Italy

One More Half Day in Positano

For those of you who followed through our crazy 3 weeks trip through snowy Switzerland, storybook-like French town/village of Colmar and Eguisheim, tulip blooming Netherland, desert trekking in Sahara, colorful island of Procida, and southern Italy Matera to the Amalfi Coast, we finally came to the last installment of our trip 🙁 Don’t be sad, more trip reports coming; we took two more trips after this so I have to catch up with photo editing and writing!

Anyways, remember we bought the watermelon from Alberobello? Have you thought what we did with it? Well…it traveled with us to Positano and we finally have a chance to cut it open lol! The room didn’t have a fridge that fit the watermelon so what we ended up doing is dipping it into iced cold water LOL! Serving time, it wasn’t seedless though and not in season so it wasn’t that sweet.

We enjoyed the view from our balcony with some watermelon haha!

Then, we headed down for breakfast, they have freshly squeezed orange juice (Sokunna said it was sour).

Yummy yummy yummy! What should I eat?

After our full breakfast, we were charged up to hike those stairs again but ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch, our legs were killing! It was the most pain I ever experienced on my legs, OMG especially walking down the stairs. Whenever we walked down a step, we walked like a 90-year-old, no kidding! It took us more than a week to fully recovered, it was that bad!

We didn’t need to get back to Rome to return our rental car until 6 pm so we planned to leave by 1 pm in case of traffic. Technically, we had half a day in Positano so we took full advantage of that! We checked out after breakfast to store our luggage so we can explore the village, the hotel staff were super friendly! They were so friendly that after Morocco, Sokunna and I had a doubt if they are truly friendly or faked it for a tip. I apologized for questioning their friendliness, what was I thinking? There was no doubt that Italians are the friendliest people of all the 30 countries we visited!

The early morning light wasn’t the best to photograph Positano, it looked the most colorful during noon and early afternoon!

The light was so harsh so not as colorful 🙁

Although we were still full, those cakes looked so good!

A beautiful painting on the wall:

There were cats all over the place, so lucky to be cats in Positano!

The other side of Positano:

Those killing stairs after the 1,000 steps we did the day before OUCH!

This is the restaurant we had dinner the night before 😀

Right near the restaurant is Nana, the highly rated shop that customized handmade leather sandals. Positano besides ceramics is known for leather too! Being the “flip-flop/sandal queen”, I couldn’t resist to customized my own pair of leather sandals haha! Sokunna bought two pairs and I got a pair so we asked for discount hehe. The owner gave us a little discount and we had to return in an hour to pick them up. It was really not 100% customized like we expected it to be but rather than pick the size, the design, the color, and he’ll make it on the spot. The simple string design cost €35!

There were so many beautiful designs featured Swarovski crystals <3 There was one that was sea themed with a seahorse in Swarovski crystals but that cost over €100! I do not have any super formal events to go to so figured it was a waste to buy and not a chance to wear it. I definitely recommend if you are a future bride, check out Nana!

That one hour, we walked around to explore and take photos. We headed to the post office nearby where Jason mailed a postcard to his friend.

A church up there, how can we get to it?

More stairs……

We walked up and checked out the church on top despite our pain!

The church was simple, it was worth the stairs to check it out!

We sandals were done and a photo with the owner as a memory 🙂 We might be back in a few years to retake the same photo like the watermelon, who knows right? hahaha!

We were super happy with our new pair of sandals in this cute bag too haha!

Sokunna was excited to dump her yucky sandals immediately LOL! No more fake leather, we finally got a real pair!

More shops but very expensive!

It was 11 am and we had to have lunch before leaving at 1 pm for our journey to Rome. Unfortunately many restaurants open for lunch at noon urg….we found one that opened but not serving lunch until 11:30 at Hotel l’Ancora.

The location offered a great view but it was shameful that they covered with glass so the photos looked like this instead through a layer of glass:

It was expensive and the food wasn’t as great either! We missed the mussels we had the night before 🙁

We only ordered 2 pasta dishes to share among three of us and glad we made that decision as the food wasn’t worth the price! I even forgot to mark down the price, sorry!

I used the restroom which is located inside the hotel and the stairway offered great views too!

We finished lunch at 12:30 pm, walked back to the hotel and the staff already loaded our luggage into our car for us, their service was superb!

Our drive back to Rome was smooth and we were there early so we dropped off our luggage at the hotel – Best Western Plus Hotel Universo first and then returning the car near the main train station. It was a short walk from the train station to the hotel. Our room, first time, we had a two story room wow!

The largest jacuzzi we had in our normal hotel room!

This futuristic looking staircase to our bed upstairs!

The room cost $282.40 for the night plus city tax, it was good, clean room and excellent location. We stayed near the main train station because our flight was at 8:55 AM so we took the express train directly to the airport in the early morning. For dinner, we were craving for rice so bad so we searched for Chinese restaurant within walking distance. We found Tin House and it was a hidden gem! Their menu is a book-thick with Szechuan, Japanese, and Korean cuisine. We focused on Szechuan cuisine! It was so hard to make up our mind because of the large menu item…so many dishes that we never heard in Szechuan restaurants at home so we want to try out everything!!!

