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Monday, December 25, 2023

Reviewing Our Itineraries for Fun and Profit

 

Here’s how a simple routine enables us to save on our travel budget.

Once we’ve made a hotel reservation at the lowest rate we can find, Kathy returns to the hotel’s website (yes, we always book directly rather than through third parties) several times before our departure to see if prices have dropped.

At this point in late-December 2023 we’ve already booked our hotels through May 2024 for upcoming stays in Cyprus, Florida, Ecuador, Mexico, Budapest, Australia, some airport hotels, and several European cities for our March trip with grandson Jace. Naturally, we've booked flights and rail travel in Europe as well.

Sometimes we find the rates have risen dramatically, making us feel wise for having booked when we did. Sometimes they remain the same. Sometimes it’s as simple as changing to a non-cancellable rate close enough to the stay that we don’t feel we’re tempting fate. The best is when they’ve dropped in price, occasionally dramatically.

Just yesterday, for example, we saved more than USD $400 by spotting a much cheaper rate at the hotel in Larnaca, Cyprus, where we’re staying for five nights in early January.  We also saved a bit on a few individual nights at other destinations. That was well worth the 30 minutes or so Kathy spent at her computer!

We also check our booked airfares, train travel, and rental car reservations. Alaska, like most other airlines, has eliminated change fees. Long gone are the days of having to stay over Saturday night to snag an “excursion fare.” Our Alaska status allows us to cancel flights outright and to receive either a refund or a credit applied to our Alaska account’s “wallet.” It’s also worth checking for changes in flight times (or even flight cancellations!).  We’ve learned through experience that airlines don’t always warn customers of changes or cancellations. 

Another reason to book flights early is that you’re almost guaranteed a schedule change. When the time change is “significant” according to the airline’s own rules, this gives us the opportunity to change to any flight we want within 24 hours of the original flight. We’ve often booked a cheaper flight and managed to change to a more desirable one as a result.

Finally, when we’re juggling a lot of different itineraries, we sometimes find we’ve closed one off without booking every hotel or train or tour. We try to add a reminder to our calendar for priorities, e.g. booking Eiffel Tower tickets as soon as they open for sale on the date we want, but it’s easy to miss and it’s useful for us to see if there are any gaps to fill.

In short, we’ve found it always worth our time to review our trip itineraries, and learned to our delight that it can also be profitable. It's fun when it is. Occasionally, however, we've had to deal with some unintended consequences after making a change. This is one of those times.

We had booked our March Condor flights to and from Europe with Jace on miles (we flyer geeks refer to them as "points" ). We noticed recently that the cash price for Condor's SEA-FRA Business Class had dropped to the point that it was cost-effective for the two of us to cancel our award flights and pay cash, while leaving Jace's flight on points. That would take us over the MVP Gold 100K finish line for 2025.

It's now possible to book Condor flights, an Alaska partner, on the Alaska website. We couldn't make this change ourselves and enlisted the assistance of an Alaska phone agent on our elite line. We'll call him Ernie. 

Ernie was friendly, competent, and couldn't have been more helpful. Unfortunately, he made a little mistake when booking the changes. On the outbound flight, he forgot to separate Jace's flight from ours when cancelling our outbound award flights and cancelled all three.  Ernie was extremely apologetic over the fact that, while we now have two paid seats in Business, the best he could snag for Jace was a seat back in Premium Economy. 

As a consequence, Brian will trade seats with Jace and sit a little further back in the plane, while Kathy and Jace sit together in Business Class for the overnight flight from Seattle to Frankfurt. We're now checking daily to see if an award Business Class seat opens up. Ernie did manage to book the return flight successfully and we're all seated in Business Class.

Would we complain to Alaska? Of course not. Ernie was trying to help us, and he made a simple human error. He called us back to apologize. If we'd completely lost a seat on the plane for Jace, that would have been different. This isn't the end of the world. We're still all departing and arriving at the same time on the same plane. And if we get lucky, a Business Class award seat may open up between now and March.

 

 

Tuesday, December 12, 2023

Oh, the Places We've Gone


 “You're off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting,
So... get on your way!”
Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go! 

We've completed our travels for this year, so we'll revisit a post we used to update annually, in which we documented for our own amusement the number of countries we've visited. For example, here's what we wrote back in December 2017.

We once ran into a couple on a cruise who were strangely proud of having visited 130 "countries" and realized we never wanted to be "those people." It's more common (and a more difficult question) to be asked about our favorite region, country, or city. Still, people do ask us "How Many?" from time to time.

