I am officially half way through my summer vacation. Only six weeks (and that visa I'm still waiting for) lie between me and my year in Spain. I couldn't be more excited. I could however deal with being less nervous. I've found it hard to enjoy siestas since returning home from Europe without my mind racing with all of the more productive things I could be doing with my time:: Studying Spanish, earning money, taking advantage of the gym, packing up my stuff or reading up on life in Madrid. Even the seemingly minor detail of packing already has me confounded and overwhelmed. First of all, I'm going to be flying standby which means that if the airlines loses my luggage I am s.o.l. This is going to require some strategic packing of my carry on bag. Then is the ever present dilemma of what can actually be classified as "necessary." Yes, I can save money by packing only the essentials of my wardrobe and travel size bottles of
toiletries, but will I actually have money to afford to go out and buy a new bottle of Bumble & Bumble hair creme when my 3oz run out? The exchange rate is starting to look scary and my first euros wont start rolling in until the end of October.
Even if I can figure out which clothes I'm most likely to wear during the fall and winter months I am also faced with another dilemma:: I want to take a vacation before I start school in October.
OK yes, maybe it seems like going to Madrid should be seen as a vacation in itself, but I will be there for 9 months and I want to get plenty of side trips in. It is never too early to start, right? Plus, I love a challenge and how exciting to arrive in Madrid jet lagged and overwhelmed with the clock ticking on finding an apartment in the 6 days I've set aside before I board another plane and set off to vacation? There will be no time to worry if my Spanish is up to par with the demands of apartment hunting in Madrid.
The other reason for getting out of Spain so quickly lies in a town across the Mediterranean on the
Amalfi Coast of Italy::
Positano. You may have read my blog from a few weeks ago where I gushed about the fairy tale week that had unfolded for my friends and I as we'd basked in the sun and danced til dawn in this gem of an Italian city. I've had a terrible time trying to forget this village. This is partly due to international phone calls with a certain local, but even more because of the mysterious ways that
Positano keeps popping up in my life. You know when you hear about a new type of car or particular brand of clothing and suddenly it seems like everyone is wearing those shoes or driving that vehicle through the streets? That's
Positano for me.
It really started when we arrived at our hostel in Rome and I discovered that the photograph at the end of our hallway was of
none other than this coastal paradise. Once at home, the coincidences continued. In cleaning out my room at my parent's house I came across my calendar from 2008 which I'd saved because it had showcased breathtaking pictures of destinations throughout the world. I gasped as I pulled it out of my closet and got a look at the cover. For an entire year the photo gracing the cover of my calendar had been of
Positano. In talking with some members at the gym about my adventures through Europe I learned that one of them had been in
Positano only a week after my stay. Soon after I met a new friend whose sister had traveled to
Positano a few years ago where she'd met a local guy who'd later visited her in Seattle and proposed to her. The coincidences continued...I received an email from Rick
Steves notifying me that his special on the
Amalfi Coast and
Positano would be on Ch 9 that week. Then just the other day I watched "Under the Tuscan Sun" with my family only to discover (could it really be??) that my favorite small town disco was in the background. Yes, that is right, Music on the Rocks had a moment of fame in this chick flick. Unfortunately in this story the girl falls in love in
Positano only to return to visit him months later and discovers he has a girlfriend. However, she also managed to make the
roundtrip trek from
Cortona to
Positano in only one day and according to the
TrenItalia website the shortest journey from
Cortona to
Sorrento (not to mention the hour bus ride from
Sorrento to
Positano) would take almost 7 hours. Then take into account the "timeliness" of transportation in Italy and you've got yourself a whole mess of an unrealistic scenario. Hopefully my attempts to prove Frances
Mayes wrong will be more successful than the mission I undertook to disprove Elizabeth Gilbert (see previous blog).
Then just yesterday I came across this article by John Steinbeck published in "
Harpers Bazaar" in 1953, which supposedly introduced the rest of the world to this tiny town on the
Amalfi Coast:
http://www.krisandsusanna.com/Travel/Italy/Positano/steinbeck%27s_positano.htm. I laughed at the
picture he painted of the men wandering the streets shoes in hand. No local wears shoes by choice. My sister mentioned the other day that she believes that girls don't actually fall for guys who remind them of their parents, but actually of their siblings. Considering that my own sister desperately tried to make it to
kindergarten without anything on her feet, she may have a good theory here. And although
Positano has certainly seen an influx of tourists since the 1950's, I don't imagine it will face the same fate destined for other small towns in Italy, such as
Cinque Terre, which faces losing all of it's Italian authenticity. Despite the town bus and the numerous taxis lining the hillside, there is still no way to reach the beach without an
inevitable climb up some stairs.
Time will tell if I actually decide I'm in need of an Italian vacation or up for the adventure of crashing an Italian birthday party. Spending my first two weeks in Europe acclimating to the time zone change, leisurely searching for an apartment and hunting down favored nighttime haunts of the locals in Madrid could certainly be just as exciting. However, I wouldn't mind spending the last days of September enjoying a belated birthday present to myself. Soaking up the last summer rays on the
Mediterranean, swimming through the salty clear blue sea, enjoying local
limoncello and the very best
caprese sandwich, utilizing my meager Italian skills (pretty much limited to "
spiaggia," "
medusa," "
buon giorno" and some creative attempts to twist Spanish phrases). And lately I have been practicing "That's
Amore" on my harmonica. What better place to play that just south of
ol'
Napoli?
