Ravello, caught between earth and sky

Elliott took this video of the scene as well as his two lovely ladies:

We couldn’t wait to see the town so we set off on a short walk to shop for some fruit. Lena enjoyed a fresh apricot (she’ll eat five a day) on the steps of the church in the middle of town.

Later that morning we all walked back down to the beach below our apartment for surf and sunshine:

The individual lidos are demarcated by the different colored umbrellas.  If you choose to go to a lido, you will pay between 3-5 euro for a day’s use of an umbrella and a couple of lounge chairs.  As always, we chose to pay nothing and laid our towels down wherever we could find space.

Twice!  Sorta.

Finally, after Lena’s afternoon nap, we hopped into our car and drove about 20 minutes up into the hills to visit the magnificent town of Ravello.  To my surprise, Ravello was my favorite of all the Amalfi Coast towns we visited, although it’s far from the coast.  The beauty of the mellowed-by-time buildings, the peace in the many blooming gardens, the spectacular views down green hills to the coastline, the clinks of cutlery on crystal in the piazza-side cafes, the bursts of color from pottery shops, and the overall understated charm of the whole town completely drew me in.

Elliott and I put Lena to bed and left Jess in charge, and then dressed up a little and headed into town on a date!  We’d both been craving a meal of fine seafood, and Elliott had researched for an hour earlier that day to determine an appropriate restaurant.  He settled upon Ristorante Marina Grande, an establishment that prides itself upon upholding sustainable fishing practices and serving locally caught seafood and locally grown food.  It was a perfect choice.

Elliott perused a wine menu that was almost as big as he was.  To begin, we chose the tasting of seven appetizers, which included seven vastly different types of seafood.  For a main course I chose the homemade rosemary gnocchi with prawns and oranges (there were a lot of flavors goin’ on in that one… almost too much for a pregnant woman to handle) and Elliott chose a dish bursting with seafood: linguine twisted around shrimp, calamari, and several kinds of shellfish.

That was our last day on the Amalfi Coast, at least on this trip.  We must come back!  We drove down the coast the next day and enjoyed our first stay at an agriturismo that night.  Tomorrow I’ll have some photos of Lena with pigs and horses and kittens (oh my!).