Italy Part 8 - Two Thousand Year Old Porn
This was certainly a surprise, though not as surprising as the road from Pompeii to Positano
Pompeii, it’s like the original Titanic. Seared into the minds and imaginations of centuries and centuries of curious minds. Our guide, XXX, was phenomenal. She showed us highlight after highlight, from fast food restaurants PIC to the (name for the corpses) PIC. The restaurants were a surprise, yet other than the 2000 year old porn mosaics in the restored brothel, the thing that surprised me most was another incredibly detailed mosaic. In one of the excavated villas of a wealthy family, inside their front door was this
It means, Beware of the Dog. I found such a commonality between cultures that are thousands of years apart to be comforting in some way. Which I tried to hold onto on the next leg of our journey…
Our driver that day (his name was Arturo) was wonderful...and we had a beautiful black Mercedes Van bringing us everywhere. Three across in front, two swivels and a back bench.
Sadly Katie and Carrie had left the evening before to catch their flight in Rome, so it was Camden and I in the front and David, Casey, Niall and Riley in the back. I was next to the door and Camden was in the middle seat. Coming through the mountain didn’t bother me, it was the teenie, tiny cliff side road 800+ feet up the side of the mountain in Positano that almost put me over the edge - pun intended. The little three foot ‘safety’ wall was not going to do much and the conversation I had overheard on the ferry about a bus driving off a cliff earlier that summer in X, kept playing in my mind as I white knuckled the ‘Oh Shit!’ handle and tried for Camden’s sake, to pretend that nothing was wrong. I knew immediately, when we finally arrived at our lunch destination, wine would be required for me to continue all the way to Rovello.
Imagine firefly, 2000ft up the side of a cliff with a terraced farm, a view from a novel and that would begin to describe La Tagliata. Family style, family owned, family operated, this restaurant was spectacular. The food was wonderful, the view was insane and the farm was so fun to walk through. They even had pom pom chickens as I like to call them. La Tagliata is a must if you are visiting Positano. https://www.latagliata.com/
Upon our exit, I coerced Riley to sit up front with Camden next to the door and drop off so I could cling to the handle closest to the mountain and try not to think about an earth quake or slide sending us plummeting 1000 ft to our deaths. I have rock climbed, skydived numerous times and even driven the Costarican Pass of Death AT NIGHT, yet something about that road made my toes curl.
Gratefully we returned home safely and enjoyed a sunset swim before heading up the mountain for dinner in Rovello.