Blue Skies Sunny Days Travel

Dazzling blue water, refreshing Aperol spritzes and cold limoncello, romantic dinners overlooking the twinkling lights along the cliffside coast and delicious food from hot cappucinos to fresh seafood to homemade pasta…there’s nothing like a vacation to the Amalfi Coast in Italy!

• About the Amalfi Coast
• Amalfi Coast Locations Included in this Post
• 9-Day Italy Amalfi Coast Itinerary
• Itinerary Planning Recommendations
• Hidden Gems
• Be Prepared

About the Amalfi Coast

Located 3.5-4 hours southeast of Rome or 1.5-2 hours from Naples (depending on your modes of transportation), Amalfi offers a several famous coastal towns to explore, all with their own charm and hidden gems. Amalfi is famous for it’s coastal cliffside towns, beautiful views, beach clubs & boat rides and lemons, and there’s no shortage of things to do or towns to visit!

Amalfi Locations Included in this Post

Here are the towns we visited on our recent trip:

• Rome
• Ravello
• Amalfi Town
• Positano
• Capri
• Paris

There are 13 official towns along the Amalfi Coast, not including Sorrento, which is just ouside the Amalfi Coast but has a similar feel and is a very accessible spot for travelers to this region (especially if they are visiting Naples or Pompeii).

9-Day Amalfi Coast Itinerary

• Day 1: Land in Rome; explore and spend the night
• Day 2: High-speed rail to Naples, taxi to Ravello, tour Villa Cimbrone and Villa Rufolo gardens, Dinner: Salvatore Ravello
• Day 3: Hike from Ravello to Amalfi Town, Amalfi Lemon Experience, afternoon in Amalfi and hike back to Ravello, Dinner: Ristorante Garden (Garden Ravello Bistro)
• Day 4: Taxi to Positano, Lunch: Saraceno d’Oro for pizza, beach club / explore, Dinner: Da Vincenzo (Michelin star!)
• Day 5: Explore / Archeological Museum, Lunch: Posides, Dinner: Trattoria La Tagliata
• Day 6: Blue Star Positano boat ride, Dinner: Buca di Bacco
• Day 7: Lucibello Positano Jet to Capri, explore and spend the night in Capri, Monte Solaro chairlift, Chiesa Monumentale di San Michele, Giardini di Augusto, Dinner: Il Geranio
• Day 8: SNAV Hydrofoil to Naples, fly from Naples home, with overnight layover in Paris, spend the night in Paris, see the Eiffel Tour at night
• Day 9: Croissant/coffee for breakfast, Boat Tour Bateaux Mouches, Lunch in Paris, Fly home

Itinerary Planning Recommendations

• Timing: Especially if you are planning to visit more than 1 town, consider staying 2-3 nights in each location so you don’t feel too rushed or overwhelmed by your travel schedule
• Transportation/logistics: There are lot of influencers talking about Amalfi Coast trips and making it look easy to go from town to town but it can be a tricky to go from place to place – just consider the logistics before booking your hotels (trains, buses, taxies and ferries could all be options!). For example, I highly recommend Ravello but getting there via public transportation would involve multiple bus transfers and several hours – the easiest option (though not the cheapest) for us was to book a taxi through the hotel to pick us up at the airport and take us directly to the hotel. Note: In my experience, the hotels we stayed had add-on services, like booking a taxi (or adding a bottle of wine to the room), and I found it easy to communicate with the concierge via email to ask questions and to book our taxis.
• Dining reservations: For dinner, I made reservations in advance – some places fill up fast and some places only open reservations a certain amount of time before you visit, so keep an eye on when reservations open. In my experience, lunch was easy to walk into restaurants without reservations.
• Walking: This area is not flat! When trying to gauge walking distance time from place to place, keep in mind you may be going up (or down) a huge cliffside / set of stairs.
• Capri: While beautiful, Capri was probably the least favorite of the towns we spent the night in. There is not a lot to do there that we were interested in and may be better suited to enjoy some of the beach clubs or if you love to shop / window-shop. It was worth seeing but I would have been okay with a day trip instead of spending the night.

Hidden Gems

• Amalfi Lemon Experience in Amalfi Town – Highly recommend this tour of a family-run lemon farm. We got to taste freshly picked lemons, learn about the growing process, see the farm in action and taste fresh limoncello!
• Staying in Ravello – Ravello is unique because it sits high up in the cliffs, which provides absolutely stunning views of the coastline below! The town gets much sleepier at nighttime when the day tourists leave, which gives the whole town a magical, sleepy feel. Ravello also had my favorite hotel of the trip – Hotel Parsifal; we were lucky to be upgraded to a room with a covered porch (because it was our honeymoon) and I enjoyed cappucinos there every morning and wine every night that we were there.
• Hike from Ravello to Amalfi Town and then back through an Italian forest – We were already planning to walk along the stone staircase path along the coast from Ravello down to Amalfi. Our conceirge at our Ravello hotel recommend an alternative path back up, which was through the back of Amalfi Town and up through an Italian forest. We ended up hiking 6 miles but overall the experience was so unique and a hike that I don’t think many people get to experience.
• Blue Star Positano Boat Tour – Absolutely lovely locally owned boat tour experience starting in Positano along the coast.
• Posides, a restaurant in Positano – Tiny little restaurant that we were able to walk in the day of to eat. Such delicious food and had a very local, off the beaten path feel to it, and we still remember “Grandma’s meatballs!”
• Long overnight layover in Paris – We had a whirlwind late evening arriving in Paris with a veiw of the Eiffel Tour sparkling at night from our hotel! Then in the morining, we enjoyed an absolutely delicious croissant breakfast (just get plain…trust me!) and one of my favorite lunches of all time (meat, cheese, salad and wine) at a local restaurant around the corner from our hotel. Totally worth it to slip Paris into this trip!

Be Prepared

• I booked all of our tours, train tickets, taxis and ferries before leaving the U.S. and printed out copies of our confirmations and any tickets so we had on hand, in case we didn’t have cell service
• Many places communicate via WhatsApp so I downloaded the app before we left the U.S.
• We ended up booking taxies for most of our between town transfers because we wanted to prioritize ease and cut down on the travel time it takes waiting for public transit, with the exception of Capri (where we needed to take a ferry)
• Don’t forget to make dinner reservations in advance!