ITINERARY: FOUR DAYS IN THE AMALFI COAST

Quick tips:

Where to Stay: Depending on what you’re looking for and how much you want to spend, there are tons of options for where to stay on the Amalfi Coast.

I personally stayed at the Hotel Vittoria in Positano and couldn’t recommend both the price point and accommodations more. With beautiful views of the coast, a continental breakfast every morning, and an easy walk to both town and the beach, it was one of the highlights of our trip. We also loved staying in Positano because it’s one of the larger and more bustling towns on the coast.

If you’re looking for something more lowkey (and potentially at a lower price point), you can check out:

• Amalfi – Also large and bustling with great access to ferries and trains
• Ravello – Smaller and more lowkey, located atop the hillside so less easily accessible
• Atrani – Smaller and more lowkey, along the coast, but still less accessible than the larger towns

What to buy on the Amalfi Coast:

• Lemon-Printed Garments: As soon as you arrive on the Amalfi Coast, you’ll find dozens of shops selling lemon-printed garments. So many, in fact, that it will be hard to resist buying at least one piece of clothing. Since the Amalfi Coast is famous for its lemons, be sure to pick up at least one fun item as a souvenir of your time in the cliffside towns.
• Ceramics: Across the Amalfi Coast are a wide variety of ceramics shops with handmade and hand-painted pieces – everything from mugs to olive oil pourers, to full-fledged tables, and more. Once you go into one of these shops (my favorite is Ceramiche Casola) and see the artists hard at work, you’ll need to take home one of these hand-crafted artisanal goods.
• Handmade Sandals: Across the Amalfi Coast, as well as in the rest of Italy, you can find outstanding handmade leather goods, including sandals, that are custom-made for you. Check out many of these leather shops along the steep hills of Positano for some new summer sandals to bring home with you.

To save money, instead of buying drinks from the servers that come by the beach chairs go to one of the small huts to the very right of the beach, right next to where the ferry tickets are sold. One of these huts sells extremely reasonably priced drinks (we’re talking 5€ for an Aperol spritz) and you can bring them back to your chairs. Also, you can grab an unbeatable sandwich for lunch from Vini e Panini, a deli nearby.

While it might seem like getting anywhere on the Amalfi Coast is a trek, getting to Capri is actually surprisingly easy! Ferries leave from any of the major towns about once every 30 minutes. The ride from Positano to Capri takes about 45 minutes and costs about 22€. The first ferry leaves around 9AM and the last leaves Capri at about 6PM, so if you’re not spending the night in Capri, take this into account when planning your day.

You can book your ferry online in advance here (recommended for traveling to Capri because they tend to fill up fastest) or at the ferry terminal before you board your boat.

The gardens cost only 1€ to enter and you can pay upon arrival. From there, it’s fairly self-explanatory! Stroll your way through the gardens and enjoy the stunning views of the surrounding cliffsides.

Now that you’ve seen the sights of Capri Island, it’s time to eat lunch & relax in some day beds at Da Luigi ai Faraglioni. The Faraglioni is a massive rock structure jutting out of the water just off the coast of Capri Island. In front of the Faraglioni are two restaurants: La Fontelina and Da Luigi. Both restaurants have outdoor seating, a bar, and also sunchairs to rent for the afternoon.

If you can get into La Fontelina (in the summer months you need to reserve your sun chairs up to three months in advance and they require multi-day reservations (i.e. not suitable for a day trip), then I think La Fontelina is the more popular and better restaurant.

