Your Guide to Honeymooning in the Amalfi Coast
After beginning our 7 day honeymoon in Naples, we continued our way south to the gorgeous Amalfi Coast to explore the Tyrrhenian Sea where we spent 3 days and 3 nights. We hired a driver in Naples to get to Amalfi and it took about an hour and a half of driving time. Later in the blog we give specific instructions under 'transportation tips'.
The Amalfi Coast is world renown for its quaint coastal towns tucked away in rolling mountains and secluded by 34 miles of narrow twisting roads. Thus, these towns are very hard to reach and make this region even more special when visiting.
We chose to add this region to our honeymoon destinations because it seemed like the perfect place to celebrate our love and recent elopement.
In this blog, we'll be sharing every detail of our honeymoon in Amalfi!
Honeymooning in the Amalfi Coast at a Glance:
- Towns We Recommend on the Coast
- Transportation Tips
- Where we stayed
- What we ate
- Experience Recommendations
Which Towns to Visit on the Coast
If you’re looking for the Amalfi Coast experience but want to avoid the crowds, stay clear of Positano! Positano is extremely busy, and is also the most expensive town in the region. The town of Amalfi is east of Positano on the coast and is the 2nd busiest city in this region. Here, you’ll experience the amazing culture, excellent food, beautiful architecture, and views of the Amalfi Coast, but with less crowds and much more affordable compared to Positano!
From Amalfi, you can easily get to the towns of Positano and Maori by ferry, and you can even walk/hike to Atrani and Ravello!
If you’re looking for a more budget friendly Amalfi Coast experience, Maori is an ideal spot. It is known for being the most family-friendly town in the region!
Transportation Tips
Reaching the Amalfi Coast: If you want to reach the coast quickly and comfortably, you'll need to book a private driver. We booked our’s through DayTrip and met a wonderful driver named Vincenzo.
Coming from Naples to the town of Amalfi, we paid 180 euros for the two of us. If you book directly through Vincenzo, he will do it for 150 euros. And if he can’t drive you, his brother will! You can contact them through Whatsapp at the following numbers:
Vincenzo: +39 333 619 4370
Pierpaolo: +39 338 526 5561
Alternate option: If you are looking for another option to reach the Amalfi Coast than by having a private driver, there is a train that goes to Vietri sul Mare-Amalfi (located just west of Salerno and east of Amalfi) from Rome Termini. When booking the high speed train, it will take just under 2.5 hours with at least one transfer. Looking at Trainline right now (a website for booking trains throughout Europe) this option can be around $50. There are other options that will take longer to arrive, but cost as little as $18. Keep this in mind if you are more flexible on time!
From the Vietri sul Mare-Amalfi station, it will take about 45 minutes to an hour to reach the town of Amalfi by car.
Ferries: When taking a ferry from one town to the next, be sure to arrive at least 20 minutes before departure. We missed our ferry to Capri because it left 10 minutes early! The ferry areas are slammed with tourists and it is an absolute cluster. They typically don’t offer refunds but they offered it to us because this was out of our control.
Buses: In our opinion, ferries are way better than buses. Buses are cheap but not reliable and are subject to road closures.
Hotels we recommend:
Want to avoid stairs? You’ll want to book directly on the water in Amalfi. However, you'll save a lot of money if you book a hotel up in the hills!
We booked our stay at Hotel La Bussola through Hotels.com. This hotel is an old pasta factory converted to a stunning marine-themed hotel!
The Hotel La Bussola is 4-stars and feels very luxurious with its updated rooms, luxurious in-room products, elevators, complementary breakfast every morning, rooftop bar/terrace, and only a 4 minute walk to the city center.
When we stayed here in the beginning of June, it cost a little under 400 euros per night. This was the least expensive hotel we could find in Amalfi during our trip…. Positano’s on-the-water hotels are nothing less than 700 euro so we felt like this was a good deal!
The staff were so stand out and made our experience at La Bussola that much more welcoming. The receptionists were extremely helpful booking us a wonderful last-minute experience when our plans fell through. The bartenders on the rooftop had impeccable service and provided us great recommendations for dinners in town. We would, without a doubt, stay here again on our next visit!
Food Recommendations:
Amalfi street food is so delicious! Our two favorite finds here were the pizzettes and freshly fried seafood.
Our go to spot for lunch was Kuott, which sold our favorite pizzettes! Pizzettes are mini pizzas, perfect for a lunch on the go. They are easy to eat in the stairwells which is what we did to cool off from the sun! We couldn’t get enough of them. I would be cautious with the fried items there - it’s not cooked as well as we hoped.
If you are craving fried food, especially freshly fried seafood, we highly recommend Pescheria CICA. Here, you can get a cone of fried fish, calamari, and whatever else you want! The prices were very reasonable and the food was delicious! Just be prepared for some lines since this spot makes some really good food!
