The Amalfi Coast and the Path of the Gods

The Amalfi Coast is the stretch of rugged cliff coastline that stretches between Positano and the town of Amalfi. This stretch of coast is called the Amalfi Coast, not to be confused with the town of Amalfi at the end. The towns of Positano and Amalfi famously cling to the seaside cliffs tumbling down to the sea. These vertical cities create the most dramatic visual effects that have made them popular tourist destinations with five million people visiting each year. This makes them beautifully crowded and frustrating, just like Italy itself.

On our first visit to Amalfi Coast we chose to stay in Sorrento which is known as the gateway to the Amalfi. It is not actually on the Amalfi Coast but allows for easy transportation when arriving from the north. From Rome you can take the train to Sorrento and from that home base you can take buses or ferries to the cities of the Amalfi. Sorrento has many accommodations such as hotels and Airbnb’s, everyone speaks English and you can eat a meal anytime you want to.

This is different than the part of Italy I live in, the real Italy where no one speaks English and you must eat lunch between 1-3 and dinner after 8:00 pm or there will be no options except gelato to feed your hungry soul. In fact, in normal Italian cities outside of tourist destinations you may not even find a place to eat lunch because most Italians are home having lunch at the family table with Nona (Grandma) who has loving prepared some fresh pasta. There are no pizzerias open because pizza is made in a wood fired oven and that is expensive and time consuming, usually you can only find pizzerias at night. You may find a pizza by the slice but even that is more common around 5:00 when the kids are getting home from school and need to be tied over before dinner. But this is a story about the Amalfi Coast and Sorrento so you can have whatever you want whenever you want it. Not a true side of Italy but a vastly more convenient one.

So back to Sorrento, our first time in Amalfi we stayed in a hotel in Sorrento and took the city bus from Sorrento to Positano (the first city on the Amalfi Coast). The transportation is easy enough and it was recommended by Rick Steve’s, but Jeff absolutely hated it. The hairpin turns made our stomachs lurch and sitting in the back of the bus offered no views of the beautiful coastline. We arrived in Positano carsick and grumpy and then had to climb down a million steps to arrive at the coast.

The second time we traveled the Amalfi Coast we road with friends in a convertible with the top down. This was a much better way to travel! Jeff loved it so much he practically stood up in the back seat to gasp in delight and the road curved and swerved on the hairpin turns clinging to the cliff side. Every turn of the car opened up new vistas of clear blue sea and dramatic coastline. When we arrived in Positano windswept and delirious from the breathtaking views, our friends asked if we were hungry. “No” Jeff says, “I ate a June bug on the drive in”! Well, hilarity ensued and the day was off to a much better start.

Now we were ready to take in the beauty that is Positano. Positano is named after the Greek god of the sea, oPoseidon and was a popular trade route for the Greek and Phoenicians. The rich and famous of Roman times built their Villas here just as the rich and famous do today. But it wasn’t always like this for Positano, it reached its pinnacle in the Medieval 15-17th Centuries as a prosperous trading route, but then fell into disrepair when many Italians immigrated to America in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.

It became popular again when John Steinbeck wrote his essay in 1953 about Positano in Harpers Bazaar. He wrote “It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone.” I totally agree with him. How it must have looked to Steinbeck when it was still a quiet abandoned fishing village. It still would have been beautiful with its pastel villas clinging to the cliffs and tumbling down to the sea. This is what strikes me most about the towns of the Amalfi, when you look closely the buildings are independent buildings ascending vertically from the sea to the top of the cliffs yet they appear to have been fused together, clinging to each other to prevent their ultimate demise.

Today whether you arrive by bus or by car you must start your journey from the top. Either where the bus drops you off carsick or where you have parked your little convertible. You begin walking downward toward the sea, though narrow streets with cars and buses wizzing by. The streets narrow and you pass cafes and shops selling high-end linen dresses, adorable children’s fashions, leather sandals and ceramics. As you get closer to the sea the walkway becomes even more enchanting with an arbor overhead that is blooming with wisteria and bougainvillea. There are artist painting pictures of the surreal vistas of land and sea and artisans selling their bracelets and jewelry.

