Italy Trip Sept 2025 - Part 10 San Lazzaro and Ravello, Cantabria

After Pompeii we headed to the famous Amalfi coast, which is only about an hour from Pompeii and around a headland from Sorrento. However, it turns out that you can't drive a motorhome on the corniche road, which when you go there you realise why - it's much too narrow, windy and busy. Even cars are limited to every other day according to their reg. number. So there was nothing for it but to stay at a campsite up in the hills, and get a bus in to Amalfi.

We stayed in a village called San Lazzaro, which was high up in the hills overlooking the coast. The road was a dead end and ended up with these fantastic views up the coast, here looking in the direction of Amalfi and Salerno, which are out of view.

Looking straight down - the sea is not so far as the crow flies. We had dinner at a restaurant near here with a large terrace with these views (not that we could see, it was dark!).

The next day we visited Amalfi, but I will do that in the next post as I have many photos. The following day we visited Ravello, which this post is about.

It took an hour to get to Amalfi from San Lazzaro and after much winding about down the mountainside we came out onto the corniche road, which was very scenic. We then had to get another bus to Ravello, which was another half an hour ride up the mountainside again! The views from where we got off the bus were worth it though. Here we are looking towards Maiori, in the opposite direction from Amalfi.

Ravello is only a little place so it didn't take long to wander around. We had a pizza on a terrace overlooking the sea (yes, there are lots of restaurants like that around here!)

Above and below, the Duomo (cathedral) of Ravello and the old tower on the right is the Torre Maggiore, a part of the Villa Rufolo. It dates back to the 13th century.

Typical souvenir shops include a lot of lemon related paraphenalia - Amalfi lemons and the slightly different Sorrento lemons have been grown in this area for centuries.

After lunch we visited the Villa Rufolo which is next door to the cathedral. The villa was empty which was disappointing as the only thing of interest were beautiful patterned tiled floors (I should have taken a photo) but it was really about the outside and the views to die for.

Part of the villa and our shadows at the bottom! This is part of a Moorish cloister.

It would be nice to have a garden with a view like this!

We were lucky to have the perfect weather which really brought out the blue of the sea. It was far less humid on this side of the headland - I think the humidity around Naples is caused by the smog. Who knows.

And back out into the village - they sell some interesting things here! 😀

The day was spoiled somewhat by the crush for the bus from Amalfi back to San Lazzaro and missing the first bus as we were nowhere near the bus doors when it stopped, so no chance to get on. We waited an hour for the next one, which luckily pulled up right where we were standing. Again there was a huge crush to get on but this time we were determined so we elbowed our way on, and got seats! 

It was great to stay here for a few days but we wouldn't have wanted to go through that experience again, having already had a hassle the day before getting back from Amalfi which I'll tell you about in the next post. Really there are just far too many people for the amount of buses. Probably the best thing to do is to visit later in the afternoon, have dinner out then get a later bus back. But you don't know until you know.