For sovereign countries we base our list on this website, which lists 195 sovereign states in the world. As of December 2023, we've visited 81 of them:

Antigua
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Bahamas
Barbados
Belgium
Belize
Brazil
Cambodia
Canada
Cape Verde
Chile
China
Colombia
Costa Rica
Croatia
Czech Republic
Denmark
Dominica 
Dominican Republic
Egypt
Estonia
Fiji
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Guatemala
Holy See (Vatican City)
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia (February 2023)
Ireland
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Korea (North) - DMZ tour only
Korea (South)
Lesotho
Liechtenstein
Luxembourg
Malaysia
Maldives
Malta
Mexico
Monaco
Montenegro (November 2023)
Morocco
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Panama

Peru
Poland
Portugal
Qatar
Russia
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Senegal (plane refueling at Dakar - did not formally enter)
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
South Africa
Spain
Sri Lanka (Ceylon)
Swaziland
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey

United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States
Uruguay
Vietnam
Zimbabwe 
 
Based on the Travelers' Century Club, which currently lists a generous total of 330 countries and territories, we've visited a total of 109 as of December 2023. We got credit for two countries with Indonesia, because we landed at Jakarta on the island of Java, and flew onward to the island of Bali. Wanna count 'em all?

Pacific Ocean (6/40)
Australia
Fiji Islands
French Polynesia (Tahiti,Tuamotu, Austral, Gambier)
Hawaiian Islands
New Zealand
Tasmania

North America (4/6)
Alaska
Canada
Mexico
U.S. (continental)

Central America (5/7)
Belize (British Honduras)
Costa Rica
Guatemala
Honduras
Panama
 
South America (6/14)
Argentina
Brazil
Chile
Colombia
Peru
Uruguay
 
Caribbean (16/31)
Antigua & Deps. (Barbuda, Redonda)
Bahamas
Barbados
Cayman Islands
Dominica (January 2023)
Dominican Republic
Jamaica
Leeward Islands, French (St. Martin)
Puerto Rico
St. Barts
St. Kitts
St. Lucia
St. Maarten (formerly Netherlands Antilles)
Turks and Caicos Islands
Virgin Islands, U.S. (St. Croix, St. John, St. Thomas)
Virgin Islands, British (Tortola, etc.)
 
Atlantic Ocean (6/14)
Azores Islands
Bermuda
Canary Islands
Cape Verde Islands
Iceland
Madeira
 
Europe and Mediterranean (40/68)
Austria
Belgium
Balearic Islands (Mallorca, Minorca)
Corsica
Croatia
Czech Republic
Denmark
England
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Gibraltar
Greece
Greek Aegean Islands (Patmos)
Greek Ionian Islands (Corfu, etc.)
Hungary
Ireland (Eire)
Ireland, Northern (Ulster)
Italy
Liechtenstein 
Luxembourg
Malta
Monaco
Montenegro (November 2023)
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Russia
Sicily

Scotland
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Turkey in Europe (Istanbul)
Vatican City
Wales
 
Antarctica (0/7)
None

Africa (7/55)
Egypt in Africa
Lesotho
Morocco
Senegal (plane refueling at Dakar)
South Africa
Swaziland
Zimbabwe
 
Middle East (2/21)
Qatar 
United Arab Emirates
 
Indian Ocean (1/15)
The Maldives 
 
 
Asia (16/52) 
Cambodia 
China, People's Rep. 
Hong Kong 
India 
Indonesia (Java) February 2023
Japan 
Korea, North (DMZ tour only) 
Korea, South 
Lesser Sunda Islands (Bali, Timor, Indonesia) February 2023
Malaysia 
Singapore 
Sri Lanka (Ceylon)  
Taiwan 
Thailand 
Turkey in Asia 
Vietnam
 
As we've often written, who's counting? Well, we are, but only once a year or less. The US and Canadian immigration officers who check our passports as part of our Nexus and Global Entry renewal interviews appear both impressed and amused by our list.

Our travels in 2023 (along with an IHG credit card and reciprocal status between United Airlines and Marriott Hotels) have enabled us to re-qualify for Alaska Airlines MVP Gold 100K for 2024. We're also "Lifetime" Gold on United Airlines after flying a million miles on UA. 
 