The beauty is undeniable but so are the prices and it seems impossible to get a meal that is delicious and doesn’t cost a fortune. But you are in Positano on the Amalfi Coast. The best thing to do is pull up a chair, order a plate of pasta or a spritz and forget about your pocketbook.

If you have decided to take this route of staying in Sorrento and taking the bus or driving and parking in Positano, I recommend taking the ferry to Amalfi Town. It’s only €8 and will allow you to see the coast and the little coastal towns of Maggiora, Praiano, Maiori and Amalfi from the water. It’s especially beautiful if you can take your return trip at sunset when you can witness the sky darkening from the bright blue of day to the deep turquoise of dusk. The towns start to turn on their lights and the cities light up like a million fireflies clinging to the cliffs.

A close friend of mine told me one of the highlights of her trip to Italy was walking the Path of the Gods, known In Italy as Sentiero degli Dei. This hike starts from the Italian town of Bomerano at an elevation of 2070 feet and snakes it’s way through the ridge of the Monti Lattari range and plummets into the Tyrrhenian Sea in Positano five miles later.

It was along this coast that Ulysses, the fictional character in Homers epic Odyssey (written sometime BC) strapped himself to his ship to avoid being lured by the siren songs of the mermaids. This is where the name of the hike came from, the path that led the Greek Gods from heaven to earth to answer the call of the sirens. Not far from the biblical account of the angels that forsook their place in heaven to be with the pre-flood women of earth.

It was on our third trip to The Amalfi Coast that we finally achieved our goal of hiking the Sentiero degli Dei. It takes a lot of planning to achieve this hike and most people do not plan their trip to Amalfi around a hike. First of all you have to choose your starting point. We chose Bomerano, a town up into the mountains from the town of Amalfi. So we parked our car in Amalfi town and happily started our adventure. We had left Sorrento at 8:30 in the morning so we thought we had plenty of time. We had dropped of some friends who didn’t want to take the hike at the ferry in Sorrento. They planned on taking the ferry from Sorrento to Naples which was another good option for people wanting to see Naples but not wanting the agony of driving into Naples or arriving by train and walking “the gauntlet” from the train station to the touristic areas. Arriving by ferry gives you the ease of approaching Naples from a much friendlier “cruise ship” area.

View of Naples from our Airbnb in Sorrento

But dropping our friends off this way meant we needed to be back in Sorrento to pick them up by 5:00. We thought this would give us plenty of time to do the five hour hike, rest on the beach in Positano and catch the ferry back to Amalfi to pick up our car and make the hour and a half journey back to Sorrento. So we stopped for a bathroom break and a cappuccino before catching our bus to Bomerano.

After arriving in the town of Amalfi, we struggled around dashing about like tourists trying to figure which bus to catch to Bomerano. We approached this bus driver and then that driver and walked into this station and then that station, we asked this police officer then that bus driver who flirted and offered to take us on a private tour (that was a hard “no thanks” and a turning on our heels). Finally we found the little station that sold tickets to Bomerano. We happily plunked down our few little euros for our bus ticket to be told the next bus to Bomerano would be at 12:30. It was now 10:30, we asked when was the previous bus had departed, she said “you just missed it, it was at 10:15” of course this dialog did not happen in English but in Italian, in fact all of the confusion happened in Italian because suddenly we were back in the “real” Italy, not in the Sorento/Positano “Italy of your dreams”. In fact everyone looked at us with derision for not speaking better Italian and for being, well, for being annoying American tourists. Sometimes the graffiti, trash filled unmanicured Italy of my daily reality is nicer than this touristic “Italy of my dreams”. At least my “Nettuno” Italy is nice to me when they can’t understand a word I’m saying and they find me annoyingly amusing.

