The Amalfi Coast: A Tale of Moving Forward
Me with Two Hands on the Wheel of a ’67 Spider, Eyes looking to the future.
It was not my first time—in Italy—but the first time after.
After one of life’s curveballs with teeth, one that knocked the air out of everything I thought I understood about myself, about love, and permanence. After waking up and finding the mirror didn’t show me a stranger, but someone I’d ignored for too long. A man out of step with his own pulse. That was me. And at close to 50 I was starting over.
My budding new life looked very different from the old one, more authentic yet complicated, exciting yet frightening. Facing the fear head-on, the plan was to arrive in Naples, rent a 1967 Alfa Romeo Spider—red, loud, and unrepentant. It felt right. If I was going to look at my life, really look at it, I wanted a good view, and the Amalfi Coast seemed like the kind of place where things reveal themselves. Slowly, then all at once.
This tale begins with the road. The old one—SS163, Amalfitana—slung like a rope between cliffs and sky. The Alfa Romeo, red as sin and just as moody, coughed when cold and purred when warm. Wrestling the wheel and feathering the brakes through those cliff-clinging hairpins is no Sunday drive—but that pulse-quickening struggle is half the seduction. If you’ve got the nerve to tame one of these rolling works of art (and everyone should, at least once), begin your love affair at Spider Lifestyle: https://www.spiderlifestyle.com/en/
We started in Positano. The town clings to the cliff, pink and yellow houses stacked like forgotten postcards. Women in linen walk barefoot to cafes that serve espresso as bitter as the sea winds. We take a room by the church of Santa Maria Assunta, and at night laughter rattles off the tiled alleys. At dawn the lemons hang heavy, bright as the July sun.
At first light we fired up the Spider and chased the sun. The road wrapped around the coast like a lover—irresistible, dangerous, thrilling. Steering was like threading a needle at seventy kilometers an hour, cliff to one side, rock wall to the other. Vespas passed us like crazed Texas hornets.
Next came Praiano. Strangers met our gaze with a candor that felt ancient. We tore into silver-skinned anchovies and chased them with rough red wine that tasted like half-remembered summers. In a patchwork of afternoon shade, old men slapped down cards like the world had quit bothering them. Then we slipped into the sea so glass-pure it became a mirror, and in its fathomless blue, I caught a startling glimpse of my future and who’d I’d share it with.
Amalfi itself was chaos and charm, in uneven parts. The Amalfi Cathedral looked like Byzantium got drunk and fell in love with Romanesque curves. Tourists swarmed. But I forgave them. We were all looking for something. Damned souvenirs, gelato, forgiveness. I found none of those in Amalfi, But we met a woman—old, sharp-eyed, dressed in black. She called me foolish for the car. I told her it wasn’t mine. She said nothing ever is. I wanted to take her picture, but didn’t. Some faces deserve more than film.
At night, we parked on a cliff above Maiori and watched headlights snake through the dark. The coast makes you sentimental. It strips you down, the way the sea does—pulling you in, then pushing you out, changed.
I’ve driven hundreds of other roads. Slept in towns that tried to forget me. But the Amalfi Coast carved itself into me—like a scar that chose its shape The old Spider didn’t purr. It howled, and the cliffs howled back. The Tyrrhenian roared like it had something to prove, I listened. I let it. We didn’t belong there but we fit. And I’d go back in a heartbeat—just to remind it we still fit.
