Positano is one of those postcard Italian coastal villages. The bowl shape and colorful buildings are so picturesque.

We first visited Positano in 2009, staying then for ten days. 15 years later the only change is a lot more people.

After a history as a trade center dating back thousands of years Positano transformed itself into a tourist mecca in the 1950’s. Author John Steinbeck helped, famously describing it as a “dream place” in a published article. Other authors, then lots of famous people, followed.

Positano still has a huge number of steps, and no elevators. We rented a very Italian villa with a stunning location. It is the pink and white villa right in the middle of this photo to the right of the larger mustard colored one.

Our villa was 256 steps from the beach, and 92 steps up to the main road. A round trip to the shops and restaurants involved at least 400 steps plus a fair amount of sharply uphill walking. Easy going down, bit of a chug going up. The villa spanned three stories, with the living level on the bottom floor. Our other couple commented that they registered 16 flights without leaving the villa on the day we “stayed in” just to enjoy it.

The lesson for this postcard is travel while your hips, knees, back and feet are good. We had a blast, and really enjoyed it all. All of the steps helped counter the always amazing Italian food. We have just met too many people that waited too long to travel, and then could not tolerate or enjoy places like this.