#3 -The Road To Hana (Maui): Drove this windy cliff-ridden road on our honeymoon in a convertible. However, the Road To Hana is like a relaxing Sunday drive compared to the following two entries in the rankings.
#2 - The Pacific Coast Highway (California): Hwy 1 is another windy road perched on cliffs overlooking the ocean, which isn’t bad in and of itself. However, I drove it in a 30 foot long RV. This multiplied the intensity factor by 10. Still, this doesn’t hold a candle to the top entry on the list.
#1 - The Amalfi Coast (Italy): Take the Pacific Coast Highway, narrow it, multiply the curves by 10, make the cliffs higher, remove guard rails, add scooters zipping all around, and you have the Amalfi Coast. In addition, now I am driving a stick, which is not my normal comfort zone.
Today, we departed Sorrento and headed to Amalfi. It was about an hour and a half drive, but very nerve racking (as mentioned above). There were lanes for some of it, but for the rest, you might have had inches to pass cars coming the other way, so you had to pass with caution, or just wait patiently at a wider section of road. It was funny… just when we though we had seen the worst curves and hairpin turns of our life, we saw a sign that said “Caution: windy roads next 3 km,” as if the previous 20 km weren’t windy! There was one point when a bus was coming up the hill toward me, and we realized there wasn’t enough room to pass each other. We both sat there for a few seconds in a virtual stalemate, but I knew I was the loser in this face-off. With a line of cars behind me, I then attempted to reverse my car uphill in my manual, stalling out a few times and barely avoiding some parked cars. I believe Kim may have even yelled out a few expletives in the process, which helped to further calm my nerves. She also thinks I scraped the car against the cliff wall, but the car was pretty dinged up when we got it, and I’m pretty sure those were existing scratches.
The good news is we made it to the hotel safely. The lady at the hotel had me parallel park the car on a steep uphill cliff road. There’s nothing more fun than parking a manual on a steep curvy road. Kim and the lady watched as I stalled out and struggled to park the car for about 5 mins (the lady kept saying I wasn’t close enough to the wall). After I finally parked it correctly, she then told me I couldn’t park there! I thought she was kidding at first. Needless to say, I was not a happy camper.Once I was parked, the lady escorted us down 300 steps to our hotel (yes, 300 steps). The hotel was nice at least, and had a great view of Amalfi below.
We cooled off in the pool, then headed down to Amalfi for the evening. Our 2 options for getting down to Amalfi: Walk back up the 300 steps and wait for the bus OR walk down 700 steps to the town! Well, this is a no-brainer. Walking down is better than walking up and waiting. And to get back, we take the bus back to the top and walk down the 300 steps. So it is 1000 down-steps round trip, but at least we avoid having to walk up any steps.Amalfi has a vibrant atmosphere, and though there were lots of tourists, the town was still very Italian. We had a pleasant dinner in the square where we could people-watch, then followed up our meal with some gelato.
Additional notes:- Kim: There are lizards everywhere in Southern Italy, scurrying about and scaring me all the time. I am haunted by a story my parents told me from when they went to Italy - they ended up with a lizard in their bathroom and the hotel sent a guy with a broom and a dust pan to "take care of it." Now, everytime we go to open the door to our room, I make Brian wait while I check for nearby lizards, then I give the word and we run into the room. No joke.
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