Amalfi Coast

The Amalfi Coast road is one of the most beautiful and genuinely terrifying driving experiences in the world. The SS163 clings to the cliff face between Positano and Amalfi with a confidence that the road's width does not entirely justify — it is, in places, wide enough for exactly one and a half cars, which makes encounters with the SITA buses (the local public buses that serve the coast towns) a matter of careful negotiation and much gesticulation. I drove it myself from Naples in a hired Fiat 500 and arrived in Positano three years older than when I'd left.

I flew into Naples from London on easyJet — two hours, cheap, and Naples airport to the Amalfi Coast is about 60km, which takes anywhere from 90 minutes to three hours depending on the day. I spent one night in Naples first, which is the correct thing to do: pizza at Da Michele on Via Cesare Sersale (the Margherita, nothing else, this is not a menu, this is a doctrine), a walk through the Spaccanapoli, a gelato at Scaturchio in Piazza San Domenico Maggiore. Naples is chaotic and loud and magnificent and the pizza is, genuinely, the best in the world, and I say this as someone who has eaten a lot of pizza in a lot of countries.

Then the coast. I based myself in Positano for the first ten days at Hotel Buca di Bacco, a family-run hotel directly above the beach with a terrace restaurant overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. Positano is built vertically — the town climbs the cliff face in layers of pastel-coloured buildings connected by stepped pathways, and getting anywhere means either going uphill or downhill, usually steeply. By the end of the first week my legs were extraordinary. Every morning I walked down to the Spiaggia Grande, swam in the clear green water, lay on a hired sun lounger, and tried to read books that I kept putting down because the view was more interesting.

The Path of the Gods — the Sentiero degli Dei — I did on day three, a coastal walk from Bomerano down to Positano along a limestone ridge above the sea. Four hours, 8km, views of the coast from above that explained why everyone who has ever seen this coastline has written about it. I ate a packed lunch from the deli on the main street in Positano and sat on a rock overlooking Capri and felt, briefly, like a person who has their life entirely together.

Capri I visited by ferry — a 40-minute hydrofoil from Positano's port for €20. The Blue Grotto in the morning, a sea cave where the light enters through an underwater opening and fills the water with an electric blue glow, accessed by rowing boat, brief, expensive, absolutely worth it. Then lunch at Le Grotelle, a restaurant built into the rocks above the sea, grilled dentice and local wine, the smell of sunscreen and salt. The funicular back up to the town, Capri's famous Piazzetta for afternoon aperitivo, the ferry back as the sun was going west.

Ravello I visited for two days in week two — 350 metres above the coast, cool and quiet, the most elegant village in the region. Villa Rufolo's gardens in full summer bloom, the stage of the Ravello Festival set up over the precipice with the sea as backdrop — I was lucky enough to catch a concert of Beethoven played by a small chamber orchestra on a Tuesday evening with the sun going down over the Mediterranean. €30 for a ticket. I drank local wine at the bar above the stage and felt like everything was, at that precise moment, correct.

The Grotta dello Smeraldo — the Emerald Grotto near Conca dei Marini — is the Amalfi Coast's answer to Capri's Blue Grotto, accessible by boat, where the light underwater turns everything jade and ancient-looking. I went with a local fisherman who offered boat tours from the harbour at Amalfi and knew every cave and current on the coast.

I drove home via Naples, stayed a second night (more pizza, different restaurant, Pizzeria Gino Sorbillo this time, equally transformative), flew easyJet back to London. The SITA bus from Positano to Amalfi on my last morning — crammed with locals going to market, accordion player in the front row — remains one of the great local transport experiences of my travelling life.