Fun, Positano style

Never say we people in Positano don’t know how to have fun. We do! We have great fun! Our Positano hosts know how to show us a good time, and then–before you can say Volare!–we know how to have it!

Fun, Positano style, starts with a free ride. A bus from the restaurant picks you up at your corner, or at your hotel if you happen to have one, and then wends its way up impossible hills on streets so narrow it takes a five-point turn to get around the corner, to pretty nearly the very top of the mountain on whose slopes Positano is laddered.

The views of Positano way below us are breathtaking.

Positano from above

Fun continues at La Tagliata restaurant when the waiter asks if we’d like white wine? Red? Water?

We are quite literally on top of the world, and we’re in a good mood. Yes, we say. Yes. All three of those things. And we are in fact plied with bottles we lose count of, house-made white wine and red wine. And water.

And the food! We are served endless courses of bountiful variety of food. More than enough for everyone. But still it keeps coming.

Somewhere around dessert time, the band comes out, and they begin singing the most tacky, the most schmaltzy, your-grandmother-would-have-loved-this kind of well-known Italian songs imaginable. But there is no groaning allowed here. This is the *fun* program!

Percussion instruments are handed out to every table, and everyone is encouraged to participate. And someone from every table inevitably does.

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But you’re not off the hook if you don’t want to stand up and play an instrument. You can still clap! This is the Positano Fun Restaurant we’re talking about here! So if you won’t even clap, we have just the thing for you. Handkerchiefs! Stand up, folks, and wave those handkerchiefs! That’s Amore!

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If some of us inhibited New Englanders require instruction, it is provided. And it works!

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But sooner or later, all good things must come to an end. The bus awaits to take us home. There are seven of us and only four seats left, but no problem! We sit in each other’s laps and make the acquaintance of our new best friends on the bus. Of course this leads to the ever-popular refrains of Volare and That’s Amore, and one by one as each group leaves the bus we sing each other Arrivederci.

I still have Volare stuck in my head. Can someone help me out a little here?

 

Positano, my home town

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Okay, actually Positano is not my home town. I live in Newton, Massachusetts, USA. But for a week this year–May 3 through May 10–it became the home town of my husband Dan and me, our children Margot, Adam, and Clair, and our friends Steve and Susie, when we rented a gorgeous villa with the view you see above.

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Our last full day in Positano after a busy week going one place or another, we spent at home. For visualization purposes, I have outline this home in red in the picture above. The corner room with the Juliet balcony is our bedroom. The next two windows each belong to a separate bedroom, and the fourth bedroom, with a private balcony is around the corner. Below, a broad terrace opens up from the living and dining areas. This terrace has an area for sunbathing and a covered area with a table that’s great for breakfast, lunch, and snacks while enjoying the sea breezes. Below the terrace sweeps an extensive garden, and below that, vistas of the sea, where we can watch the ferries going up and down the coast and out to Capri.

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This villa, like many in Positano, can be accessed only on foot, along a narrow pedestrian street punctuated with stairways.

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Finally, on our last day here, I walked down the 375 stairs (okay, that’s probably an exaggeration) to our local beach, the smaller of Positano’s two beaches. There’s one very attractive hotel and restaurant, and the opportunity to rent beach chairs and umbrellas.

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Myself, I chose to follow the path that from here winds around the cliffs to the larger beach at the town center. 

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From here, I walked farther north, to the far end of Positano’s main commercial tourist area, where the views looking back at the town were–like everything about Positano–charming.

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