The Australian

After Michelle and I had fought parking traffic all day in Positano and Amalfi, we finally sat down to a 4pm lunch (and cappuccino for me) at a cafe bar in Amalfi. This cafe also had wifi, which was key for us to get to our next place to stay for the night. We were planning on visiting the town's duomo, but after a lengthy conversation with an Italian man about the view from the cemetery (and whether or not we wanted him to take us there), we headed up the long staircase to the top of Amalfi's hill.

We had done hundreds of stairs that day, so we stopped as soon as we got high enough to see the sea over the town--better for sunset pictures. As we were taking in the view, a man coming down the staircase asked us to take his picture, which Michelle took. He was Australian, and his name was Marc (with a "c"). His camera was legit, and he was traveling around Europe for three weeks while on some paid leave that tenured teachers get in Aussie land.

The three of us chatted while he took sunset shots of Amalfi, spoke of how starved we were for fresh English conversation (He told us, "This is the longest conversation I've had with anyone for the past week."), and decided it only made sense that we eat dinner together. We learned a lot about our Australian friend at dinner. I'm talking a full-out sharing session. But hey, it's nice to know he felt comfortable around us. We heard about his childhood antics of ding-dong-ditch and "millennium trolley" (something about a padded shopping cart flying through a fence in the year 2000). We discussed his DJ-ing job and all the stereotypes that he breaks in that line of work. We talked about his Catholic upbringing and study abroad in Rome while at a Jesuit high school. We heard the more personal tales, too, like how he and his girlfriend ended it after five years (really disheartening). Then we got to the really important stuff like how Justin Timberlake is fantastic. Fantastic. Then we found out that it was his birthday the next day. And while Michelle loves birthdays so much that she has a special birthday hat at home, Marc hates celebrating birthdays and wouldn't even let us pay for his meal. And we spent a large part of our first conversation wondering what he was talking about. For instance:

"Do you put tomato (toe-MAH-toe) sauce on your chips?" "You mean, do we put ketchup on our fries?"
"How true do you find it to be that men go to bars looking for love making of the one-night variety?"
"Making out. Ha! We say 'sneaky pash.'" "How do you spell that?" "No one spells it; it's slang."
"What's your camera doing down there? Are you upskirting me?"
"The back of the car is the 'boot' and the front is called the 'bonnet.'"
"Your brands are Adidas (AH-dee-das) and Nike (like "Mike")."
"It looks like algae (al-ghee) on the rocks."

We took a stroll about the city at night and almost witnessed Michelle's death. Marc wanted to get some shots of the moon (Did I mention photography is his primary hobby?), and so we walked down the pier. A man in a blue windbreaker appeared to be sleeping against a fence while two men whispered nearby. Marc passed blue guy. I passed blue guy. While Michelle was passing blue guy, I heard the windbreaker rustle and turned to see blue guy sprinting toward Michelle. He passed her, grabbed a fishing pole, reeled in his line, unhooked a fish and threw it into a bag. It sat there wriggling in a plastic bag for a few minutes while we realized that Michelle was still alive. Scary. I haven't seen someone move that fast since I was on the dunes of Morocco.

Michelle and I had so much fun with this guy with no apparent agenda that we decided to drive five hours completely out of our way the next day to hang out with him in a city built into rocks. It's unlike us to go chasing a stranger across the country, but it really just came down to whether we wanted to see more of the same on the coast or do something new and fun with someone new and fun. Good news! It was ultimately a good decision, and we're getting postcard-worthy photos of the Amalfi Coast--as well as photos from many of Marc's travels--in our inbox sometime next week.


Matera is awesome. If you get a chance, I recommend it. We didn't get to see inside any of the house caves because Michelle and I had places to be that evening, but we hiked and saw some pretty cool formations. We definitely weren't dressed for hiking, however. We tripped and slipped often, but we so enjoyed our unexpected day! At one point we had a group hike going on with people from Finland and San Diego because of our welcoming Australian friend ("No one hates Australia," he told us when he met us.) On our drive onward that night, we were so grateful that God had given us an opportunity for a new adventure. Thanks for the invitation, Australian friend!

Check out some of these pictures of Matera: