The Surprise of Travel

One of pleasures of travel is surprise, particularly the surprise that rewards a seeming setback or hitch in plans. Our plan (recommended to us by guidebooks and the Tourist Information office) was to take the bus from Positano to Sorrento, take a short bus ride up from the dock to the train station, catch the Circumvisuviana local train to Naples, and from there transfer to a national train from Naples to Rome. But the morning of our trip, the receptionist at the hotel told us that there had been a rock slide and the road between Positano and Sorrento was closed. But she recommended we take a ferry (leaving Positano in an hour) to Salerno (stopping briefly in Amalfi), and then walk the short distance to the train station in Salerno and catch a direct train from there to Rome. And that turned out to be the way we should have gone from the outset. Of course, up until the day before, the ferries hadn’t been running along the Amalfi Coast because of rain, wind, and waves, though none of which had affected us much on shore. But this morning the weather was perfect: calm sea, blue sky, 70°. We pulled away from Positano to a marvelous view of the town, and the hour-plus ride was a constant trail of one sight after another along the rock-ribbed cliffs of the coast. I can’t imagine – no, I’m sure – that the bus ride, train ride from Positano to Naples couldn’t have touched the ferry to Salerno. The pleasure of surprise in travel.