Fourteen Thousand: Day 11: Positano

Another day trip from Sorrento was by ferry to Positano, a picture-perfect town on the Amalfi Coast. This was a tough choice for us. We vacillated for days. It was between Capri and Positano. In the end, Capri was just too expensive and overrun with tourists. We decided on Positano. There were still plenty of tourists, but nothing obscene like we'd heard would be on Capri. We took in the town, went to the cathedral (of course!), ate some delicious lemon ice, rented an umbrella and chairs for the beach and went swimming, and walked high up the road to see the view of the town and ocean before taking a hair-raising bus ride along the coast back to Sorrento.

As for the beach, we spent a couple hours there enjoying the beautiful day. It was very hazy and humid, but perfect for lying on the beach. We decided to go in for a swim. I thought it was strange that nobody else was in the water. No matter. We swam around for a while until Jared started making jokes about sharks. "Don't even joke about that," I said. Literally a few seconds later, I felt something brush against my arm and of course I panicked and moved out of the way. I turned around and saw a purple jelly fish. "There's a jelly fish over here!" I said. Jared didn't believe me until he felt a stinging sensation on his leg. We hurried back to the beach. Looking back at the water, I was amazed we hadn't seen it before: it was like a plague of jelly fish. They were lying all over the beach as far as the eye could see, and the water from the shore to several feet out was thick with them. Jared's leg swelled where he had been stung, but he said it didn't hurt too badly. It took a while for the swelling to go down. Poor Jared. That's what you get for teasing me about sharks. So the jellyfish certainly put a damper on our swimming, but I did enjoy a relaxing time walking the beach and collecting sea glass and lazing around in the shade.