What a glorious morning!! The sun is shining brightly, low on the horizon having just appeared on this crisp last day of November. We are down on the waterfront/bus depot early, hoping to get a prime seat on the bus that will ply the Amalfi Coast road back to Salerno. There are a number of buses parked at the station. It is 7:30am, 30 minutes before the scheduled departure time. We notice a couple drivers hanging out in a bus talking. They open the door as we approach. Upon inquiry they tell us the bus we want will be parked right in front of them in a few minutes. True to form, it arrives in about ten minutes. In the meantime we mill around the square admiring the morning, the position of the town, the cool air, the rocky mountains above and contemplate how to capture the morning with our cameras. The morning sun casts a golden glow across everything, the faces of the buildings, the cliffs, the statues in the square. It is that magical time of the morning. After a few feeble attempts we give up. There is no way to capture this moment in time, bottle it and take it with us. We will just have to trust our aging brains to remember the look, taste, sound and feel of the morning.
We board the bus while our driver is still back conversing with his friends on the bus behind. We scan our tickets and sit in our preferred position, front row, passengers side with a good view forward and out to sea. About eight other people also board. A few minutes before eight our driver returns and we leave the lot precisely at eight.
The ride does not disappoint. The sun is glinting off the Mediterranean Sea as we twist and turn our way along this improbable coastal road. We pick up passengers often and the bus fills up although we don’t exceed capacity and everyone has a seat. From the lack of suitcases it is obvious we are surrounded by locals.
We arrive in Salerno about 9:30am, 3 hours before our scheduled bus back to Rome. This will give us time to explore this city a bit, something we didn’t have time for on our way through last time. First stop, a pastry shop with cushy chairs to spend some time researching our next moves in Rome and which sites to visit that we have not visited on previous trips. Second stop, a survey of the bathroom at the train station. Has it changed since we were here three days ago? Is it still a euro? Still clean and tidy?
We walk the car free main street of town, marveling at how many people are out this early on a Sunday morning. Sally likes to window shop. We make many stops to gawk at merchandise. I stay outside most shops, my oversized backpack makes me a liability in a shop, plus I have little interest in shopping.
At the far end of the car free zone I direct us to the waterfront and we begin to stroll back toward our starting point. There is a wide walking path and it is loaded with strollers this morning, people of every sort, young, old, in strollers, in wheelchairs, joggers, couples, groups of men. At one point we sit on a bench and just watch the parade or in Italian, the passiggiate.
About noon we make our way to the bus stop. Not seeing a FlixBus parked there we move 50 yards to a waterfront bench, review our financial record keeping for the trip for ten minutes and then back to the bus stop where a Flexbus is parked and waiting. After a ten minutes wait the driver scans the tickets on our phone and we board. We ask the driver if she can unlock the bathroom and she angrily snaps at us in broken Italian/English to wait until we are underway. We don’t dare to ask why. About 30 minutes into the trip we try to use the restroom again, but the door won’t open. Sally walks to the front of the bus to ask if she will unlock the door. The angry woman behind the wheel spews some venom, yet the door still won’t budge. Another passenger, a guy in his 20’s tries the door with no success. He yells at the driver, in Italian, that the door won’t open. I decide maybe the door is stuck, not locked, brace myself and yank quite vigorously. It doesn’t break, but it doesn’t open either. I reposition and try again, this time with little effort, it opens. Is she just messing with us?
The ride to Rome is uneventful, with only a few honks of the horn. We make a stop in Naples as we did before, then off to Tiburtina in Rome. Once there we stop at a kiosk and buy 8 metro tickets, figuring that will cover us while in Rome.
We ride the Metro to Termini station. From here we gps our way to our new apartment for the next few days at Via Agostino Depretis 65. We arrive on the correct street but it takes us a few minutes to find number 65, the addresses are high up on the building and hard to see, partially obscured by the weathering of the rock building. Once there, we have no way of entering. We WhatsApp the landlord and he buzzes us in, explains he will arrive in 10 minutes and tells us to go to the 6th floor in the elevator where he buzzes us into the apartment.
This spacious apartment/home has been completely remodeled into 5 rental bedrooms with a large kitchen/dining/common room. We wait for his arrival at the kitchen table. We hear him open the lock on the front door and he appears in the kitchen. He spends a few minutes explaining the operation of the place. He finds it surprising that we want to use the kitchen and says it is only available to a group that rents the whole floor. But, he decides to make an exception for us since we based renting the place on the fact that it did have a kitchen.
Our apartment is spacious, with two bedrooms, one with a queen bed and one with two singles. It also has a large bathroom. It has all been beautifully redone. We asked about it before he left. It was his wife’s grandfathers place, handed down to her. They ripped out the interior, exposed the timber supported ceiling and brick walls and then carefully crafted an aesthetically pleasing space highlighting the timbers and brick with light. Very comfortable, too.
We chilled for an hour, Sally taking a shower and washing her hair. Now it was time to go shop for food and find dinner out. We were both in the mood for Chinese food and searching we found one just a block away. We bought vegetables for tomorrow night’s dinner at the grocery just down the street, brought them back to the apartment, then navigated to the restaurant. We knew we were in a good place as soon as we walked in the door; every table but one was fully occupied and all with people of Asian decent.
We had a nice meal for only €20, then plotted out the rest of our evening. We hadn’t been to the Spanish Steps yet. We mapped out our route and headed off. It was only a mile away in a straight line on the street our apartment was on.
It is wonderful to walk the streets of Rome after dark. For the most part they are well lit, every shop is open (even on a Sunday night in November) and there are people everywhere. The only frustration is we can’t walk side by side because there are so many people and the sidewalks at times are quite narrow or are partially covered with cars parked up on the curb.
Once at the Spanish Steps, and feeling energetic, we decided to walk to Trevi Fountain. It was somewhat in the direction back to our apartment, the final leg would complete an isosceles triangle, the base, somewhat shorter than the two legs, leading back to our room.
We enjoyed the relaxed mood of the waters at Trevi and then started back to our lodgings. I used Apple Maps to plot our course home, but I think I didn’t select a walking route and instead plotted a driving route. Predictable, it was much longer and convoluted as it negotiated one way streets. About halfway along the route we were remarking at how long it was. The base of our triangle looked like a swollen, pregnant belly, adding quite a bit of distance. I replotted our route, selecting a walking route. The belly shrank in size, but the distance was still farther than expected. What should have been about 0.8 miles from Trevi to our room was still 0.9 miles away, even after walking for the previous 20 minutes. I scrutinized the route and found it was indeed the shortest route home. Where had the previous iteration taken us?
Another half an hour, sometimes on deserted or sparsely populated streets saw us home at last. We had not taped Sally’s feet before leaving on our “short” walk she was fearful some blisters were forming. But, it was a fun walk and a great reintroduction to this amazing city. Plus, after all day on buses and subways it was nice to get some distance under our feet.
Salerno’s harbor side walk
Sally in the led elevator to our Sixth floor apartment
Driving the Amalfi Coast road
