Today we start our longest hike with full packs. We started off with a hike up out of Positano climbing 2500 ft less than one hour. The cathedral of Santa Della Maria Castellano sits in the small village at the top of our climb. The church wasn’t very exciting, but the view was nice. By this time it was approaching lunch and I had seen a small ristorante called, Zi Peppe, on the map. We walked over but the place looked deserted. The door was unlocked, so we walked in. It was much larger inside than it appeared out and reminded me a large, German beer hall. I heard some noises in the kitchen so I went in and said “buon giorno!” A middle aged Italian gentleman came out and seated us. He didn’t speak much English, so I finally got to use some of the Italian I learned. We had a nice lunch and a Swiss lady we passed on the trail came in while we ate. We chatted with her for some time before we hit the trail again.
See hike GPS Route details here… Positano to Colli di San Pietro
The rest of the day was a long, hot hike. We were mainly in the direct sun all day, but the views were spectacular all day. Today was also our 11 year anniversary, so I was enjoying the fact that Denise and I could be happily spending the day hiking 8+ miles and >;;5000′ in elevation. We summited two mountains in the process getting to our destination of Belvedere Bed & breakfast in the little intersection of Colli di San Pietro. Named for the bus stop there.
The B&B was nice, but when Denise asked the lady when breakfast, she said “no breakfast”. LOL! A little false advertising there. The lady said there were two places to eat dinner, one up one street and one up the other. We stopped in the crammed little mini market beneath the room and got something for breakfast. It had a kitchen atleast so I guess that is where the breakfast part comes in.
After getting showers, we picked a road and started on our search for dinner. After a half mile up the road we finally came across Picale Paradisio which said pizza on their sign. We walked down the dirt driveway of what looked like a farm. There was a fenced in field on the right with dog trials going on and a bunch of fenced in birds and ducks on the left. There were three white ducks quacking away at Denise like they wanted to tell her something. We contined into the building which appeared deserted, but there was a sound of screaming kids coming from the rear. We finally bumped into the chef who was making pizza. We asked if we could get some dinner, and he said sure…pizza!
We sat at a table in the rear dining room. There was a children’s birthday party going on outside. They served us a bottle of wine, which was a bubbly, sparkling red that was so dark you could not see through it. Obviously homemade. They brought us out silver platters full of slices of delicious pizza in between similar ones for the kids. The kids were served one with French fries on it that they went crazy over, which we did not get. Another couple came in that were not as entertained by the situation as we were as they were yelling something to the young kid Erving us. They opened their sparkling wine and sent it back immediately. We ended drinking it…don’t want to waste good wine! The meal ending up only costing €20, which was our cheapest meal yet.
It was a memorable end to our anniversary. I am pretty lucky to be married to someone who is happing hiking all day over mountains and having a pizza and sparkling wine dinner!
Tomorrow we will be hiking through some towns down to Sorrento on mostly backroads. Should be relatively easy day.
