Positano By Bus

Positano is magnificent.

Literally magnificent. Since it is on the lower reaches of a mountain. And the only way to get there is by sea, air or torturous road. Since I have neither helicopter nor jetfoil the choice of Positano by bus was made for me. All the better to behold its majesty.

When my train pulled into Sorrento I thought getting to Positano would be more of same. It wasn't.

It started with asking a man near the information kiosk where to find the bus stop, having already bought my ticket. This lead to a great opportunity for him to try to arrange for me to hire a car. A car is so much nicer and easier he said. "Why you take the bus?" he said scrunching up his shoulders, his eyebrows and every other visible part capable of being scrunched. "You will get a better ride this way" he said. Until I said "Cuanto?" Only 60 euros. To be clear, this was almost a 600% markup on the price of the bus ticket. But when I said "The bus is cheaper." He shrugged and said "Well come with other people" and started looking around for other people to make it a group outing. I kept smiling until he yielded and pointed to the bus stop which was just across the street. No harm meant.

Coming as I was from London where the culture of queuing has been spliced onto my DNA I assessed the direction of the line and joined it. I soon realised this wasn't that kind of queue. This was more the get yourself in position when the bus comes to get on first and Devil take the hindmost version. And here is what I love about being an international citizen with basic Jamaican wiring. I was able to override London queue command and call on my first two decades of Spanish Town/Portmore/Kingston bus taking. This means elbows out and hold your ground. For by this point two things were clear, the Positano buses were not frequent and I was getting on the next one.

Leaving aside the gorier details I was soon Positano bound. And there are two ways of viewing the almost hour long ride the the town. All views are either the best you have ever seen or the worst. These perspectives differ depending entirely on your feelings about height, mortality and cliff diving magnificence. I found myself coming to terms with myself on all three and it seems I am not the moderate I pretend to be. Heights terrify me and I am not ready to die. Being on that large bus as it navigates the narrow roads on its descent into Positano was scary.

And in a bus mixed with tourists and Italians it seemed from the tight, tense silence I wasn't the only one. There was a reverential silence on these buses ( I had to take it again when I went to Pompeii and to leave on the last day)  that I have never heard on public transportation anywhere. Conversation when it commences is hushed and just a way to escape looking down the cliff face to death.Your inner voice questions the floss like barriers on the side of the road I like to call the Naked Fear. But one other tourist drily pointed out that you don't see wrecks or other evidence of accidents on these roads and I concede while comforting myself that the driver is in no sooner hurry to meet his Maker than I.

In the end it is magnificent. It is majestic. The town honey combed into the rock face. Looking up and seeing the top of the mountain wreathed in clouds. Positano is breathtaking but I am going to have to find another way to get there. Possibly sedated.

Real Hope in Anzio

I woke at 5:30 to finish packing my bags and to catch the first bus heading North out of Positano to Sorrento. I then caught a train from Sorrento to Naples, only 34 stops and then another ( only 35 minutes late) onward to Rome, then a five minute dash across the platform at Termini to get the hourly train to Anzio. Why would I do this you ask? A friend had introduced me by email to her friend, a Jamaican living in Anzio. I did this for a possibility.

Seven hours after I woke up I was giving her the two kisses European style of greeting and feeling the possibility of friendship in an instant. Twenty-four hours later that possibility was made real.

It was made real by the warmth and generosity of her family. Her Italian husband who asked whether I had eaten and rustled up the freshest, tastiest tuna salad I had ever had. Olive oil, olives, sweet pomadorinos and a balsamic glaze that I could not rest until I had found and secured for myself two bottles for my already over burdened suitcase.

It was made real by his mother making a seafood pasta, from shrimp, calamari, mussels in a simple white sauce made of olive oil, achovies and parsley that saw me making that primi my secondi twice over. Washed down with ice cold rose that went down too easy for someone taking a flight in less than three hours. When I said I didn't need another mozzarella ball since I had already had two before lunch, she only smiled her beautiful but insistent smile then sliced off a few more knots. And God help me and my cholesterol but I ate them all. They were heavenly, the milk oozing onto my tongue as I chewed. And then another glass of wine. I could have become delirious. In fact I am sure I was since I can't recall now whether I licked the plate, to my mind the ultimate compliment to a chef, to others a source of effrontery. Oh well.

It was made real by their daughter, a beauty destined to have the world fall at her feet. Who captivates you with deep brown eyes and a lips pursed into a permanent pout. But who stalks along Nero's Beach as if instinctively knowing that long dead dictator would be hard pressed to withstand her strength of personality. All this at the ripe old age of 17 months.

And here was water so beautiful, so inviting and surprisingly so warm I went in and submerged myself in the sea for the first time in two years.

It was made real by Hope, a fellow Jamaican with an Italian complex. We sat on that verandah in Anzio and shared stories and laughter as if we had been sitting together in a twenty year friendship on a verandah in Jamaica. The journies that have taken us both here are different but intersect at the usual crossroads of pain, dreams, love and destiny. I sipped from the last of her stock of perfectly chilled, sufficiently strong homemade limoncello and raised a mental toast to our common friend who made this possible and to Hope herself who shared her family and provided another chapter for my book.

When we heard a car roar by with dancehall artist Beenie Man's "Rum & Red Bull" blaring from the radio we laughed but I knew my Jamaican and Italian worlds were truly collapsed. For me there is only one world. And when I left the Lanzoni's I also learned that Italians have a similar phrase to the Jamaican "Soon Come".