Day 13 (Friday, May 26, 2023) - Naples, Italy, Celebrity Beyond 12 night Mediterranean Cruise

 Day 13 – Naples (May 26, 2023)

Our last port of call on this cruise was Naples. We had a tour scheduled today with Kensington but Tim decided to stay on board for this last day with Lisa so the tour was just Seth and I. It took a little while to find our guide at the cruise terminal – it was a bit of a madhouse with a ton of people getting off 2 ships, tour groups standing around, and tour guides holding up various signs. I walked back and forth several times for about 20 minutes before finally finding our guide. For some reason, even though I was the main contact booking all of our tours, our tour guides all had “Teske” on their signs and I expected this last tour to be the same but, no, of course, this time the guide had “Hodge” written on a sign.

We met our guide Carmen and driver, Antonio. We had been to Naples 15 years ago and did the Pompeii tour and enjoyed a wonderful homemade lunch by a family that grew their own olives, made their own mozzarella, and had a vineyard – we had high hopes for the same. Our first stop was Ravello – Carmen’s favorite town. We got to Ravello via the highway because Carmen felt that traffic was going to be really bad. In Ravello, Antonio dropped us off and we walked to the public square in Ravello, stopped to use the bathroom, and had some coffee and a breakfast roll at a small cafe.

We then walked across the square to the Cathedral of San Pantaleone, down the street to an overlook and then met up with Antonio and drove to Amalfi where we visited the town square and Duomo di Amalfi. This Cathedral was magnificent.

                            

We walked about half a mile to the far end of Amalfi where we had lunch at Lo Smeraldino. It was a nice day and we sat out on the balcony where I had pan-fried eggplant parmigiana cooked in a wood oven (so good!). I had a good amount of Seth’s octopus salad too. We shared the Linguine pasta “Afeltra” with fresh lobster and a bottle of “Per Eva” white wine. The food was really good but a bit on the pricey side.

After lunch, we drove from Amalfi to Positano and this is where the roads got really interesting. Huge tour buses battled with local city buses (also huge) to make their way in opposite directions on the narrow, winding roads that make up the Amalfi Coast. The scenery was gorgeous but I couldn’t imagine living in this area between the traffic, the tourists, and the crazy landscape. Antonio dropped us off after expertly navigating these teeny streets and we walked down to the beach. We had mentioned to Carmen that we needed to be back on the Beyond by 5:30 pm and it was already almost 4 pm by the time we used the bathroom and grabbed a Positano magnet. The drive back to the cruise terminal would take about 75 minutes (in favorable traffic) so we were worried that we would be cutting it close. Fortunately, there were hordes of people still getting back on the ship when we got back to the terminal and we still had about 20 minutes to spare.

We had dinner reservations at Fine Cut again for 6 pm. It was just Tim, Lisa, Seth, and I for dinner, though. Wade wasn’t feeling well. I had the arugula salad again which was delicious, shared a ribeye with Seth, and had the truffle fries. The food was delicious again and I didn’t feel super stuffed this time like I was the last time.

We returned to our cabins and had to pack. They wanted our suitcases outside our cabins by 10:30 pm for pick up. Our tag numbers were 2 and, being suite guests, we were invited to breakfast at Luminae and could disembark any time we wanted to after 6:45 am. Fortunately, I had brought along an Adventures by Disney duffel bag and we used that to put our overnight stuff in (Seth’s CPAP machine, makeup, Pjs, etc) to carry off the ship.

Next post:  Day 14 - Saturday, 5/17/23 – Civitavecchia to Rome