified on the ticket (thankfully we weren't charged), the journey up to York was a pleasant couple of hours from London. We arrived in York around 3:30pm, were greeted outside the train station by a knitted Viking perched atop a postbox, went straight to the B&B to check in and leave our heavy backpacking rucksacks, then went out into the hot, sunny afternoon to look around the city.

I immediately loved it. The B&B was just outside Bootham Bar - the large fortified gateways of the city walls are called bars - so we entered the old city on High Petergate - the streets are called 'gate' from Old Norse 'gata' - which led straight to the Minster. It's all winding cobbled streets and centuries-old buildings looming overhead, very pretty. The minster was gorgeous, and the gardens, though busy, were quiet.

On Goodramgate (''guthrum-gata" - Guthrum was a king) we found a little gelato shop and cafe called Roberto. I got passion fruit sorbet and my friend got lemon and basil sorbet; both were delicious and we resolved to go back again before the end of our trip. It was right next to Monk Bar, so we went up the steps and onto the walls to walk the 2-mile city walls circuit. (A large proportion of the walls are intact, but there are some sections missing, with a trail all the way around where they would have been.)

It's a nice thing to do, and free. The intact sections of wall and grassy ramparts are medieval - the latter concealing the earlier Roman, Viking, and Norman defences - but the walkway on top is Victorian; before it was built, anyone manning the walls would have stood on wooden platforms. On the parts of the route where the walls no longer exist you're just walking next to a busy road next to an industrial estate / retail park - which was once a large marshy wetland area that the king used for fishing or something - but a lot of it is nice and quiet, often lined on one side by trees and the other by the grassy ramparts and more trees. You can also make a short detour to see Dick Turpin's grave, which we did, and York Castle which now contains the York Castle Museum and the Crown Court, as well as the medieval keep of Clifford's Tower. There's a timeline of the city's history set into the ground in front of the Tower, and a memorial stone to the massacre of the city's Jews in 1190.

After a couple of hours at a leisurely pace we reached the riverbank by the Museum Gardens, and decided to sit and rest on a bench for a while in the shade of a tree. It was in a small park and I was sad to see that the grass had all been walked over so much that there was no grass left and it was just dry earth - stick to the paths, people! Anyway, my friend got out the sandwiches he had brought from home for lunch (which had instead been Hainanese chicken rice bought at a food market near King's Cross) and we ate those as a makeshift picnic dinner. Eventually we continued on our way and passed through Bootham Bar and began the last section back to Monk Bar. There are great views of the Minster from there, so we ended up stopping to linger in one place and just watched the light change on the Minster as the sun set. As the warm golden light on the ancient building turned to shadow, we started walking again, but just a little further on we noticed the moon rising above one of the towers and stopped to look at that. When we finally started to move on again, we were ushered back the way we had come by two wardens in hi-vis as the walls close at dusk. We would have to go back and finish that section another time. 

It was nice just wandering around the town as it got darker and wonderfully cooler. There had obviously been some sort of event happening as most people were wearing formal outfits and out celebrating something. We stood for a few minutes amused by a large crowd of people gathered round a busker and singing along to Sweet Caroline and an Oasis hit. At one point a guy with a couple of his friends passed by and asked us if we were from York; when we replied in the negative he muttered something like oh that's why you're dressed boring and wandered off again. I found out the next morning it had been the York Races. We got a drink from a pizza place just off the Shambles Market and sat at an outdoor table to enjoy the summer evening before heading back to the B&B.

Sunday 10th

Breakfast at the B&B cost extra, so we went out to a nearby cafe where I had granola with yoghurt, and a disappointingly small number of berries. Then we made our way to Exhibition Square, opposite Bootham Bar, for a 10:30am guided group walking tour by the Association of Voluntary Guides.

"In York, the gates are called bars, the streets are called gates, and the bars are called pubs." - One of the first things our tour guide told us. After a brief introduction he led us through a little walkway out of the square past some of the old perimeter walls of St Mary's Abbey. In the Museum Gardens, a lovely park outside the Yorkshire Museum, a large section of one of the Abbey walls remains standing, which is cool to see. I can't remember a lot of the detail of what we were told over those two hours, but I did really like seeing the section of still-intact Roman wall and tower in the Museum Gardens. I mean how often do you get to see an intact Roman wall, 2000 years old?! Cool :) There's also a Roman column in the Minster Yard, which was found underneath it in the 1960s when, like Winchester Cathedral, it was discovered that the building was in danger of sinking/collapse and the foundations had to be reinforced.

