Naples to Sorrento and Positano: Private day trip

Main attractions

• A clifftop town of lemon groves, Liberty-style hotels and Neapolitan baroque churches perched above the Tyrrhenian Sea on the southern edge of the Bay of Naples — the views across the water to Vesuvius from the Villa Comunale gardens are among the most celebrated in southern Italy
• The old town lanes around Piazza Tasso reward slow exploration — limoncello distilleries, inlaid woodwork (intarsia) workshops and century-old pasticcerie occupy the same medieval street grid that has defined Sorrento since the Aragonese period

What to eat

• Gnocchi alla sorrentina (potato dumplings baked with tomato, mozzarella and basil) — the dish the town claims as its own; limoncello gelato from any of the old-town gelaterie

The Amalfi Coast’s most photogenic village tumbles down cliffs in a cascade of peach-and-pink houses. It’s Instagram-famous for a reason, but secret corners remain.

Main attractions

• The most vertical town on the Amalfi Coast — a cascade of pastel-coloured houses, bougainvillea terraces and ceramic-domed churches tumbling from the clifftop corniche road down to a small pebble beach; the view from the water looking back up at the town stacked against the cliff is the defining image of the entire coast
• The Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta on the seafront holds a 13th-century Byzantine icon of the Black Madonna — the spiritual anchor of a town that otherwise exists in a state of beautiful, unhurried excess

What to eat

• Scialatielli ai frutti di mare — fresh broad pasta with mixed seafood, invented in the Amalfi Coast and at its best in Positano's seafront restaurants; delizia al limone for dessert