Travel Guide: Procida / Pastel Island

A colourful gem in the Bay of Naples

So you fell in love with the screen-adaption of Patricia Highsmith’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley”, featuring the debonair duo Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law. Paltrow’s stylish summer-white clothes and impeccable hair, Law’s skin lightly bronzed under his 1950s-styled shirt, the two walking in the narrow streets of Positano. You knew that eventually, you would be doing the same, dressed in the same kind of Mediterranean chic.

One day, it’s finally time. You travel to Naples, and from there, you continue towards Positano, eager to see the pastel buildings and go for boat trips on its clear-blue water. But when you finally arrive, it doesn’t look at all like you had imagined it would. The town is noisy and over-crowded, a claustrophobic tourist-trap of the worst kind, far from the slow and laidback weekend you had been envisioning. Regardless of time of day, there is an endless stream of rude tourists, all looking for the perfect Instagram-angle before they move on to the next town. Instead of…