Escape from Grey Gardens

The video is a condensed version of the Amalfi Coast excursion from Benvenuto Limos that was my prize in the last Slow Trav contest. Mille grazie!

[nb: new version fixes misspelling of Saverio's name--fixed 8/6/07]

We took the trip on July 16 (only a week ago!). Our limo driver, Saverio, picked us up near Villa Monica just outside of Sorrento (down the hill since the van was too big to make Pasquale's gate) and took us on a day trip down the Amalfi coast to Positano, Amalfi, and Ravello, with stops along the way (notably at the Green Grotto, where we had one of the more strangely goofy touristic experiences of our whole trip). Gary and our friends Jim and Michelle are in the video; I'm not since, um, I had the camera. Lunch was at Cumpa' Cosimo in Ravello, a town in which I'd like to spend some more time. It was really good: most of us had the specialty di casa, seven homemade pastas with different sauces (the pesto was from heaven). I have to say this is the kind of experience we never would have had, had it not been for the prize, since a €500 car trip is really far out of our budget. I suppose otherwise we would have rented a car to do the drive, or more likely taken one of the giant blue buses. (Saverio, by the way, told us those are soon to be banned from the road; they will have smaller more sensible buses.) But it was really nice not to have to do that, especially after Saverio's joke about how the average tourist gets a nice brown tan after a few days in Sorrento, then gets on a big blue bus and gets off it pale and trembling as a ghost. It was a huge treat to be driven by an expert in absolute, air-conditioned comfort. Thanks, SlowTrav and Benvenuto!

Saverio, by the way, was a mighty intriguing fellow. I can't help feeling that maybe I'm not supposed to be so interested in the tourism industry workers (kind of like snooping backstage) but I can't seem to help it. He wore his suit, tie, and hair pomade all day and I never once saw him even begin to break a sweat, even when the rest of us were gasping climbing back to the car lot from Positano. He had many opinions about the driving skills (or lack thereof) of the drivers who shared the road with us that day. I'd say he was completely entitled to them. I'm nervous on much better and less, um, scenic roads, but his confidence made the trip very easy. He had a--how to put this--somewhat old-fashioned view of sexual politics (Michelle founded the Women and Gender Studies Program at LSU, so there was a little polite frisson of something going on there). He was very proud of having driven Sophia Loren around the coast, and of his family's homemade mozzarella cheese, and mostly, of his daughter. He spends only the high season on the Amalfi Coast and the rest of the year driving for the well-heeled in the US. From what he said, many of the tourism industry workers work in the states part of the year, since otherwise they can't make a living.

Of course after we heard the boatman in the Green Grotto (Charon?) we had to keep saying "Looky looky it's a miracle!" at anything vaguely interesting (or not) for the rest of our journey. We're still doing that. Looky, looky.