One woman's opinion, but I definitely would not recommend someone learning how to drive a stick-shift on the Amalfi Coast.
I think I'm a pretty good driver having driven throughout Europe many, many times. Our first trip to Italy for 2 weeks in 2002 was pretty uneventful (1 wk- Carpedium Roma, 1 wk-Le Barchesse Di Villa Corner near Treviso). We put close to 2,000 miles on our rental car and went everywhere. Awesome trip!
But our last Italy trip in 2006 (1 wk-Carpedium Roma, 1 wk-Residence LaFerreria) the traffic and driving was absolutely horriffic -- nothing like what we had experienced 4 years earlier. We were constantly wedged in like sardines, but the flow of traffic is like 100 km/hour. Sometimes on the autostrada when there are 2 lanes your direction, they drive 3-across & sometimes even 4-across. It's like our Mario-cart game on the Wii, totally insane, crazy. Makes driving in Manhattan (which I have done) look like nothing! Driving into towns is also crazy, insane as no one has patience & they're all cramming in, so you have people literally driving 4 inches from you trying to squeeze by. I could not even count the number of times we had to fold in the side mirror to let some idiot pass. It ended up really making the 2nd Italy trip very stressful for us. On top of just trying to find your way, find a place to park (another huge & expensive pain), find a place to eat, find a bathroom, etc.
After 10 days of driving in this insanity, I was side-swiped by someone in opposing traffic while both of us were going around 50 miles an hour. Their driver side mirror hit my driver side mirror & in an instant -- POW --- everyone in our car (our 2 girls are in the back seat) are suddenly covered in little shards of glass. Over all our clothes, in our hair, in our skin -- but we can't stop driving because there is no where to pull off without plummeting into a ravine. Ten minutes later we are finally able to pull off to the side of the road. What a nightmare. At least we were fine, but the car was no longer lockable with the driver's window missing, & my driver side mirror was dangling alongside the car hanging by one small wire. So, we drove it to the nearest National/Eurorent office at the Venice airport. They billed the 1,000 Euro deductible to our credit card and 2 hours later sent us on our way with a fresh, new car -- but my nerves were shot, and my poor husband had to drive the remainder of the trip.
We were supposed to spend the last 5 days of our trip on the Amalfi Coast, but the La Ferriera Residence timeshare office helped me with calling & explaining we had been in an accident & planned to stay in Tuscany. They even let us stay the extra nights in the 2-bedroom unit we were in at a good rate (130/night?) and the hotel in Amalfi was kind enough to not bill us for being no-shows.
Having spent a week on the Amalfi Coast many years ago, I very vividly remember the hairpin turns and steep drops. I had an Italian train/bus pass, & used public transit to travel from Rome to see Pompeii, Capri, Positano, Ravello,and all the little towns along the Amalfi coast. I stayed in the town of Amalfi & there was very frequent bus service to Sorrento which is the largest town with the best night life. In 2006, our travel plans for this 5-day Amalfi coast side-trip were just to use the car to get down to the area, then park the car at the hotel, and use ONLY public transit or taxis. Even when I felt most confident about driving in Italy (before arriving), having seen the terrain previously, I never had plans to drive the Amalfi Coast. The roads are too narrow. It's too steep. There were not good guard rails. Plus, all the backing-up to let buses pass, business. And it's not just backing up a little bit --- it requires driving around steep cliffs in reverse sometimes for fairly long distances. I remember watching the cars do it when I was riding the Amalfi bus previously. Not for the faint of heart!! And certainly not a good idea for someone who just learned how to drive a stick shift, or has a fear of heights.
Since I now have my own traffic-accident-in-Europe story, I can't believe how many others I've heard since then. A fellow teacher at my school had her rental Mercedes totalled by a drunken Frenchman who ran a stop sign at 10am on a Sunday morning. I think that we were actually very fortunate that only our mirrors collided. Six inches more and it would have been a head-on collision going 50 miles/hour and that would have been REALLY, REALLY bad. In that split second *POW* when we were all covered with tiny shards of glass, my entire family could have DIED.
I count the 1,000 euros as the price of a lesson learned. No more risky driving adventures for me. That was 2006, and the up-side of that has been that our foreign vacations have been far more relaxing without the rental cars. We still rent cars in the US. But outside the US, we stay near where we want to be, so that we don't HAVE to rent a car. When we need to go somewhere farther we take a bus, a train, a taxi -- whatever. I actually think we're spending less, because the foreign car rentals & insurance were getting rediculously expensive, anyways!
--- Rene