On holiday in the land of brilliant bay views, precipitous cliffs and adorable piazzas.

By Drew Limsky

The funny thing about the movie Under the Tuscan Sun, the unabashedly romantic, very loose adaptation of the runaway bestseller, was that its most intoxicating scenes didn't take place in Tuscany at all. When beautiful divorcee Diane Lane falls for an Italian charmer, their sunset clinches happen not in the northern countryside but quite a bit south, on the beaches and terraces of the spectacular Amalfi Coast. The filmmakers could have chosen to set those scenes anywhere in Italy. Hollywood chose Positano.

The low-lying beach town of Amalfi and the rarefied hilltop Ravello comprise, with Positano, a glorious trifecta of sun-kissed indulgence. After a winding, cliff-hugging hour-plus drive from Naples, I found an enchanted land of brilliant bay views, precipitous cliffs and adorable piazzas where each lingering lunch ends in a shot-glass of Limoncello. Here, everyone is animated, but no one is in a rush. Each passeggiata (evening stroll) brings a display of Italian kids with tanned faces that belong on ancient coins, flirting and licking gelato cones gingerly as not to drip stracciatella (chocolate chip) on their impossibly stylish sneakers.

Its entrance occupying a dip in the road between two steep rises, the town of Amalfi is my first love. With its lovely fountain, Moorish-style cathedral and pebbly beaches lined with colorful cafés, Amalfi offers the best people-watching south of Rome. From the piazza, the town crawls up a narrow gorge along a skinny street where cars, Vespas and pedestrians wend a path between shopfronts strung with garlic cloves, vine-ripened tomatoes and red peppers advertised as "Viagra Naturale." Windows are filled with enormous strawberries and dense, nutty pastries.

A few minutes from town stands the venerable 62-room Santa Caterina. I stayed in a cottage called Follia Amalfitana, which is accessed by a stone path shaded by orange trees and lemons that turned up in one night's memorable ravioli dinner. The bed was round and the Bang & Olufsen TV swiveled toward me by remote control. A huge Jacuzzi occupied a room with a glass wall framed by bougainvillea, affording a thrilling coastal vista, and a private terrace ran the length of the suite. I loved riding the glass elevator down to the sea, where sunning platforms and a saltwater pool awaited. It was early April, not even the first week of the summer season, but still I couldn't stop myself from diving in.

When it was time to leave, I hiked through town and up into the hillside, climbing age-old stairways that led to unexpected waterfalls and the stone ruins of 18th-century paper mills. A thousand feet above Amalfi sits Ravello's hotel Palazzo Sasso, dating from the 12th century, that has been visited by the likes of Virginia Woolf and Placido Domingo (and during my stay, by the actor Billy Zane, who stuck to the excellent spa). The hotel's tiered grounds are legendary, boasting numerous fountains, an outdoor swimming pool with underwater windows that look into the garden, a Japanese bridge and the sparkling Gulf of Salerno visible from teak lounge chairs. Be sure to ask for a room with a sea view—my deluxe suite (#304) was positively palatial.

My trip ended in Positano at Le Sirenuse, the resort celebrated by John Steinbeck after a 1953 visit. I don't know which siren call will bring me back: the fact I had one of only two rooms in the hotel decorated with antique Roman marble; that I took breakfast on my terrace facing the famous blue-and-yellow dome of the church of Maria Assunte; or that I had the best gelato of my life in a dining room lit by 450 candles.

Or this memory: it was late when I grabbed one of the hotel's fabulous, hooded robes and stole down to the pool deck. All was quiet except for the infrequent murmurings of a pair of honeymooners stepping out on their balcony. With only the half-moon and a row of friendly lemon trees for company, I luxuriated in a midnight swim. Soon I would wrap myself up in the canopy that hung from the corona over my bed; tomorrow I would awaken to the

7 a.m. trills ringing out from the church. But for now there was only the lightly lapping water and the spring night, on a lemon-scented terrace under the Amalfi moon.