Our ongoing hotel status includes Hilton Diamond (approaching "lifetime" status), Marriott Gold, and IHG Platinum, so we have the basic tools to travel in some style.

Besides, we get jet lag even when we stay home, so why not travel?

Wednesday, December 6, 2023

Alaska Buys Hawaiian: What's in It for Us?

We've already been asked what we think about Alaska's proposed purchase of Hawaiian. The Alaska Forum in FlyerTalk has a thread going that's already gathered well over 300 comments:

Alaska Nears Deal to Acquire Hawaiian Airlines

Hawaiian is an airline with a non-contiguous (50th) state name, loyal customer base, and a generally good reputation. Alaska is an airline with a  non-contiguous (49th) state name, loyal customer base, and a generally good reputation. We've never flown HA ourselves, but we have a vaguely positive impression of it, based on what we've read over the years.

HA has fallen on recent hard times, with the Covid-era restrictions apparently being a significant factor in its financial problems.

Gary Leff claims the proposed deal is neutral to good for customers, but a bad idea for Alaska, which is offering to buy Hawaiian's shares at a huge bonus.

The Cranky Flier, on the other hand, argues non-crankily that the purchase is a good deal for both airlines

It's also worth reading Alaska's statement

The agreed-upon purchase plan apparently is to combine operations as feasible, while maintaining separate branding as Alaska and Hawaiian respectively. 

We'll leave it to others with more knowledge to argue the relative merits of the transaction. In trying to figure whether it's good or bad for us, we see that Alaska says it intends to combine the mileage programs of the two airlines. 

We are fly-on-our-own-dime travelers who moved from United after they merged with Continental and changed or removed a number of previously promised "lifetime" benefits, while moving to a "spend" requirement to earn status.

We therefore read with particular interest one line in the HawaiianMiles mileage program: "Earn miles on how far you fly, not how much you spend..." That's been a keystone of the AS program, much to our benefit.

Combining programs with Alaska would remove the major drawbacks in Hawaiian's program that are highlighted in the US News & World Report's 8th-place rating (Alaska ranks in 1st place): 

  •  Basic membership does not offer many advantages
  • Elite status cannot be earned by booking flights with partner airlines

  • Elite membership benefits are only available on Hawaiian Airlines flights

Oddly enough to us, this poll makes no mention of the lack of a spend requirement for either program. 

We're hoping we can count on the combined mileage programs to maintain this key feature shared by both programs. That's because we earn our miles the old-fashioned way by BIS (Butt in Seat) flying. We've been burned before, so this is a hope rather than a prediction.

Time will tell.


Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Aussie Border Bust: The $2K Kiwi Chicken Sandwich

Here's a cautionary tale presented as a public service.

A 77-year-old woman flying from New Zealand to Australia to house-sit for a friend claimed to have forgotten she had in her bag a sealed chicken sandwich bought but not opened at the Christchurch Airport before her departure.

The Australian border authorities at Brisbane Airport found it, confiscated it, and fined her the equivalent of about US $2,000 on the spot.

What catches our attention is the fact that the hapless traveler is about our age, and claimed in her own defense to be forgetful. Yes, we can relate to that.

We have four reasons for never lying when crossing an international border.  

First, we consider lying to be immoral.

Second, the risks (fines, placement on a watchlist, loss of Global Entry) outweigh any benefits.

Third, we're poor liars. We've met a number of skillful liars in our days as educators, and we don't measure up in the fibbing department.

We've already forgotten the fourth reason. 

In any event, forewarned is hopefully forearmed. 

You can read more about the travails of New Zealander June Armstrong in the New York Post or in Canada's National Post.


Half the Fun?

 

Is it planning travel that's half the fun, or is it getting there that's half the fun? Maybe it's some of each.

We're not surprised by a Dutch study that indicates travelers are happier when anticipating travel, and happier when they're actually traveling. However, they're ordinarily no happier when their trip has concluded. We've reached similar conclusions based on our own experience. That's why we're always planning at least one future trip (and usually several trips). We also spend a fair (inordinate?) amount of time looking for travel bargains. We've been doing just that during the past couple of weeks since returning from Europe.

A lost and confused tourist supposedly asked a New Yorker, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" The one-word reply was "Practice!" When others ask us "Where do you find your travel bargains?", our one-word reply is "Research!" We've found no single magic source, but we check a variety of sources regularly. 

