Positano

L'avventura turistica vs. la città slow: i.e. real life or just a myth created for tourists: Did you know that Positano is actually a member of the so-called Italian comuni (Towns) that define themselves as slow? Città slow is an extension of the Slow Food Movement. Being a "slow town" is (should) not be just a slogan to attract even more tourists, but these towns have to fulfill certain criteria. 

• Towns need to have fewer than 55,000 inhabitants.
• Fast food outlets and neon advertising are banned.
• Walking and cycling paths must be at hand.
• Restaurants serve typcial traditional dishes, made from the freshest local ingredients.

This sounds like paradise, especially if you are living in a big hectic city and in bad need for escape. Currently, in Italy there are 70 "certified slow towns" that adhere to these rules.

Positano's scenery certainly fulfills the criteria for "città slow"

Still, it is quite an avventura to keep alive this laid-back style of life with direct approach to natural resources like fresh air, food, vegetables, direct access to the sea. And the avventura is of course to keep a balance between the thousands of visitors Positano gets every day, compared to its capacity of beds availability. Positano has been "adopted" by so many visitors as second home to which they are assiduously returning whenever they can (and think of it ...). 

How can Positano withstand this challenge of constant tourist influx?

Waylaying just another tourist, come rain, come shine ... ???

Still, Positano can only survive this ever ongoing onslaught of visitors only if succeeding in keeping up its unique setting, nature, plants and trees, olive and lemon gardens, and luxurious vegetation. So tourists will keep flowing in, but it might help making them "conscious" visitors "expecting quality of life" which in this spectacular setting they will encounter without any doubt. This is what this blog would so much like to contribute to, not just "another blurb on the coast". The blog is a concept laid out for quite some time, starting with the more general aspects but going VERY much into the detail later on. Nothing to be read by il turista sfuggente.

Positano seem to share in this respect (overload of tourists) the fate of my home-town, Venice. As my other grandmother is from a small village on the Amalfi coast, I would like to finally include her and my mother's memories and experience of life here on the coast into this blog. Enchanted Positano means that all is available, all the pre-requisites of a frame to lead and to practice how to lead a fulfilled life, but we will see where the journey will lead us from here.

"Vita all'aria aperta, il camminare scalzi, vestiti di pezze dai colori sgargianti,  che fa esplodere nella fantasia dei turisti un nuovo (??) modo di vivere ... ed ebbe inizio l'avventura turistica del paese."

(Gabriele Cavaliere, La Costiera Amalfitana)