We passed through the famous Shambles, which isn't named due to the shambolic appearance of the ancient buildings but because historically it was a street of butchers shops - the name comes from "shammels", the wooden shopfront shelves on which butchers displayed their products. Pretty and very quirky, the street is now a heaving tourist hotspot. The marketplace still has a daily market, and to one side there is still a row of old, low stalls with wooden shelves outside. 

Leaving the Shambles, we came to an old side street next to the Treasurer's House and Garden, and our guide told us one of the city's most famous ghost stories, which I recognised and must have read somewhere once. In the 1950s, after the National Trust had taken over the Treasurer's House, a teenage apprentice plumber was working on the boiler in the cellar when he heard trumpet sounds, which gradually grew louder as if getting closer. Suddenly a soldier in armour and a plumed helmet emerged from the wall, blowing a trumpet, and was followed by a horse and a dozen or so more soldiers marching in pairs, all looking dirty and worn out. They were only visible from the knees up, their lower legs and feet were below the floor. Despite his terror, it seems he was able to mentally note and remember such detail about what the soldiers had been wearing that an expert in Roman history was able to identify them. Our tour guide said it was the 9th Legion, which is famous for vanishing without trace from the historical record in the second century AD - what happened to them is a mystery, and the last record of them in Britain was of a battle in northern England. Other online sources say the green tunics and round shields the plumber described were in later decades revealed by new evidence to be of local reserve soldiers who took over the garrison when regular soldiers began returning to Rome in the 5th century. Later excavations also revealed a Roman road 18 inches below the floor level of the cellar.

The tour was excellent, I do recommend it if you visit York. After a morning of walking and taking in information, even though it was a hot sunny day I could think of nothing better than a sandwich overflowing with roast pork, stuffing, apple sauce, and crackling, from The York Roast Co. My friend got the same and we went back to the Treasurer's Garden, a beautiful little walled oasis where we could sit in the shade, listen to a water fountain, and look at the lovely flower borders and tall trees and the Minster.

One of the things I definitely wanted to do while we were there was visit Jorvik Viking Centre, so we went there after lunch. It's located in Coppergate ('koppari-gata' - street of the cup-makers), right on the site where Viking-age houses, yards, and workshops were discovered and excavated by archaeologists in the late 1970s and early 80s. The centre houses a reconstruction of the 10th-century city, which you travel through on a ride that immerses you in the sounds and smells of the scenes, with narration piped through the headrests. Everything is highly detailed and based on what was found during the excavations, from the species of plants and animals, to the splashes of natural dyes in a backyard, to the games being played. Animatronic characters with facial features and clothing based on meticulous research show what a multicultural hub the city was, welcoming trade from all over the Viking world, and you can hear at least three different ancient languages being spoken on the way around (recognising them or telling them apart is another matter). The ride through the Viking streets takes about half an hour, and then there's a museum gallery. It's cool, and interesting, I enjoyed it.

Leaving Jorvik, we bought ice-creams and joined the crowd watching the Wimbledon final on the big screen set up outside the shopping centre. It wasn't too long before it finished, and we made our way back to the river to take a stroll along the bank. The path on the Museum side is named the Dame Judy Dench Walk. We continued maybe about a mile and crossed the bridge to come back along the other side; it's a nice walk, there are lots of lovely big weeping willows and poplar trees (along with quite a bit of invasive non-native Himalayan Balsam - friendly reminder to Check, Clean, Dry your footwear to help stop the spread of invasive species!). We sat down on the bank to just enjoy the evening and watch the numerous greylag geese.

Around 8pm we decided we'd better not leave it too much longer to go and find some dinner, so we stood up and headed to Little Italy, opposite Roberto on Goodramgate. It was hot and stuffy inside, but the food was good. Afterwards we went back to the riverbank to watch the finale of the York Proms - complete with fireworks - through the fence of the Museum Gardens. There was an exhibition of landscape photos by the Royal Photographic Society Landscape Group on panels along other parts of the fence, so we looked at those too.