Lemons, and the art of staying put

The Amalfi coast punishes ambition. The road is a beautiful argument between a cliff and a bus timetable, and every attempt to see it all converts a holiday into logistics. We arrived with a list of eleven towns. On the second morning, on a terrace under somebody’s grandfather’s lemon pergola, we crossed out nine of them, and the trip began.

Staying put is a skill, and it is harder than moving. Movement always feels like progress; a new town daily is a rosary of arrivals, each one briefly indistinguishable from achievement. But stay a week above one village and the place begins to admit you to its routines. The greengrocer starts setting aside the good tomatoes. The beach attendant stops charging you for the second umbrella. You acquire, without ceremony, the only status worth having anywhere: the person who came back.

A new town every day is a rosary of arrivals, each one briefly indistinguishable from achievement.

What a week in one place buys you

• The second visit — to the trattoria, the cove, the bar — which is where every real welcome starts.
• Shopping for lunch instead of hunting for it.
• The hour after the day-trippers leave and before dinner, which is the coast’s entire secret.
• Lemons, obviously. From the tree, with leaves, given not sold.

On the last evening the owner of the house came up the steps with a bag of lemons the size of fists and instructions for a granita that we have followed every summer since. Eleven towns would have given us eleven fridge magnets. Two towns gave us a recipe, a friend with a spare room above the marina, and the settled conviction that the itinerary is the enemy of the journey. We are not going back to see the other nine. We are going back to stay put again.