... Just figured out why Italians live on the Amalfi Coast... it is not as you may imagine... no... it is not to enjoy the beautiful scenery... nor the quaint village life... nor the great climate... delicious food... mysterious history... it is not for any of these reasons. People live here to save entry fees on amusement park rides!
This morning, we caught the bus from our apartment in Montepertuso down to Positano and paid €1.70 for the ticket. Now I know for a fact that Montezuma's Revenge (the best selling roll-a-coaster ride at Knotsberry Farm Amusement Park) costs more than $10...more than five times the cost of the bus ticket... and the bus trip delivered twice the thrill. Italian kids would refuse to ride on Montezuma's Revenge... what would be the point? Their parents would save a fortune in entry fees.The bus was packed... for a moment I thought that I should offer my seat to one of the nice ladies standing in the aisle... but that thought disappeared as we raced around the first bend... if this bus is going over the 1,000 foot precipice, I wanted the luxury of a full view out the window.
Positano was a delight. Every available flower box and garden bed had Bougainvillia in full colour... deep purple... that lifted the appearance of the whole village. Jodie claims that Amalfi is the prettiest spot on earth... so we jumped aboard a ferry and checked it out. Nice... very nice... a toss up with Positano as to which is prettier. What was not pretty was our boarding the bus to exit Amalfi back to Positano. We had been warned of the Amalfi bus scrum... but thought the lady telling us must have been exaggerating... not a bit.
Here is how it works. There are a number of empty buses queued up... any one of which could be the next bus to Positano. Passengers enquire of the drivers which is the next bus to Positano... and are curtly told to wait until the sign is shown. The crowd of passengers grows... it becomes clear not all will fit into the next bus. At the scheduled departure time, the Positano sign is shown on a bus... the door is open... the crowd runs flat-out towards the door. There are no courtesies shown by passengers. It is a full blown rugby scrum. I was fortunate to remember some schoolboy scrummaging techniques... keep the shoulders level with the hips... straighten the knees to full extension... modulate the push rather than apply constant pressure. Fortunately, these techniques saw us on the bus... one last hurdle was to find a seat... I headed for the first vacancy... a big mistake. The lady in the seat in front was leaning over with her shoulder bag draped over the seat that had attracted my attention. I sat down... and in so doing, pushed her bag to one side. In a loud voice she lamented, "You touched my bag! You can't touch my bag." I apologised for touching her bag... she may have had friends in secret societies. It was interesting that she did not want to contest her right to reserve three seats for her friends... her sole defence was that I touched her bag. My friend who forewarned the terrors of the Amalfi scrum believed that the unsightly spectacle has been designed by the bus drivers... for their own amusement. If watching rugby union is amusing... then the bus drivers could be onto something. I would like to sell TV rights to the viewing of the Amalfi Scrum.
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