Driving the Amalfi Coast: Everything Nobody Tells You

<p>The SS163 Amalfitana is simultaneously the most beautiful and most terrifying road in Europe. Carved into limestone cliffs above the Tyrrhenian Sea, it connects Sorrento to Salerno via 50 kilometres of one-lane hairpins shared by tour coaches, Vespa riders, and the occasional flock of goats.</p><p>Our advice: hire a driver for your first day. Watch how locals lean on the horn before blind corners, how they fold mirrors to squeeze past buses, and how they park by millimetres on village streets so narrow the church bells seem close enough to touch. On day two, rent a Fiat 500 yourself and join the chaos.</p><p>Stay in Ravello, not Positano. The former sits 350 metres above sea level, away from the day-trip crowds, with villa gardens that look down on the entire coast. At dusk, when the tour boats depart, the towns below fall blissfully quiet.</p>