As we've previously mentioned, our bodies tell us to settle for nothing less than Business Class on foreign flights longer than five hours, so FlyerTalk's Mileage Run Forum isn't as useful to us as it once was. We just signed up for Jack's Flight Club with a three-month trial membership. While they're flagging some great bargains in economy class to a variety of destinations, they don't offer much in the way of premium cabins, so it's doubtful we'll maintain our membership.

We do monitor FlyerTalk's Premium Fare Deals Forum regularly. We also utilize Google Flights Search, using a variety of originating airports, always including Seattle and Vancouver. We have absolutely no hesitation in adding repositioning flights to an itinerary if it's worthwhile. If we see a great deal that starts or ends in, say, New York, we'll fly there with points or cash. 

For example, in 2019 a bargain one-way Business Class fare became available on Singapore Airlines for what was then the world's longest flight, SIN-EWR (Singapore to Newark). The catch was that to use the bargain fare (somewhere around $1,200 in our recollection) it was necessary to start in Ahmedabad, India, AMD-SIN

We flew from Bangkok to Jaipur, where we enjoyed a most enjoyable cooking class, before flying to Ahmedabad and boarding our flight to SIN. After a short stay in a Changi Airport transit hotel, we flew 17 pleasant hours on SQ 22 We repositioned on both ends, enjoyed a great time in India, experienced the world's longest flight, earned a lot of miles in the process, and found our way home from EWR. Well worth it!

Using the same strategy, if we were planning to catch a cruise in Lisbon (LIS), we'd look for a cheap Business Class flight to just about anywhere in Europe, knowing we can find a cheap flight or train trip from there to Lisbon. As it happens, we'll be looking for one of those in Fall 2024.

We also monitor various travel blogs (check out our list of favorite links). Kathy in particular makes use of ITA Software, and we find Expert Flyer useful enough to pay for an annual subscription.

Finally, airline websites occasionally reveal bargains. We look at those, especially Alaska, from time to time.

Our travel plans for the first several months of 2024 look like this:

Early January: Larnaca Cyprus  

Mid-January: Fort Myers Florida  

Late January: Quito Ecuador  

Mid-February: Cancun Mexico  

Late February: Budapest Hungary  

Late March: Grandson’s Europe Tour

Late May: Cairns Australia for Oz Fest

Our March trip with grandson Jace and our May trip to Australia are currently booked on points (Alaska Airlines miles). In the unlikely event a cash price becomes competitive, we'll snap it up. Our paid round trip Business Class flights to Cyprus, Ecuador, and Hungary cost us about $2,200 each. It's an investment from which we receive a lot of benefits.

We're delighted with our upcoming itinerary. It will include our first visits to Ecuador and Cyprus (we just booked the Cyprus trip last night after spotting it out of YVR on Google flights), a return to Budapest after quite a few years, a traditional "grand tour" of Europe with our eighth grandchild, and our 18th trip to Australia to attend our 16th Oz Fest.

By our calculations, that's over 75,000 miles earned on Alaska for our paid flights. It looks like a lot of fun planning and getting there.

Friday, November 17, 2023

Successful Senior Travel: Geezers in Motion

 

 As we near the end of 2023, we two wanderers look back on yet another active year of travel.

Alaska Airlines will credit us with close to 110,000 miles flown on it and its partners by the end of the year. We have therefore re-qualified for Alaska’s top-tier status, MVP Gold 100K. We’re also closing in on lifetime  Hilton Diamond status.

We started the year with a Caribbean cruise and ended it with a Mediterranean cruise, both on Oceania’s Riviera, a cruise line for foodies. We’ve achieved Platinum status on Oceania, which provides us with some pleasing and profitable perks.

In 2023 we spent time in France, London, Bali, Indonesia (a new country for us), and Australia.  We also overnighted in Iceland twice and stopped in a variety of ports of various countries during our two cruises. We traveled domestically, although not as much as we would have liked. One of our favorite trips this year was one of the shortest in distance, to southern Colorado with some of our family members to visit the remote Tres Piedras Ranch in which Kathy’s family has an interest.

We’ve been traveling fairly intensively since 2001, the year we took early retirement from public education. Back then we were in our mid-50s (here we are in Egypt in 2007), and now we’re… just a little older.  In the course of flying over 1.6 million miles on United and its partners, another quarter of a million miles on Alaska and its partners, and visiting more than 75 sovereign countries (fun fact: the country we’ve visited with the lowest per-capita birthrate is Vatican City – think about it), we like to consider ourselves a little wiser too.

As Brian has been known to say (Kathy: “incessantly”), we suffer from jet lag even if we stay home, so why not travel? We’ll continue to explore the world as long as we can, with a few added considerations.

First, we derive both pleasure and peace of mind by planning our trips in great detail. We use the TripIt website and app to outline every detail of our itinerary, including not only the transportation and accommodation, but the information required, for example, to get from the airport to the hotel.

Along with that, we utilize a variety of free and paid websites and travel blogs to find the most cost-effective flights and accommodation.  We check back regularly on our flight and accommodation rates, and have saved a lot of money over the years by rebooking right up to the day of travel. For anyone who wants further details, we’re just an email away for subscribers, or a query in the comments section.

Kathy uses a variety of websites to book European train travel, including foreign language sites, and we try to book far enough ahead that we ordinarily travel in the modestly superior first or business class carriages for a cheaper price than a second-class ticket purchased closer to the travel date.

We continue to use a packing list that we check religiously before departing home. By the way, we continue to carry lots of paper with us, i.e. printouts of reservations, tickets, etc., rather than simply  relying on what we store on our phone. We've been able to point out discrepancies in rates to more than one hotel front desk employee when checking out.

As the years go by, we also strive to take into account our physical reserves. For example, earlier this week, we flew one evening from Naples to London, with a short overnight in the LHR Holiday Inn Express. Very early the following morning we arose (earlier than we needed to) to fly from LHR to Dalles-Fort Worth and, after a several-hour layover, onward to Seattle.

That was already too much flying for us, as Brian confirmed by literally falling asleep in the middle of eating ice cream somewhere over Montana, thereby creating a rather spectacular mess that the flight attendant and a couple of other passengers helped to clean up (Thanks, new subscriber Daz!). We did overnight at the Seattle Airport Hilton Garden Inn, rather than taking a flight that would have landed us at Bellingham around Midnight, but next time we’d add another overnight along the way.

Second, we take health and security seriously. Our Medicare insurance supplement covers emergency hospitalization when we’re abroad, and we’re limiting the length of our future visits to third-world countries. We want nearby access to first-rate medical care if we need it. We register the itineraries of our trips with the US State Department's Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP).

We walk more slowly than we used to, often arm-in-arm to maintain balance. We notice that more and more people offer us seats on buses and trains, or offer to help us hoist our carry-ons into the overhead compartments. While that’s sweet, it also means we look old, dammit! We’re obvious potential victims for pickpockets and muggers, so we keep a special eye on our surroundings. No more romantic evening strolls along deserted streets for us.

After Brian’s wallet was pickpocketed out of his front pocket on the Paris Metro last year, he invested in pants from Clothing Arts that feature secret zippered pockets, and a hoodie from SCOTTeVEST with another set of secret pockets. We’ve both worn the original SCOTTIEeVESTS for many years. Brian also carries a dummy wallet containing some cash and expired credit cards, and we each carry our own credit and ATM cards, with contact phone numbers recorded in our phones in the event of theft or loss. For that matter, we also store in our phones photos of our passport ID pages and our carry-on suitcases.

Our cellular provider is T-Mobile, which for a bargain monthly rate gives us virtually free phone calls and data in almost every country in the world and free WiFi on Alaska and other airlines.  This gives us further peace of mind. If we used another provider, we’d spend the money required - $10 daily or whatever - to give us coverage.

Finally, we’re not ashamed of spoiling ourselves. In fact, we call it being realistic rather than selfish. If that means we take fewer trips because each trip costs more, so be it. We won’t fly domestic redeyes, even in First Class, and we will only fly Business Class on overnight international flights. Long gone are our days of “mileage runs” in Economy to reach destinations like Singapore and Hong Kong. 

We consider taxis or car transfers between one spot and another, as opposed to climbing on a bus, then catching a subway, then walking a kilometer to reach our hotel.

Traveling with congenial companions can provide both shared enjoyment and mutual support. Some of our favorite trips over the years, including the one just concluded, have been with adult relatives, including Brian’s brother and sister-in-law and Kathy’s brothers and sisters-in-law. Showing Europe to our grandchildren starting about 10 years ago has kept us feeling young, and we’re looking forward to taking our eighth and youngest grandchild on his special trip in March 2024.

We quote Robert Louis Stevenson on our main page: “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.”

We hope to keep moving for some time to come.

