Town of stairs - Part 2
On Positano SA, Italy - Part 2
Continuing my account on Positano, I’d like to address a few more themes of no less importance.
First off—
The sequestered location of Positano may make it not entirely clear how to actually get there. If you are arriving from NAP (Naples Airport), there are a couple of options to my knowledge: using the ferry service called Positano Jet or booking a ride on a shuttle.
I didn’t use Positano Jet. The only thing I know to keep in mind is that if you arrive at Naples International Airport, getting from the airport to the ferry departure spot involves venturing into the depths of the city. This can be quite a challenge and nerve-wracking, considering the decrepit state of the local transport system.
So if you do arrive at the airport, you might want to consider taking a shuttle, which departs directly from the airport. The shuttle service I used was called Enjoy Traveling. To book the ride, I used the website Omio. The shuttle takes you from Naples Airport to downtown Positano, to the parking called Mandara (Parcheggio). A one-way ride costs €45 per person.
The process of booking the ride online was straightforward. Yet, there’s something to say about the reality once you're at the airport.
Naples can be quite chaotic and messy. In theory, the shuttle driver is supposed to hold a sign with your name written on it, right in the area of arrivals. In practice, the driver may engage in a nonchalant conversation with his friends and barely show the sign, or, as happened in my case, he might even drive off without waiting for you, simply because the information about your booking never reached him.
The good thing is that all communication with Enjoy Traveling goes through WhatsApp, where you can inform them about your flight information, possible delays, etc. So, if you find yourself waiting suspiciously long for the driver, and the scheduled departure time has passed while your eyes are exhausted from constant scanning dozens of signs with names, you’d better call the shuttle service directly on WhatsApp to sort out the situation. As I said, in my case, even though the WhatsApp conversation with the manager had gone smoothly, the driver himself never received details of my booking and drove off. Luckily, that day he hadn’t gone too far and returned to the airport to pick me up.
For the return trip from Positano to Naples, you can also book the same service. The pick-up point in Positano is usually the same Mandara parking garage, located next to the town’s only gas station—vivid spot filled with cars and joyful locals filling canisters with gasoline while having a smoke and a chat with each other.
Upon arrival in Positano—specifically at the Mandara gas station—you might face the issue of transporting your luggage to your hotel, apartment, or other place of residence. Trudging the luggage through tight crowds of tourists under the hot sun, while trying to avoid being run over by vehicles and motorcycles, only to continue the trudging up several flights of stairs for half an hour or more, can be exhausting.
In this case, you can turn to a local service called Blue Porters. These workers wear blue uniforms and drive small vehicles specifically designed to transport luggage, marked with the service's name. You can usually find them easily around the Mandara gas station, as they know most tourists disembark there.
The average charge is €20 per suitcase. And yes, they can also carry your baggage up the stairs no matter how heavy it is.
Please bear in mind that this service requires payment in cash. In general, it's practical to carry some cash with you in Positano. Not only the Blue Porters, but also in some shops and markets, payment in cash may be welcomed.
It is possible to withdraw money in Positano itself. Along the main road, you’ll find several ATMs, as well as a Deutsche Bank and some Italian banks located downtown. However, the withdrawal fees are sadly still very much a reality.
On a hot sunny day you might want to sweeten your walk with some ice cream.
For this purpose, I recommend visiting the ice cream section of Collina Positano Bakery, located at Via Cristoforo Colombo 1/3, not far from the main beach. There, we found very good ice cream. The flavors included chocolate, lemon, vanilla, stracciatella, coffee, strawberry, hazelnut, and pistachio. The ones I tried were all fresh and well-executed.
The coffee flavor, for example, tasted exactly like grounded coffee beans—bitter and intense—while the strawberry flavor tasted just like the berries it’s named after.
For someone constantly on the lookout for a bookstore, Positano might not be the best destination—simply because it doesn’t have any stores of this sort.
However, Positano does have a local library. It’s a pity that there’s almost no information about it online. We happened to come across it purely by accident, spotting a sign on the wall of what looked like just another small house—completely indistinguishable from the others around it.
The library's opening hours are quite limited—just 9 hours a week in total! For that reason, we didn’t manage to visit during any of the available time slots.
For those curious to find out what this place really is, I’m leaving a photo of the sign here, with the opening hours and contact information. The address of the place is Viale Pasitea 65A.
Positano tries to compensate for its complete lack of bookstores with an abundance of clothing stores. These can be found on nearly every corner in the downtown area.
They demonstrate a very specific and unmistakable style of the area: light summer dresses for women, often simple in shape, of just white or grayish colors—or in white with ceramic-like patterns in blue or pink over it. Another major trend is white dresses with a plentitude of lemon images. That makes sense. Positano has many lemon trees, and the dominance of this motif is something a tourist simply can’t escape. There are even shops turned into shrines of lemon: lemon candles, lemon scents, lemon soaps, lemon pasta, sculptures in the shape of lemons.
Even in men’s fashion, the white summer shirt covered in lemon images is the clearly expressed trend.
So, if you know someone—or see someone on the street of your town—wearing a white shirt or dress covered in lemons, it might just be that they’ve been to Positano.
The flip side of this, of course, is the price. No matter how simple or even banal these dresses, shirts, or hats may appear, buying one often requires budgeting hundreds of euros.
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