In Amalfi with no Pradas

When I was a student my favourite film adaptation was 'A Room with a View' and my favourite chapter title was 'In Santa Croce with no Baedeker'. In the chapter Lucy loses her chaperone, Miss Bartlett, and ends up in the cathedral, Santa Croce without a guidebook to advise her which are the very important Giotto frescoes and which are not. There she has the start of an unsuitable romantic encounter.

E.M Forster's description of the foibles of Edwardian travellers in Italy has crept into my mind a few times over the past week as I am in Italy too. I'm not in Florence but in Sorrento. However, I'd love Forster's archness when writing about British tourists here. They are all discernible by their dress: why is it that as soon as a Briton leaves the country they believe that they need to wear khaki trousers with a multitude of pockets and ugly walking shoes? Just to walk round a city? And why must their handbag be traded for a rucksack and a litre of water in one hand? The rebellious part of me has chosen a gorgeous and impractical blue Italian handbag for the daytime and I've been wearing cute sparkly sandals and proper clothes. Do I look Italian? No. Do I look like I should be on safari rather than walking down a shopping street? I sincerely hope not.

But travelling in Italy is sometimes quite like becoming single again. There are a lot of reverses and alterations which you just have to deal with. One day we set off to visit Amalfi and instead visited Positano and then came back. Yesterday, we planned to visit Amalfi but there were 300 people queuing for a bus that carried 67 so we wandered Sorrento and sunbathed instead. Today we planned to visit the Archeological Museum of Naples but when we got to the station all the trains were cancelled so we ended going up to Amalfi finally. Due to the notorious nature of Naples we had emptied our bags of mobiles, cameras, credit cards and cash and were only carrying the bare minimum. However, our diversion to Amalfi meant I turned up in one of the most chic locations on earth wearing 5 euro sunglasses rather than my beautiful, and thoroughly cherished, Prada sunglasses (I'm not telling you what they cost - suffice to say BOTH of my last cars were traded in for a substantially lower sum...). I'd pictured myself wandering around Amalfi in my fit black dress, sparkly sandals, gorgeous handbag and Pradas. But that was not to be. However, I have to say that life is what you make it and I completely loved the town even if I was in Amalfi with no Pradas, which is just a modern version of being in Santa Croce with no Baedeker.