For dessert, you NEED to try the lemon sorbet!! There were tons of vendors but our favorite was next to Panificio Apicella on the main street. Here, they stuffed the sorbet inside a lemon that you get to hand pick! Lemons grown in and near the Amalfi coast are generally larger, so the lemons to select from were MASSIVE! This was definitely my personal favorite treat.
It being our Honeymoon, we wanted to relax and have a drink so we often found ourselves on the rooftop of Hotel La Bussola looking over the city of Amalfi and the beautiful horizon on the sea. If you go between 5pm - 7pm, you’ll receive a 10% discount and complimentary house-made appetizers daily which was a surprising highlight for us pre-dinner. The bartenders are incredibly sweet, made us feel at home and made delicious cocktails.
Experience Recommendations:
The Amalfi Coast is such a dense and beautiful area that you can find countless wonderful things to do. Our favorite experiences was the boat tour to Positano, spontaneous nature walk thru "La Selva" and the cooking class at a 400 year old vineyard! Each of these experience made us feel deeply immersed into the nature and culture, teaching us more about the land, sea and how each play such a vital role in the amazing cuisine of Amalfi.
La Selva Walk
One of the more memorable moments was finding this seemingly hidden little walkway called “La Selva”. We stumbled upon it by following the main street of Amalfi all the way up past the shops where you start to get closer to the mountains. It was so serene on our way up as you could hear the river flowing down the mountains past the trees and under the old cobblestone streets.
Once you begin the walk you're going to find yourself completely immersed in the lush greenery of gorgeous plant life and abundant smells of fresh lemons being grown in the local farms across the water. Not too far into the walk we found a little picnic and gymnastic area where Ian got to goof around.
The reason you need to try this walk out is at the end of it. The end of the trail takes you right up to where the river flows under these super old and abandoned structures. There was no way to see what was inside of them but Ian and I had to walk around a bit underneath and feel the clear refreshing water on our feet.
Boat Tour to Positano with Raphael
When in Amalfi or on the Amalfi coast you HAVE to take a boat tour or find some way to get on the beautiful waters of the Tyrrhenian / Mediterranean Sea. Since we were on our honeymoon, we were looking for a relaxing and low key experience with a dash of excitement! The boat tour we booked did that in spades!
We found our tour through Airbnb Experiences which seems to continuously be the place to find immersive experiences hosted by locals. The tour was $165 per person, but we felt that for the location we were in and how enjoyable the tour was, this price was very fair. The tour lasted 4 hours and was easily one of my favorite experiences!
We boarded the boat at the Amalfi dock where we met 8 other guests for the tour, along with our captain Raphael! We got off to a quick start cruising along the coast and headed west towards Positano. Raphael was very knowledgeable and helpful pointing out notable buildings and rock formations.
Our first stop was at a grotto where we got our first taste of the sea! The water felt so amazing! The best way is to just jump in, you’ll be chilly for the first few seconds but will warm up in no time! Raphael also supplied each member with their own set of snorkeling gear. The water was very clear so we saw many schools of little fish.
After about 15 minutes of swimming and snorkeling, we got back on the boat where Raphael greeted us with fresh honeydew melon and prosecco. He had this really fun little wooden table for people to put their glasses on when they were finished. The table had specific designs on the bottom so you were able to tell which glass was yours. So neat!
We then proceeded towards Praiano where we saw more amazing resorts and hotels poised along the coast. Our last stop was at a private beach in between Positano and the Arienzo Beach club. This was my favorite spot because it had these cliffs on the side where you could easily climb up and jump into the sea! I got in a least 4 jumps in and swam around for a bit before we were called back to the boat.
Cooking Class with Elio
Our cooking class held in a 400 year old vineyard was out of a storybook. We booked this experience through their website! They offer this class in Italian, French, and English, and it last about 3 hours.
Once we arrived at the farm we were greeted with the cute family doggie (Caterina) and one of their farm cats. Elio then showed us the infrastructure of the farm and how they set up their vineyard to grow their grapes for their wine.
Our next stop was a brief tour of the inside of the farm house. Elio’s family has been farmers on this specific plot of land for over 400 years so needless to say there were so many beautiful antique pieces in their home.
To start out the cooking class there was a mini kitchen set up outside on their back patio area where they had a table set up with wine, cheese and prosciutto.
For the first course we made our own pasta with tomato sauce made with fresh tomatoes and chilis from their farm. It was such an experience to be able to make food and eat it literally from farm to table.
This was the view from our outside cooking class! How cute and romantic is this?!
The last dish we made was pork scallopini. We took pork filets, coated them in flour, fried them and then topped them off with a lemon sauce we had made with fresh lemon juice and zest from the farm. It was so incredible! Afterwards we ended the evening watching the gorgeous sunset recede into the distance while sipping delicious cappuccinos. Truly getting the most romantic Italian experience!
We hope you enjoyed this extensive guide for everything you need to know when visiting Amalfi! This was only stop #1 on our elopement in Italy. Stay tuned for blogs about our other adventures traveling through Italy!
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Xx,
The Wildjoy Team