Day: 18, Tree: 5

An underlying theme in this blog is the - somewhat expected - tribulations of travelling with a Very Small Child, and hence the whole tree thing. The problem is, Tara isn't actually that much trouble, and so I struggle to find the odd tree to throw in to the mix every now and then. The best I can do this time concerns our apartment.

The new place is very nice, as Gerri pointed out last time. Not damp, clean and modern and with a decent bed. The location, however.. The location is.. not ideal. In much the same manner that Robert Mugabe is not an ideal president.

The problem is that the lovely terrace across the road that you could see in the view from our kitchen window is the only flat piece of land between here and Holland, and so every child in a thousand mile radius congregates on it for hours in the (late) evening, and they don't sit quietly discussing philosophy. So tranquil the place is not.

Aside from that we're enjoying the first week in Casa Ivetta. We started out with a quick trip to Positano on Sunday, which is an easy half hour ride on the local bus for a whole 1.50 euro! Tara slept most of the way there in the baby bjorn, despite the hairpin bends at breakneck speed and constant horn tooting from the bus.



We had lunch at a very nice place recommended in the Lonely Planet guide, which by virtue of having no view of the water actually offered decent food and service as an alternative.

We walked the million steps or so down to the smaller of the two beaches, where fortunately we were able to buy a huge bottle of water and ice creams for very un-Positano-like prices. Very nice to see them not taking advantage of hot and thirsty people prepared to sell a kidney for a drink.



The trip back was somewhat more of an adventure than we'd planned, due to our understanding of the bus timetable being spectacularly wrong, but all in all it's very easy to just pop over to Positano for a short visit, and we plan to head back for dinner one night this week.

Tried a new place in Vettica (one of the local parts of Praiano) for dinner last night, which despite being a hotel and clearly catering for tourists was very nice and still reasonably priced. We met some Canadian Italians when offering to take a photo of all of them, and they returned the favour with a nice shot off the restaurant's beautiful terrace, with Positano in the background.



We haven't really talked about the weather here at all, so here's some stuff about the weather. It's all over the place. One day it can be 31 and sunny, the next 30 and sunny or even 32! And sunny. You never know what to wear. Nothing is an attractive option since the humidity has soared to amazonian levels, but this tends to frighten small children and, alarmingly, everyone else as well. That's almost a link, so here's some gratuitous nudity.