Positano from Spaggia Grande (main beach)

Another look at Positano but this time from the beach at the bottom. It looks as if steam is rising out of Positano. When you make it down to the bottom of Positano you are in the main town. There are lots of shops and restaurants to check out. We headed straight to the beach. It was another rainy day in Italy. It actually came down fairly hard at times. At one point we ducked into a restaurant for a snack and drink hoping the weather would clear after a few minutes. Chris and Karen spent a great deal of time scouring the beach for rocks to bring home and make some type of mosaic with them. I think they left with about 10 pounds of rocks. It’s amazing we made it through customs. I wandered around the beach taking photos of the water and cliffs.

Positano history from the Fodor’s book:

“It may have started with bread. Roman Emperor Tiberius, son of poison-happy Livia, sent his three-oar boat to a mill in Positano, understandably afraid that his neighbors on Capri would poison him. The (now modernized) mill still grinds healthful flour, but Positano is now more than just a grocery stop. Its name could be a corruption of the Greek ‘Poseidon,’ or derived from a man named Posides, who owned villas here during the time of Claudius; or even from Roman freedom, called the Posdii. The most popular theory is that the name ‘Positano’ comes from Pestano (or Pesitano), a 9th-century town by a Benedicine abbey near Montepertuso, built by refugees of Paestum to the south, whose homes had been ransacked by the Saracens.”