However, if you can’t get into La Fontelina, then Da Luigi (which is right next door) is the perfect spot for any last-minute or day-tripping travelers! Below are some tips about Da Luigi:

• Reservations: You likely don’t need a reservation for either the restaurant or the sunchairs. But, if you want to secure your spot, you can make a reservation online in advance here.
• The Restaurant: While the views from the restaurant are beautiful, I was pretty underwhelmed by the quality of the food. Instead, I’d recommend grabbing lunch somewhere in town and then just coming to Da Luigi for the sun chairs.
• Renting Sun Chairs: At Da Luigi, there are two chairs you can rent: those that sit up for about 25€ and lie-down chairs with umbrellas for 35€. While this may seem pricey, I found it 100% worth it because there aren’t many other places to relax on Capri without a hotel reservation, and renting the chairs gives you access to the bar and swimming area for the whole day.

Once you’re finished with your relaxing and sun-filled day on Capri Island, it’s time to head back to the coast. The last ferry from Capri back to the mainland is at 6PM, so be sure to not miss it and get stranded on the island! I would recommend purchasing your return tickets in advance (when you purchase your departure tickets) to ensure you get onto the last ferry. Since it’s the last of the day, it tends to fill up quickly.

Before hopping on the ferry, head to Salumeria da Aldo, a small sandwich shop right near the ferry terminal. This classic sandwich shop served the best prosciutto sandwich I had in all of Italy – it’s definitely worth the stop before your return home!

For your third day on the Amalfi Coast, it’s time to check out the coast from a new perspective: the water! There are a ton of different boat tour options on the Amalfi Coast, including private tours, group tours, tours to Capri, sunset tours, and so many more. Considering we had just done our day trip to Capri the previous day, we opted for a group boat tour (which is MUCH cheaper than the private boat tours) of the coast, which I could not recommend more highly!

Our full-day boat tour left from Positano at 10AM and returned at 6PM, making it a full eight-hour day in the sun out on the water. From Positano, the boat will head southeast along the coast toward Amalfi, stopping at a handful of swimming areas and beautiful viewpoints along the way. Around lunchtime you’ll hop off the boat in Amalfi and are given three hours to explore the town and grab lunch, during which we ate some of my favorite pasta of the whole trip – check out where we went in the next section below! Throughout the tour, you’re also offered free beer and sodas and are given a shot of limoncello at the end.

Overall, I can’t imagine a more perfect day on the water and would rate this as my favorite can’t-miss activity from our trip to the Amalfi Coast!

As hinted before, during the full-day Amalfi Coast boat tour, you’ll get three hours in Amalfi to explore and eat lunch, during which we had the best pasta dish of my whole trip to Italy! Da Gemma, opened in 1872, is located right in downtown Amalfi and has a terrace overlooking one of the main walking streets. The famed pasta dish in question is called La Genovese and has been a Da Gemma classic since the restaurant opened a century and a half ago. Whether you spend three hours or three days in Amalfi on your trip, don’t miss out on Da Gemma!

If you’re looking for dinner with a view in Positano, Il Capitano is the place to go. The beautiful terrace (pictured below) has a stunning view of the coast and Positano town, making it hard to even pay attention to what you’re eating because the view is so stunning.

The meal, however, was equally as outstanding. The menu isn’t available online, but we ordered four dishes and each was better than the last. Honestly, if I had to recommend one restaurant in all of Positano to go to, it would be Il Capitano.

My favorite stop on our personal scooter tour of the coast was the beach under Fiordo di Furore, which is a large stone bridge between Praiano and Amalfi. If you choose not to rent a scooter, you can also get here via bus or taxi from any of the towns on the coast. 

This beach was actually my favorite of all of the Amalfi Coast because of its uniqueness. While the others are gorgeous and overlook cliffsides along the Mediterranean, this beach is a small inlet looking out at a beautiful arched bridge. Because of how small the inlet is, there are also tall rocks that cliff jumpers were continuously leaping from throughout our time there.

 For your last dinner in Positano, head to Next2 – a Michelin star restaurant up the hill. I had actually avoided getting a reservation at Next2 because the name didn’t exactly scream “Italian!” or draw me in any way, but boy was I wrong. This was another one of our favorite meals in all of Italy. The terrace, while it doesn’t have a view, is beautiful, and our two orders of pasta were to die for.