Positano Mistake

Sometimes making a mistake can be a good thing. On our first afternoon in Positano, we walked from our hotel, in the west part of the town, down the stair/street to Fornillo Beach, across a path over the bend in the coast, past a 13^th century lookout fort, and into the main part of Positano. We walked through the narrow streets, the piazzas, shops, restaurants. In the late afternoon, we decided to catch the little red bus that winds through the only street in the town that allows traffic back to the hotel. The main stop is at the Piazza dei Mulini (the closest motor vehicles can get to the lower town and beach), and we bought our tickets at a tobacco shop across from the stop and only had a short wait for the next bus. What we didn’t know is that there are two red bus lines. One, the Interno Positano route, stays in the town, looping through both the east and west parts. The other route, Termini, goes along the main Amalfi Coast road for a short way, and then turns up and climbs up and up and up to the small town of Nocelle, 400 feet above Positano. Our mistake was getting on the latter bus. The road is one-lane, two-directions, winding up the mountain. But while it’s even narrower in most places than the main Amalfi Coast road (hard as that is to believe), there isn’t much traffic, so the anxiety is replaced by the awe of the ever-new vistas that open up around each turn, high above Positano and looking out across the sea. This was the good fortune of our mistake – the reward of a dizzying scenic ride, one of the highlights of our trip. If only more mistakes could be so rewarding.