Pork belly in garlic and spicy oil; this dish inspired Jason to try to make it at home!

“Water-boiled” beef, it was the right amount of spicy and mala numbing!

Cold noodle “dan dan mein”

Stir-fried pork belly (Sokunna was craving for pork belly):

Beef stew with potatoes since Sokunna couldn’t take too spicy food so we ordered a non-spicy dish for her.

She saw the other table ordered snails so we tried it out too…it was weird….

The whole fish in spicy sauce, this was yummy!

Look at the amount of food we ordered LOL!

All these food for less than €70!!!!! The prices were super cheap that prompted us to “try” out dishes hahaha, we were so full!

But we two ladies left room for gelato!!! We noticed a gelato place on our way so we stopped there after dinner – Gelateria S.M.Maggiore.

They have melon flavored too!!

However, our expectations were too high that we thought we could have the yummy melon gelato again but it was no match to the gelato we had in Alberobello!

This is the conclusion of our crazy 3 weeks trip across 2 continents and 5 countries!

Switzerland – expensive, reminded me of New Zealand but with cute houses along the lakes. My most memorable events in Switzerland were the amazing scenery at Grindelwald and the delicious authentic Szechuan cuisine at Jialu National, a restaurant in a hotel.

Colmar and Eguisheim, France – colorful fairytale town/village, it was definitely worth a detour trip.

Netherlands – Keukenhof and the tulip fields, another bucket list checked. The cycling around the tulip fields was super fun except for the weather.

Morocco – our camel ride into the Sahara and stargazing on top of a sand dune was a once in a lifetime experience that we’ll never forget! Chefchaouen was like a dream, I love the blue colored town but too bad those annoying kids made it less enjoyable.

Italy – one of our top favorite countries. We visited Procida, Matera, Castelmezzano, shortstop at Alberobello, and Positano. It made us realized how much more to explore in Italy! We already decided to have an Italian roadtrip next year, we really enjoyed the food, the atmosphere, the friendliness of the locals, and the charming villages!

6 thoughts on “One More Half Day in Positano

  1. I really enjoyed reading this:). You sure did a lot in those 3 weeks! I was wondering how long you spent in Morocco? And you did your own thing? As in not apart of a tour group? I think I would have to do a tour as think it would be a lot different going & navigating your way around compared to say a European country. Also if I may ask, could you give an indication on how much this entire trip cost you? Thank you so much & I cannot wait to see where you go next 🙂 Jess

    1. I did a week in Morocco and yes I arranged everything on our own. I don’t like to be in big tour groups because we need time to take the photos and I hated being rushed by others. Also, there might be other people in the group that has different interest than you thus could be annoying. I have the same feeling as you that it’ll be less hassle and safe to be in a tour in Morocco so what I did is I booked each separately and on “private tours” (not expensive as you think). This gives me the flexibility to pick my own hotels and itinerary. Morocco is not expensive at all. This is how I did it, always have a tour guide with us:
      1. Day 1 Marrakesh airport transfer booked from the hotel.
      2. Day 2 Marrakesh “private” walking tour with a local guide who picked us up at the hotel, booked via the hotel. The whole day is like 700 dirhams.
      3. Day 3 Our 3 days 2 nights desert tour from Marrakesh to Fez, our driver/guide picked us up at the hotel. The private desert tour was around 300 euros each for 3 of us.
      4. Day 4 desert tour
      5. Day 5 desert tour
      6. Day 6 End of desert tour drop us off at the Fez square, our driver/guide called the hotel to send someone out to pick us up.
      7. Day 7 Fez “private” walking tour with a local guide who picked us up at the hotel, booked via the hotel. The whole day is 400 dirhams.
      8. Day 8 Taxi to the bus station, took the bus to Chefchaouen. We walk around Chefchaouen ourselves without a guide because this is a very safe town.
      9. Day 9 Explore Chefchaouen on our own, in the evening, we arranged a transfer to Tangier.
      10. Day 10 Tangier fly out

      As you can see every city we visited has a local tour guide except for Chefchaouen and the point to point transfer arranged. In a sense, “private tour” and not too expensive. The price for the local guide for a day is fixed rate so you don’t need to worry about bargaining or getting rip off. Enjoy and feel free to let me know any questions you have.

  2. I really have enjoyed following this trip 😀 You travelled to all my top bucket list destinations! I couldn’t believe it :))). Could I please ask you what your budget was for this 3 week holiday? I have saved 10K to go but not sure if it will be enough. Kind regards, Sienna

    1. Hi Sienna, see my latest post for the cost of our trip and details 🙂 Your saving should be enough! I hope you have a great trip, feel free to contact me for any question you may have, happy planning!

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