We anchored off the town of Amalfi and then tendered into town to pick up our tour, which consisted of another boat ride, this one to Positano, a tour there, a boat ride back to Amalfi and a tour of Amalfi. The villas and hotels reaching up the Amalfi coastline are truly a sight to behold.
The boat ride took about ½ hour and if we thought Amalfi was impressive, Positano blew us away. Of course, this is the town used as the backdrop for the movie Under the Tuscan Sun and it is “photo op” after “photo op”. There is a lot more colour in the houses here than Amalfi, but then Amalfi has a good deal more history.
After touring ourselves about in Positano, we headed back to Amalfi where we had an extensive tour of the cathedral and its museum. After that, we did some shopping for typical Amalfi items like ceramics, cottons and linen paper. Another item they produce here is Limoncello – lemon liqueur. They grow the largest lemons I have ever seen and apparently they are relatively seedless
We caught the 1:30 tender back to the boat and managed to make the end of lunch time – phew, didn’t miss a meal. The rest of the day was spent looking back at the town of Amalfi – not shabby!
I haven’t talked a lot about our dining, other than it’s been superb. Tonight’s dinner in the Grand Dining Room is worth some mention. We started with a consommé for me and crab appetizer for Dawn. Following that, Dawn had the consommé and I had a Boston lettuce salad with gorgonzola and candied pecans. Main course was the piece de resistance of the meal where Dawn had a seafood medley with one each of a shrimp, mussel, scallop, octopus and clam. I had ostrich. You may ask, does it taste like chicken? I will answer that it tastes more like venison and was done medium with a nice finished glaze. For dessert Dawn had a strawberry almond cake and I had a molten chocolate thing that was right up my alley. I should mention that the wine with dinner was a chef recommendation of a Uruguay viognier. I have to say it was outstanding and our sommelier, who had not yet had it, tried a bit of ours in her tastevin and agreed. Dining on this ship is definitely an experience!
My next post won’t be until Athens, since we’re at sea from tonight until Saturday. I’m being optimistic about this since it appears that the satellite internet in the Mediterranean is less than wonderful.
For entertainment this evening we had a magician, who baffled the audience – an interesting job being a magician on a cruise ship.
Tonight we lose another hour of time as we pass through the Straights of Messina and on towards Greece.
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