Happy travels to all! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Tuesday, November 14, 2023

Revisiting Pompeii

As a recent article in Science Magazine puts it,  The destruction of Pompeii, Italy, is one of the most well-preserved catastrophes in human history.”

What took place nearly two thousand years ago in 79 A.D. was a tragedy of considerable magnitude, but as archaeologists uncovered the ruins of this city over a period of centuries, the impact of the eruption of Vesuvius on individual citizens became increasingly obvious.

This region was populated at least as far back as the 6th or 7th century B.C. Pompeii grew to be a prosperous and significant trading center, not far from the Appian Way. All that changed over a couple of days as the city was buried in ash and pumice, and countless residents - probably more than a thousand  - were poisoned by fumes, although scientists are still investigating the cause of deaths.

We two had visited Pompeii back in 2001. Since we were driving right by it on the way to the Naples Airport. Our driver arranged for a two hour private tour.

Imma proved to be an excellent guide.



She showed us main squares, private homes, the public baths, and business and government sites, including those selling fast food.





Two-thousand-year-old mosaics and frescoes were still visible.





It was an impressive grand finale to a successful trip.








Monday, November 13, 2023

Dining Exceptionally Well in Sorrento, Italy

We discovered Casa Tua by researching TripAdvisor and Yelp. Our efforts were rewarded by a fascinating dinner in this modest little joint.








The fixed-price menu consisted of a collection of the chef’s favorite dishes, supplemented by what looks good in the daily market.

We savored a ceviche or fish tartare.



Lemon Sea Bass Meatballs…



Katalfi Prawns…



Cuttlefish Salad…



Courgette Fliwers stuffed with ricotta and Parmesan.,,



Calamari and more…



We finally gave up and skipped the final course. Another outstanding Sorrento dining experience.



On our final night in Sorrento, we ended up at a pizza joint after our original choice is apparently closed Sunday, despite the reservation website The Fork confirming our reservation before canceling it at the last minute.

Lieve isn’t a bad place at all, and it was quite reasonably
priced.







We two dined on Neopolitan-style pizzas today in the miserable Naples International Airport, and enjoyed it too.



We do admit to still preferring Kathy’s homemade pizza, but we certainly will keep that to ourselves.

Sunday, November 12, 2023

Positano or Bust

The Amalfi Coast must be one of the world’s most scenic coastal roads. We’d stayed in Positano with Kathy’s youngest brother, Greg, and sister-in-law, June, back in 2009, and visited briefly againwhen our cruise ship anchored nearby in 2012.

We wanted Tom and Ellyn to see it, and traveling by bus around the hairpin turns and switchbacks makes for a real thrill ride.

Armed with a schedule and directions from the hotel, we made our way to the bus station Saturday morning and lined up to buy a €10 24-hour pass. The woman at the counter gave us instructions on how to transfer at Amalfi to get to Ravello.

We lined up at the end of a very long queue that stretched around the edge of the road. We waited and then waited some more in the on-and-off light drizzle.





Rumors spread and were then confirmed. There was no bus to Amalfi until 4:00 PM. We continued to queue and watched buses come and go, some advertising our €10-pass on the side. Yes, it’s a great pass if you can actually use it.


If we could only go as far as Positano, we’d go as far as Positano. Besides, we’ve spent as much time in line for Disneyland rides that are no more thrilling.

Eventually, upwards of two hours later, we were lucky to board and to get seats on the right (ocean) side of the bus. Others were not so lucky.



The ride itself is as spectacular as the bus driver’s skills are impressive.



The moving clouds provided us with varying lighting effects.



We eventually saw Positano clinging to the hills, the only town built on a “vertical axis,” according to the artist Paul Klee.



And then we arrived at the Positano bus stop, getting off as various would-be passengers found out the bus to Amalfi wouldn’t appear for hours. There’s no doubt an Italian expression equivalent to the French “C’est comme ça” or our “That’s just the way it is.”

As for us, we wandered down the hill to take in the sights of Positano.







It was Armistice Day in the U.S. and Remembrance Day in the British Commonwealth, so it seemed appropriate to stop for a moment at the modest plaque commemorating the WWI and WWII dead of Positano.



Three of us rode the little municipal bus back up the steep hill.



Ellyn shamed the rest of us by jogging up the hill and waiting for us at the top. The next bus to Sorrento arrived promptly and we all obtained seats (Mirabulum, as the ancient Romans used to say) for the return ride to Sorrento.



A day of thrilling rides and spectacular views made the long wait worthwhile.