We sit down dazed and confused on how we could have made this huge oversite. How can we hike the Path of the Gods starting at 12:30 and be finished in time to pick our friends up? We can’t, that’s the answer. I’m already considering just to chuck it up and go find one of the 100 beaches on the Almalfi coast to lie down on and chill the rest of the day. Oh, noooo. Jeff won’t have that, by golly he is going to hike the Path of the Gods, so he approaches a private car and asks how much to go to Bomerano. The young handsome Italian driver says €80. “WHAT?!? When I can take the bus for €1.80 each? “ The tight wad in me said “no way!” But one look at the resolute look on Jeff’s face and I knew we were taking that €80 private car. That didn’t stop me from running around asking every private car how much they would charge. The answer came back the same every time “lady, we are one private service, every car will charge €80” Wow, they stuck to their guns. No one budged for us. How is it possible in such a disorganized country where no one agrees on anything as simple as how to make lasagna but they can stand with such solidarity on the cost of a taxi? Man, where is Uber when you need it? Not in Italy. So we paid our €80 fee for what should have been under €5 and drove the curvy roads up the hill to Bomerano while I sulked in the back seat.

So a word to the wise, if you plan on doing the Path of the Gods and want to park your car in the town of Amalfi, make sure you arrive in time to find the correct bus station and buy your ticket before 10:15 or prepare to pay dearly for your mistake.

All was forgiven though, when we started the hike. Bomerano is a cute town in itself, known as the little Switzerland of Amalfi. We easily found the trailhead and began our hike with sweeping views of the coastline and dramatic drops to the sea. Along the trail the mountains were terraced with vineyards, olive and lemon groves. The stone paths were not in the wilderness but felt as though you were walking through the vineyards and back yards of ancient stone homes. It is a tribute to these hardy industrious people to have carved a life out of the mountain to raise their crops and graze their livestock. In fact the only animals you see along this trail are foraging goats with their little bells creating a sound like “the sound of music” echoing through the canyons. This is not a hike for people wanting to escape humanity and become one with nature, rather it is a pathway carved out thousands of years ago by Greek settlers and kept in use by those living in secluded monasteries. These well worn rugged foot paths may have been the only way in and out for those who chose to build their homes and lives here.

Over the course of our hike we saw ancient stone buildings, breathtaking vistas of the islands of Ischia and Capri floating in the deep blue Mediterranean Sea. In fact, when you first start the hike there is a sign that reads in part when translated “This is the Path of the gods, opened to our gaze, the Amalfatana Coast, facing west towards the Island of Capri, that steep, sultry coast with crystal clear water and mountains. Where the gods are abandoned and lost but the Mediterranean is discovered again.”

Our hike ends when we approach the outskirts of Positano. At this point the hike has not been strenuous and we have greatly enjoyed ourselves. We are looking forward to sitting on the beach with a Spritz. But we haven’t realized the hardest part is before us. There are 1500 steps that lead down to the town of Positano. We start our descent, happily at first, how hard can steps going down be? Try it and you will find that your legs have turned to jelly and tremble with each step, about 3/4 of the way down you realize you legs may rebel and decide to crumble under the weight of your body. Your knees are jarring and threatening to lock up. You start to do strange things like walk backwards or in a strange zigzag or sideways pattern or you even start to run. Anything to ease the trembling jarring sensation you fear will send you tumbling down the remaining stairs.

Finally you reach the final step happy that your legs cooperated and did not launch an all out anarchy on the rest of your body. But don’t worry, your legs will get even with you. We spent the next three days walking like we were 80 years old wincing with each step like we just had major surgery. Fun when you are walking through hill towns!

I am happy to report that we made it down to the ferrry in time to catch it back to Amalfi town. We didn’t sit in a fancy, bougainvillea covered cafe over looking the sea with our toes in the sand. Rather we bought a beer and sat at the steps of the ferry and slugged it down, happy to not take anymore steps than necessary.

Our plan worked and we enjoyed our ferry back to Amalfi, picked up our car in the parking lot and drove back to Sorrento just in time to pick up our friends from their day trip in Naples.

In one breath I say I never want to return to Amalfi and in the next I am saying “What would it be like to stay in Praiano next time? Maybe in May? Say a little bougainvillea covered villa overlooking the sea? So goes life in Italy, like the words of Steinbeck, it “becomes beckoningly real after you have gone” and it always beckons you back.