Trip to Amalfi and Assisi report part 1

We just returned home from our last minute trip to Italy. My husband had work in Assisi so we decided to go to the Amalfi Coast first. It was one of the most memorable trips I have taken, thanks in part to the recommendations from many of you on this site. The weather was perfect, no rain. We found Assisi had the most tourists and crowds but it was easy to find quieter and less crowded areas. We did almost the entire trip with public transportation, we did hire a driver to get us from Naples to the house in Furore and back to Naples again. We used Pasquale from Your Italian Driver and found him to be very helpful and engaging.
The highlight of our trip in the AC was staying in the small town of Furore. When I booked the Airbnb many of the reviews stated it was a great place but a little out of the way unless you had a car to get to the cities. It was a 1km walk to the center of town to take the bus for our white knuckle ride down into Amalfi. For us, this was not a disadvantage but a plus. The town only has 800 people and each day we would walk to the center of town, saying hello to the residents as we passed, taking in the beautiful olive and lemon trees that were ready for harvest, arugula and rosemary bushes growing on the sides of the road and the beauty of the coast below us. Once we got into town, we had espresso from the little shop where we bought our bus ticket and listened to the locals outside the shop conversing in Italian, and even though we had no idea what they were discussing it was magical. One day we missed the bus (weekend schedule) and when we asked about a taxi, a customer in the store offered to drive us down to Amalfi.

One of our recommendations was to have dinner at Serafina Agriturismo. It was a short walk from where we staying and when we called to make a reservation, they told us dinner was at 8. I asked about gluten free and vegetarian options….no problem. Once we got to the farm, the chef Rosa, her father Dominick and the rest of the family immediately took us into the kitchen and showed us the olives, the lemons, and the tomatoes that they just picked and were using in the recipes for the dinner that evening. This was a family that had a true passion for food and service. After 7 courses (no menu) that included homemade red and white wine, homemade lemon sorbetto, homemade limonchello and finocchietto, we were told it was 30 Euros a person. We had to give them more.

On our 2nd day, after a long day in Positano, after we had taken the bus back to Furore, my husband went into the wine bar (Bianca Zita) next to the tobacco store to get a glass of wine. They weren’t open but they let him in anyway and gave him a complimentary glass of wine. They told him to come back in the evening for dinner (fish and wine), but when my husband said it would be too long of walk in the dark from our house, they said no problem. They would come and pick us up and bring us home after dinner, and they did. There was a lot of walking and I think we needed a few more days to see everything we had planned but overall it was a great experience thanks to the people of the town. winery. Again met wonderful people.

The food we ate during our stay in Furore was delicious, not only because of how it was prepared, but because of who it was connected to, people who truly love what they do, despite how hard it must be, who have such pride and passion in what they do and their desire to share it with outsiders and yet make us feel like part of the family.