We “did” Amalfi today, inasmuch as anyone can absorb a town in one day. Most people come to Amalfi on a bus, stay perhaps long enough to tour the main church, stroll the streets, buy some limoncello (and boy-o-boy is it tasty!), perhaps go as far as the paper museum, maybe get a bite for lunch, then head back down to the bus parking area.
We came by car, and configured our visit differently.
We arrived in a lineup of buses, so that part is similar.
We did stroll the streets, just a bit.
We did get a simple (early) lunch in a white-walled patio, very pleasant.
Then we headed for a walking trail that heads up the valley, climbing along the east wall, up up up.
Amalfi is on a little bit of land at the mouth of a small river that whooshes downhill. We followed the river upstream. In the city, it’s underground, running through a big pipe with vents up into the street that emit a tremendous water-whooshing noise above the paving stones.
Outside the town, it’s less confined, but the valley bears the ruins of factory after factory, most just some standing walls, with bare window-holes gaping.
Amalfi was famous for being an early production center for paper. Since we skipped the museum, I don’t know what the fiber was that the paper was made of, but internet information suggests cotton.
So I ask: where was the cotton grown?
Anyway, we had a grand time hiking in the dappled shade in the forest above Amalfi, all the way until there’s a fence across the trail, protecting forest resources, the sign said—and looking down onto the lemon groves in the valley below the trail when we were closer to town.