Ravello, Again

I’ve never liked Amalfi. It’s a tourist trap, plain and simple. Packed piazzas, overpriced lemon everything, a coastline dressed up for someone else’s version of Italy. But the road past it, the one that climbs toward Ravello, feels like slipping behind the curtain.

You don’t rush it. The drive winds narrow and quiet. No Vespas chasing drama. Just stone, switchbacks, and an occasional van that makes you pull over and think. It forces presence, the kind you forget you need until it’s given back.

I’d done this drive before. First with my mother and sister. It was one of those light-filled trips where things unfold gently. No pressure. No proving. We didn’t do it for content. We did it because it felt good to move.

Coming back, I wasn’t looking for something new. I wanted to see what stayed.

And Ravello? Ravello stays.

It’s not about the view, though the view is there. It’s not about the gardens, though they’re worth slowing down for. It’s the energy. Ravello feels like it’s holding something. Like it’s paused just before something real happens. Not cinematic, honest. A tension you can’t photograph.

We wandered. We sat. We didn’t fill the time. The town didn’t ask us to.

Villa Cimbrone still stops you. The gardens still pull the breath a little shallower. But it’s the in-between moments that linger, a breeze through the corridor, music that wasn’t playing but felt like it might have been, light that knew exactly what it was doing.

This wasn’t romance. It wasn’t nostalgia. It was presence.
That rare clarity you only get in places that don’t need you to be impressed, they just let you feel something real.

You don’t go to Ravello for the list. You go for the space.
To remember that not everything good has to be new.
That some places don’t shout.
They just wait for you to notice.