I have just returned from a week in Positano. I know, I agree, it’s ridiculous. How can I even admit that when I live on a small tropical island with a pink sand beach….but somehow home is never a holiday. Home feels as though I am always in my office or forever picking up dachshund poop.
We landed in Naples. Domino and I went in search of a bathroom. I passed a police man, who of course looked like Marcello Mastroianni, he stared and called out “Ciao bellissima”. Gosh I love Italy. The bathroom offered a kiddie loo, yes, a teeny weeny loo for small bottoms. Domino loves Italy too.
Twisting through Naples and flashing past Pompeii we reached the coast, on a road, high, high above the blue sea, that hooked and corkscrewed on the edge of nothing. Sleepily, as the sun set, we arrived in Positano. You park way above the town. And walk. Carrying your luggage on your back. Everything in Positano is reached by stairs, some of them as steep as ladders. My mother and her recently operated knee would not have survived.
Our seven year old hostess, David’s goddaughter, ran to greet us. Taking Domino by the hand the girls slipped their way down the steps to the Villa below.
We settled in for dinner, Prosecco, pasta and laughter. Close friends catching up. The table lazily stretching out across the terrace, under the grape arbors, with a view out over the sea, to the islands of the sirens from which those ladies sang so sweetly.
Our week was filled with similar times. Whether we were dining in first class hotels with Italian noblemen or eating sea urchin with our fingers under the shade of aging bamboo on a dusty beach there was an ease and a gentle pace about it.