Travel Day to Praiano

Woke with a start at 5AM, sure that I have emailed Melanie the wrong place to stay.  Knowing there was nothing that could be done about it at 5, I went back to bed.  Woke at 6 and packed and headed for wifi... I was right.  But, I hadn't heard back from her so I just sent her another email.

We left Manarola on time and made our way with bags to the La Spezia station.  We bought our tickets through to Salerno - but the La Spezia to Rome 2nd class  tickets were standing room only so we had to buy 1st class tickets to get seats.  When we got on the train, it was indeed an overly packed train.  So much for the Info station guy who told Mike it was a waste to order tickets in advance, sigh.

This train was late, like all trains we have taken so far in Italy, and we missed our connection in Rome.  Fortunately, we JUST made the next train (by 2 minutes) and the conductor put us in the front car.  We called Melanie from the train, the apartment we wanted could not be booked, but she offered us another and we snapped it up.

We arrived in Salerno and stood in line for the bus for almost an hour.  It was a crowded bus and I was glad to have a seat, but when we arrived in Amalfi we didn't know the last bus until 11 left right after our Salerno bus arrived.  We had to pay a taxi driver 50E to take us - a big money mistake.  sigh.

We met the caretaker at a small grocer when we arrived.  She walked us down to the house. There were a lot of stairs for our bags to navigate, but we made it ok.  The house is 3 stories on the cliff and our space is on the bottom floor.  In the dark, with an almost full moon, you can just make out the water.  I cannot WAIT to see this place in the morning!