Salerno: the charming and affordable gateway to Italy’s Amalfi coast

The ferry from Salerno to Amalfi takes about 35 minutes, and we spent the crossing debating whether to risk the windswept top deck, fearful our packed lunches might fly into the Tyrrhenian Sea. My father and I had taken a pragmatic approach to our holiday—light midday meals to save room for primo and secondo courses at dinner and ample lemony desserts—and as the boat sped across glittering water the Amalfi coast slowly unfurled, incandescent with charm.

From the sea we could see the crawling traffic on the narrow cliffside roads and felt grateful to have a sea breeze in our hair and coffee in hand instead of white-knuckling tight hairpin turns. Salerno sits just under the Sorrentine peninsula, about half an hour south of Naples on the fast train, and proved an ideal base for exploring the region.

From here it was easy to jump on trains to inland sites such as Pompeii and Paestum, or to catch ferries to every town along the Amalfi coast and beyond to Capri and Sicily.

Italy, Salerno

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