Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Mourning a loss

Another gorgeous day! Spent the morning in Sorrento having a wonderful Italian breakfast, walking around town then caught the bus up the Amalfi coast, stopping in a quaint town along the way or so we thought. We sat on the right side of the bus waiting patiently for the beautiful coast to appear since we were heading south but it didn't appear on the right, we looked at each other, Are we on the wrong bus? We are generally good with mass transit, I read the schedule it said 11, at 1050 someone was outside the bus selling tickets so we bought ours and got on. 40 minutes later as we are supposed to be approaching our stop we see signs for Naples, the opposite direction that we want to go. We don't fret, it's beautiful out we have a day bus pass so we'll stop wherever the bus takes us. An hour into the ride we make a turn towards the mountains and follow signs for Amalfi, ok maybe we are on the right bus. We arrive in Amalfi and since it's after 12 we head straight for some gelato and then wonder around the pretty yet overly touristy town. This is the only town on the coast with room for big buses and two cruise ships are in port, oh and its Labor day so it's bustling.
The only sight in town is The Cathedral of Amalfi which holds the crypt of St. Andrew. In true tourist fashion they have turned it into a "museum" so they charge to get in but still hold mass (I assume free of charge). Michael was excited as he loves seeing crypts, I don't quite get what the big deal is but crypt or not it was beautiful. We took some pictures as we were leaving the Cathedral since it was high up and had offered great views (the Cathedral was about 50 steps up from the road). I went down a few steps to get a picture of Michael with some stain glass of St. Andrew in the background. As Michael started down the steps he fell...down a good 5-6 steps, everyone turned and there was a collective ***gasp*** from the 50 or so tourists sitting on the steps. I of course was doubled over laughing.
When we arrived we try to figure out what time the bus would depart since it clearly wasn't following the schedule I had but we were unsuccessful in the mass chaos so we headed down around 1600 to figure out what the situation was. We were told that rocks had fallen on the road between Sorrento and Positano (the town we planned on stopping at) and it was closed, hence the side trip towards Naples. We planned on stopping on the way because the return bus starts in Amalfi and if they are full they don't stop so you could be stranded. It started raining so the driver let us board, awesome because we got seats and the bus was full full full. It's almost a two hour ride and 20 or so people were standing. Then I see a storm brewing, all the workers are talking to an official looking man, I see someone kick the tire as if it's flat, I feel it coming I know what's going to happen, the driver gets on and speaks in Italian and people are running...we're changing buses!!! I'm sitting on the inside but my passive husband is basically useless in these situations so I pass him and take off towards the new bus, I catch an unprovoked elbow and a good shove from a completely crazy woman (tourist I assume) once I get on board I get us two seats. It's minutes later when Michael arrives. 10 minutes later I go in my bag looking for the camera, Michael do you have camera?, No it was in your pocket...no camera, we check all our pockets and my bag, nothing. It must be on the other bus. We didn't bring a computer on this trip so the last picture dump we did was in Hoi An and we've taken about 800 pictures since then plus all our video which takes too long to download so we left them on the memory card. We asked the driver when we got off hoping that he could call one of his 10 buddies that was at the bus station when we left but we forgot we're back in the western world where people don't actually go out of there way to help anyone. He gave us a phone number and told us to call in the morning. We asked the hotel to call right away but we couldn't read the drivers handwriting!!! We tracked him down since we knew the bus wasn't leaving for half an hour but he surely wasn't happy about being bothered twice, he didn't even look at us. Then we drowned our sorrows in gelato, saw a cheese making presentation, got to taste some cheese, bought some wine and planned the next few stops on our trip.
We are truly bummed about the camera but we're trying to remain positive. Luckily we have some pics from the iPhone and we just started Italy. Maybe we'll get lucky and someone will turn it in.

Pics:
- The Amalfi coast
- St. Andrew, there's a locket with a piece of the occipital bone of his skull
- Liquid crack aka cioccolato freddo
- the stair to the Cathedral that Michael fell down

No comments:

Post a Comment