Today was an absolutely spectacular and fun day. 4 boats were scheduled to take all of us on a very slow, but gorgeous ride to Amalfi—fabled town on the hills of the Mediterranean. We were happy to learn that there is a permanent moratorium on any future new buildings; replacements of existing buildings are allowed, but no brand new construction. This is so very smart—and certainly helps home values!
Some of the choir wore bathing suits to really get the most of the day, and they had the opportunity to swim in the Mediterranean and get sunburned. Life is full of trade-offs. The rest simply enjoyed a rare opportunity to soak in the beauty.
Every town has a church; also each town has the remains of a tower that dates to Roman times. Every now and then you’ll see a tower ruin that was renovated into becoming a building now in use as a store or home.
There is a church perched atop a mountain that one must really, really want to attend. It can only be reached by foot, and it looks like quite the hike—though anyone who lived in these towns must be incredibly fit as every day would require a lot of hill climbing! Services at this church are held once a month. Perhaps that’s as often as a congregation is willing to make the climb.
Near most villages you can see rows of planted crops. The next image shows a close-up of an area of lemons, which is the main crop of the Amalfi coast. The name of the lemons sounds quite a bit like Meyer lemons that we have in the USA, which are the tastiest we have. My guess is that an Italian immigrant brought them to the USA at some point. Lemons are incorporated into many drinks and foods, and it adds a lot of freshness to the food.
We took our turn to enter a little grotto, which had a beauty of its own.
There are many small towns between Salerno where we stayed two nights, and Amalfi, which gives the coast its name. Amalfi is the real tourist draw, and really is beautiful beyond what I can describe.
We returned to Salerno much more quickly than our meandering ride to Amalfi; we had a quick turnaround to clean up for a reception with the choirs who participated in the choral festival at which we performed last night. Mingling and getting to know each other was quickly facilitated by Angie Whiting, who speaks all forms of dance. She had everyone who could move involved in line dancing in no time at all, and all had a great time. If you ever need an activity to hasten mingling, call Angie.
Once the dancing was finished, we all broke into groups to find some dinner (another very late one for our American stomachs) and make our way back to the hotel for a good night’s sleep.