Day 8 - March 31st - to the Amalfi Coast

Started out the day with "breakfast" at the hotel (it's in "" as we were able to chose from croissants and croissants - really no options). We left the car at the hotel, took a bus into Ercolano where our destination was Herculaneum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herculaneum). We purchased a multi-day/multi-place ticket as we were planning on visiting Pompeii as well (cost $18 EUR per person for 5 sites - Herculaneum, Pompeii, Boscoreale, Oplontis and Stabia). This was a very interesting place - it really is amazing what has been uncovered here. I had read that this place was a must see place - even better preserved than Pompeii (not sure if I agree with that). We opted not to hire a tour guide so Dawn & I went into the bookstore and purchased one of the Herculaneum/Pompeii books with the transparent overlays (shows before and after pictures). This helped us figure out what some of the locations were supposed to be.

We spent hours walking around, took another bus back to the hotel then continued driving south to the Sorrentine Peninsula. We had reservations at the Hotel Piccolo Paradiso in the fishing village of La Lobra (overlooking the bay of Massa Lubrense http://www.piccolo-paradiso.com/en/) . We found the hotel (quite by accident really) and checked in. We stayed in the section that used to be the Hotel Nereidi across the street from the main hotel in rooms 2 and 3. Dawn & I were in room 3 with the larger, wrap around balcony). WOW - the view! Beautiful!

We arrived right before 2pm and luckily the hotel restaurant was still serving lunch, as we were hungry. The main dish was Ravioli a la capresa - very good. It was back then to the balcony to decide what our next plan of action was to be. While we were very tempted to rest in our rooms overlooking the water, we headed off to see Positano and Amalfi. I had seen so many pictures of these places but pictures reall don't compare with the real thing. The drive along the coast had me white knuckled - Dad drove like a champ & Dawn and I were extremely grateful for him doing that. I really loved this area - I can definately see myself going back there.

Dinner was back at the hotel where Dawn had a reprisal of lunch while Dad & I had the pasta con funghi e pomodoro, pork chops & potatoes. We had some limoncello to end the meal then called it a night.