Carmelo and Raphaela

Following Rick Steves' recommendation, we hired a taxi-van driver to take us around the Amalphi coast sites. Saturday we had Carmelo as our driver; 71 originally from Northern Italy, he was a talker extraordinaire! We settled in the van sitting 3 across the back (me, Teddi, and Martin) with Marty up front, bearing the brunt of the conversation—which actually started out with instruction. Acknowledging his broken English, Carmelo had a spiral bound laminated set of news articles, describing everyone who has ever visited the Amalphi coast. While he drove down winding roads, he selected pages and pressed them into Marty’s hands, asking Marty to read them aloud, noting that famous people throughout history have visited Sorrento: Julius Casear, Cleopatra, all the Roman Emperors, Tolstoy, Goethe, Lord Byron, Sophia Loren has been to Amaphi coast, the pope has been to Amalphi…on and on.

Carmelo selected another page for Marty to read to us; a clip from a reporter who mentioned him as a “charming tour guide.” Carmelo just beamed. Then suddenly he realized none of us had said anything for 30 minutes—“Am I too much talking?” he asks—“do you want less talking?” We didn’t answer—and bless his heart, of course he was incapable of not talking. So we settled in and listened to Carmelo’s commentary.

He really was a sweet old fellow who grew on us quickly. We smiled as he drove slowly and carefully on these incredibly windy roads—and talked. When cars or scooters passed him, as they often did he gestured and said, “Piano, Piano! Only save 5-10 minutes!” He is mourning the end of tourist season, only weeks away, then everything will close up until about March. During off season, Carmelo goes to the biblioteca several times each week to learn more history to share with the tourists.

Carmelo outlined our next trip, scheduled for Monday, and mentioned the fabulous buffalo mozzarella cheese at a very nice tratoria where we would be visiting. This got him talking about his wife, Conchetta, who was big like Sophia Loren, he gestured, we got the picture. Conchetta makes wonderful pasta, she was originally from Sorrento, that’s why they’ve lived here for years. Somehow Marty got a word in near the end of our day about Steyers originally being from Austria. “Osterich!” exclaimed Carmelo. “The king of Osterich has been to Sorrento!” He was so excited and determined to show us proof from his laminated pages, that he pulled over to the side of this narrow road on a hillside and paged fervently through his selections. We roared, it was so funny! We left the car laughing to ourselves about Monday and another day with this character.

We were surprised on Monday to find that Carmelo was not back—rather, his son, Raphaela was our driver. He was the counterpoint to his dad’s chatter, a quiet, thoughtful person, who was the spitting image of his father 30 years younger. Raphaela explained that his dad was tired, he’d driven to Rome on Sunday, so he sent Raphaela instead. This young man was delightful in his own way. He’d driven Rick Steves around last April when they were making a new DVD on the Amaphi coast—so if any of you happen to see it on PBS, the driver is Raphaela. The weather when they were filming was terrible. They only had one nice day, so Raphaela drove the coast 12 hours that day, which was exhausting and nerve-racking. And those of you who know California’s highway one—narrow it by 50% and add medieval walls…that’s about what it was like on these roads. We had a glorious day, so lovely. We joked about Carmelo’s “Piano, piano” with Raphaela. These two drivers will remain in our memories as part of the local color that brought the area to life for us.