We have arrived in the most beautiful place on earth. I have never seen anything like it.
When we arrived at our villa at lunchtime it was unbelievably hot and our lovely host Costantino greeted us on the street and organised for our luggage to be carried up the stairs (which are substantial) to our villa. The villa just blew us all away – two big double bedrooms and a huge room for the kids – all with ensuites – a living area upstairs for the kids, verandas on three levels all with amazing views over the water and a huge kitchen. An old olive tree is growing through the three levels of verandas, our views are framed by bougainvillea and directly below us is a lemon tree grove. Our hosts had put some bottles of wine and plate of fresh figs in the fridge and gave us a bottle of their olive oil that they have pressed from their olive trees.
It was unbelievably hot and humid – like Queensland in summer – so we retired to the pool area shared with other guests and had a salad and paninis by the pool. My cabrese salad was the best I had ever tasted because the tomatoes were spectacular – also grown by our hosts. By then the heat was unbearable so we walked down the stairs to the private beach of the property.
The rocks and pebbles were almost unbearable to walk on but the water was beautiful – warm, salty and, in my mind at least, shark free! We swam for a couple of hours before walking up about a million stairs to our villa. Ok, that is a slight exaggeration but I estimate there would be 200 stairs between the beach and the pool, about 100 between the pool and the road, and because I have counted them, 155 stairs between the road and our villa. John and Joanne, who are very fit, bound up them, but I need the occasional rest!
We had no food in the house so we walked into Positano for dinner and found a little pizza place. After a lovely dinner walked down to the bottom of the hill, sat on the wharf and admired the view. I wish I had a picture to show you how amazingly beautiful this place is at night, but my iPhone camera just can’t do it justice. The walk home was a killer – SO MANY steps!!! I collapsed into bed and fell asleep immediately.
Chris and I ended up sleeping in the next morning and woke up to an empty house – Joanne and John had taken the kids to breakfast. It was mid morning and already so hot, so I didn’t bother with a shower (what’s the point when I knew I’d be dripping with sweat in 5 minutes) and walked down into Positano to find them. We found them coming back up the hill, and the kids carried on for home while J and J came with us to join us for a second coffee. We had planned a special treat for lunch and what a treat it was.
At 12 o’clock we walked down to the private beach where a little fishing boat picked us up and drove us to a tiny cove around the corner where there is a little fish restaurant on the beach.
It’s a very laid back place, everyone dines in their swimming costumes, but the food is unbelievably excellent. We were very, very hot and so as soon as we got off the boat we swam for an hour in that delicious ocean. Then we retired to our table under a canopy and had the most amazing lunch – tuna carpaccio, mozzarella barbecued on lemon leaves, fresh mussels, clam spaghetti and eggplant parmigiana, washed down with peach wine. We sat there for hours while the kids played in the ocean right in front of us. The restaurant was full of tourists from Australia, South Africa and America and soon we had made friends with other diners. This may have been one of the most blissful days of my life. Around 5.00pm we decided to take the boat back into Positano central to shop for dinner, buy some souvenirs and generally meander around. The day finished with an excellent dinner cooked by John sitting on the veranda watching the sun set on the boats in the water in front of us. Heaven!!