Hey, Neighbor

From lounge chairs on the beach or hilltops in town, Praiano shimmers by the sea. (Nicole Cotroneo - Nicole Cotroneo)

If you want to shop for expensive ceramics or boutique clothing, you take the bus to Positano. When you get your fill of high-priced drinks and crowded streets, you return home to Praiano.

American or British?

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Praiano is a vertical town connected by long, steep flights of stone steps and long ribbons of sloping roads. Every resident we met advised us to rent a scooter, but Phil and I didn't listen. The narrow, winding roads with their stomach-churning curves and sheer precipices were daunting enough. The prospect of maneuvering them on a glorified bicycle while playing chicken with motorcoaches was not our idea of taking it easy. We would hoof it or take local buses.

After two days we had it all figured out. If we wanted to go to the lower part of Praiano, where the restaurants, shops and a beach are located, we usually walked down Via San Giuliano, a "street" made of a gazillion steps that connected lower with upper. Down was easy. Returning to the villa was another matter.

Our first evening in town, our heads dizzy from several cups of espresso and a few glasses of limoncello, we made the climb from Via G. Capriglione -- essentially Main Street -- to the top of Via San Giuliano, stopping at each landing to give our burning thighs a rest, to bring our breathing down from a wheezing pant. After that, we vowed never to climb those steps again.

Praiano folds itself around a vertical ridge that extends upward from Capo Sottile (Thin Cape). To the right of the cape is Praiano proper, mostly a residential area with some hotels and restaurants. To the left is Vettica Maggiore, a hamlet of Praiano, although I only heard residents refer to it as Praiano. Life on the Vettica Maggiore side converges at Bar del Sole. Though bars in Italy usually serve coffee, this one also serves alcohol. It's in front of the cathedral so you can first confess your sins, then skip across the street to commit them.

During the 2006 World Cup soccer tournament, it was the place to watch the games. Our first evening in Praiano, we enjoyed an excellent fish dinner at La Brace, a restaurant perched over a pharmacy, then walked down the street to the bar for espresso and a nightcap. The place was alive with people gathered around the television, cheering, shouting and waving their hands at the screen. It was a match between Italy and the United States.

"Okay, if the U.S. loses, we're Americans," Phil said. "If the U.S. wins, we're British."

The next morning, when I walked into a nearby grocery store called La Euro Frutta, manager Salvatore De Lucia asked me if I'd watched the match. The game had ended in a tie, so I decided it was safe to be American.

Salvatore, in his early 30s, is married to an American and speaks English quite well. I walked to his store every morning. It was down the road from my villa, past a bronze statue of Padre Pio (a popular Italian priest, canonized in 2002) that I saluted every morning, and just around the ridge on the Praiano side. That first day, as I looked over the vegetables, Salvatore advised me to hold off because he'd receive new vegetables tomorrow -- these were from yesterday.

That kind of generous honesty was common in Praiano. When I was peering into the frozen fish bin at Maria Sorrentino's butcher shop, she told me about the fresh seafood market in town. Like many shops, it had no sign out front. You had to follow your nose or ask a friendly person where to find it.

On the Rocks

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My kitchen was small, with a gas stovetop, an electric-blue refrigerator with matching toaster oven and, happily, a dishwasher. The rest of the villa far exceeded my expectations.

La Sovrana looks as if it has been there for centuries, yet it is only a few years old. Separated from owners Luigi and Ana Pane's house by a small courtyard with a lemon tree, it has tile floors, lovely architectural details such as crown molding and sweeping archways, and an open floor plan. The bedroom's French doors open to a flagstone patio, where we drank espresso in the morning under the shade of an olive tree.