You Only Know What You Know

Have you ever done something to help another person and ended up with an unexpected benefit? That happened to me while on a trip with three of my cousins. Although the Amalfi Coast was not in my ‘bucket list,” it was in my cousin Tim’s. At dinner one evening he mentioned, “Too bad I won’t get to see the Amalfi coast when we go to Pompeii.” (Amalfi shoes I knew. The Amalfi coast not so much.) Some recollection niggled in my brain, however, so I set out to research options to see if there was any way my cousin could get to check off the Amalfi coast on his bucket list. Sure enough, the ship offered a shore excursion to the ruins of Pompeii plus the Amalfi coast, including a boat trip to view its 50 kilometers or so of coastline from the Mediterranean Sea. A consultation with the ship’s concierge and us four cousins had new tickets. Turns out, that visit to the Amalfi Coast and to the town of Amalfi itself, ranks right up there with several other of my all-time favorites. I might have missed it—because you only know what you know