Italy

"Leave me and save yourself. I mean it." I had made the last 20 steps only through willpower, my mind ignoring my protesting legs. I didn't know how I'd ever make it to the top. "I was about to tell you that," wheezed my husband from the step above me, sliding his backpack off and collapsing on top of it. We knew Ravello was built into the side of a hill; it's stunning Amalfi Coast views could be had no other way. We'd been in Italy for a week now and though we were definitely strangers in a strange land, we'd done fine navigating Rome on foot, using a guidebook and all 4 Italian words we knew. We assumed we would do the same in Ravello, having the added benefit of a car and GPS. Surely Garmin knew what it was talking about when it said the B&B we booked was at the top of a 3 mile high stone staircase. Before starting our climb we even called the B&B owner, who spoke about 4 English words, just to be sure. "Via Casanova, si, si, very easy!" Yet we seemed to be the only souls in Ravello stupid enough to think this never ending stairmaster was a road to anywhere. We had been climbing for 30 minutes, completely alone with no end in sight. Knowing our B&B owner could no more help us than our insistent and obviously wrong GPS, we had reached the point where our bodies were giving out, the sun was setting and one of us was getting a touch dramatic. "Ciao signorina, dove stai andando?" The voice came from a lemon tree behind the iron gate opposite where I'd chosen to collapse. I looked at my husband. "Now I'm serious. I'm hallucinating. That tree just spoke to me." "Ah, Americans! You are Americans, yes?" A small boy swung open the gate, a huge smile on his face. "Yes, we're Americans. Do you live there?" I pointed at the gate. "Si! But where are you going? You, ah...you sleep in Ravello today?" "Yes. We're trying to get to Via Casanova and-" "Via Casanova! Oh, no, signoria," he laughed. "We all know, in Ravello, this is not the way. You have car, yes?" "Yes," I replied, while my husband pulled out a map. The boy placed a finger on it and traced a circle around the entire town. "You must go around to get through, yes? Very easy!" We realized then that we had to follow a road around the town to the top in order to drive down to Via Casanova. "But where does this staircase go?" I asked. "It is the hard way, yes?" he replied, laughing. Yes, we agreed, and thanked the boy, never even getting his name in our haste to escape the hard way.