Villa La Patrice - Positano, Italy (9/24/16)

To get to Positano in time to meet the caretaker, we need to leave Milan at 6:15 which means that we have to up by 4:45...of course, the fear is that we don't get up in time....but all was well, and we got to the Frecciarossa Train, with enough time to get Cafe Americana, orange juice, and cressant from the cafe in the Train Station...there are no smiling Italians at 6:00 in the morning.  The train goes 250 mph,  so our journey was fairly short to Salerno where we caught the ferry to Positano.  We called the caretaker..."make sure you get a porter for your bags, and take a taxi."  I thought the villa was fairly close to the harbor. "No, it's 400 steps away."  We took a taxi, and the porter charge us €10 extra because of all the steps.

The villa is ridiculous...absolutely immense...with nothing where it should be.  The first room we enter is the pizza oven room, then the piano room, followed by the TV room, followed by the dining room.  Upstairs are four interconnecting bedrooms...there is a shared veranda, but inside the house, you have to go through all three bedrooms to get to the fourth.  The views are magnificent and Deb and I spend half an hour picking our favorite room, and working on our rational for taking it.  By the time the Hinkley clan arrives, we have most of the details resolved.

We went to the local grocery store to find Spaghetti and Tomato Sauce and a loaf of bread, to have a nice little family dinner with the Hinkley's...the first of several that evening for the Hinkley kids.