Billionaires. Yachts. Fashion. La dolce vita. 

Anyone who follows this blog knows this isn’t our usual traveling style, assuming we could afford it, which we can’t. 

However, we’ve spent the past few days living among the beautiful people in Italy’s Amalfi Coast. We window-shopped lemon-themed gifts and colorful ceramics as we toured the scenic towns of Positano, Amalfi and Ravello along the rocky shoreline. We watched boats sail off to Capri. We sampled gelato and sipped limoncello. Outside our window in Sorrento as I write this, a musician is playing “That’s Amore” on his accordion. Really. 

The Amalfi Coast is unavoidably expensive but we’ve kept to our usual style, such as foregoing an expensive guided excursion to Pompeii by traveling there on our own by train, ordering admissions tickets online and listening to an excellent free Rick Steves audio tour. (It rained but we enjoyed it anyway.)

Last night in Sorrento, we assembled a delicious dinner with bread, cheese, peppers and other goodies from a local market. 

The Amalfi Coast is every bit as gorgeous as its reputation, and we’ve enjoyed our version of la dolce vita. However, we felt more at home in Naples, an hour away. 

Naples is Italy’s third largest city, after Rome and Milan, and we loved it. It’s loud and chaotic, with graffiti on the walls and laundry in the windows. Aging buildings, glorious churches, historic monuments and tempting pizzerias provide a backdrop for racing scooters and flirting teenagers. 

Shrines worship local football legend Diego Maradona along with the Virgin Mary, above.

There are plentiful street demonstrations, such as one we saw for Palestine, above, and strikes, like the one that nearly made us miss our train. 

Our favorite stop was the National Archaeological Museum, with its imposing sculptures and galleries filled with mosaics and other artifacts from the doomed city of Pompeii, whose ruins we visited later. We also rode a funicular up to Castel Sant’Elmo, admired its views of the city and Mount Vesuvius, then took a different funicular down to large plazas near the waterfront. We sampled the gelato there, too. 

Sumptuous Amalfi and vibrant Naples are both part of the Italian region of Campania, which is only one of many regions in this large and beautiful country. We’re heading next to Rome and Florence and look forward to continuing our new love affair with Italy. 

When the world seems to shine like you’ve had too much wine, or gelato, that’s amore.