My Brilliant Vacation

January 8, 2018 8:13 PM

I would love personal recommendations about relatively inexpensive but not grungy places to stay (from towns to actual lodgings) in the Amalfi coast this summer. Travelers are a mother/daughter pair (middle aged/teen) who do not want to drive.

Wants: safe, easy to get places from lodging, clean, pretty. Need not be fancy.
Any other Amalfi or other southern Italy ideas welcome. Flying in and out of Rome, and will stay in Rome about 5 days. The whole vacation is for two weeks.
Grazie!

posted by velveeta underground to Travel & Transportation around Italy, TX (5 answers total)

Train or fly to Naples and take a bus, which is what I did, the art hotel Galleria Umberto was great at about $100 a night. The popular places might be crowded, but still plenty to see on quieter isles like Ischia and frankly around Napoli itself without a car. PM me for details. Sorrento is glorious, Positano like a postcard. Vesuvius is easily reachable by train.
posted by OneSmartMonkey at 9:18 PM on January 8, 2018 [4 favorites]

If Positano ends up on your list and depending on your threshold for relatively inexpensive, you may want to keep an eye on Hotel Posa Posa's availability. They have a no view room that we scored for around $160/night last year at the end of spring, beginning of summer. They have an unattended pool deck on top of hotel that we commandeered as a very large wine drinking balcony to make up for the lack of view.

Not reasonable to stay at, but to visit... the Villa Cimbrone in Ravello has a great garden for wandering with yet another set of unreal Amalfi views.

I can't speak to the non-driving options as we kept a car for both day trips and getting in and out of the region, but almost invariably I saw the ferry recommended as the most economical and lowest hassle.
posted by minedev at 10:42 PM on January 8, 2018

We stayed in Atrani, the little town in the next cove over from Amalfi and loved it. Small and quiet, and a very local/nontouristy vibe, but within an easy walk to Amalfi (half mile?). From Amalfi, you can get buses all along the coast.

A'Scalinatella had very reasonable prices, which are hard to find in this area.

Napoli is great, but I wouldn't use it as a base for seeing the coast. I strongly recommend staying on the Amalfi coast.
posted by mkuhnell at 8:28 AM on January 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

This was back in 2007, but I found Mami Camilla to be clean and quiet and it is just north of Sorrento. The smell of the lemon trees was so nice.
posted by soelo at 8:36 AM on January 9, 2018

We stayed in Sorrento and did day trips via bus: Positano, Capri, Amalfi, Ravello. Not having a car was not a problem at all. We stayed at the Hotel Sorrento Experience, which was ok, but the regular host was away and the person he had running the place was a bit chilly.
posted by basalganglia at 5:30 PM on January 9, 2018