Italy 2010 - Day 7 - Positano
Our last full day in dreamland. Sorry, Positano. I had breakfast at my pensione for the first time, on a patio next to several window boxes full of basil, and had possibly the best caffe latte of the whole trip. Coffee in one jug, steamed milk in the other - I could make it exactly as strong as I wanted to. Bliss.
I met D and E for lunch (Cafe Positano again, and yes, octopus salad again - it was that good!) and then we grabbed beach wear and went down to the smaller of the two beaches, where we hired deck chairs and towels and settled in for an afternoon of hanging around on the beach. The water was perfect - warm but not too warm, clear and still and salty enough that even my brother the Brick could float in it. I spent at least an hour in there, swimming, floating, saying hello to the small fish that darted around my feet. And then...
Those of you who were following my blog back during Walkabout might remember the Savannah semi-skinny dipping story. Four of us in our underwear, swimming in bath-perfect waters under a full moon, and then the rude interruption in form of a jelly fish wrapping itself around my foot. Well, this time it was a hot afternoon in Italy, it was my brother and I in swimsuits and the jellyfish stung my just below my left knee, but yeah, same story. This time I was sensible, at least - I left the water, rinsed off under the shower provided and asked the nice people at the beach bar we'd rented the chairs from if they had anything for jellyfish stings. They did, of course, just for silly foreigners like me, and sprayed me with something like Stingose. The fire ant sensation abated, although it was blistering nicely, and I went back to my deck chair to spend the rest of the day encouraging my Canadian-pale skin to develop some colour in an ozone hole-free environment.
It was still stinging a bit that night at dinner (we'd slogged our way up some of Positano's notorious stairs, gone to our rooms and cleaned up), but I'd prepared for that with a damp towel waiting for me back in my fridge.
D and E, like me, had a favourite place to eat already, the Mediterranean, the seafood place they'd had dinner at the night before. We adjourned there for our last meal together: as they were leaving at 5:00 a.m. the next day, we were ensuring a good last dinner together. Another walk, this time to the bottom of the cliff where the bank machines were hiding, and then the local bus back up to the top, drinks in D and E's hotel room and then I left them to pack.
Me, I sat on my balcony for a while, watching the cumulative firewords display for Santa Maria.
With a cold wet towel on my leg.