After five minutes in a kayak, the first thing you realize about the hubbub of beachgoers, scooters, and tour buses is that it is a localized phenomenon. Out on the water, the Amalfi Coast is not merely a collection of hotels, restaurants, and patio umbrellas—it is seriously mountainous, and human habitation occurs only where it can achieve a toehold. In between the villages, for miles at a stretch, there is nothing but cliff faces capped by green hills, the odd deserted beach, and crumbling fortifications, sentinels from a time long past.

Midway into my first day of paddling, I came upon a lemon floating in the water. It had succumbed to bloat and was well beyond edible, but it was still yellow enough to look appetizing. I pointed it out to Federico and suggested that it must have fallen off somebody's yacht during cocktail hour. "No, Mark, they grow them," he said, and pointed. The top of the next hill was bushy with lemon trees in fruit. We paddled close to land just beneath them. I thought I would find more lemons, but the tide was going out and the water had begun revealing the tops of rocks bearded in black mussels. I looked at the mussels, considered the lemons, and thought of lunch.

Around the next corner, the town of Maiori conveniently came into view, its pastel houses sitting jubilant and pretty on the beach. Two hundred yards to our left, a fisherman was drifting in a boat, rod in hand. We paddled over to say hello. "How's the fishing?" Federico asked in Italian. "It'll pick up in September," the man replied. (It was the middle of April.) Federico asked about a good seafood restaurant in Maiori. There wasn't one, according to the fisherman, who, perhaps not surprisingly, hailed from the competing town of Minori. (Minori, on the other hand, had a very good seafood restaurant, to which the man sold his fish.)

We paddled over and pulled our kayaks up on the beach. The restaurant, Il Giardinello, had all the makings of a tourist trap—a fabulous patio and a sign boasting that it's been around since 1953. The patrons, however, were all speaking Italian, which is a good sign even when you're not in Italy. Federico ordered scialatelli, a fresh pasta, with shrimp, mussels, and clams. He offered me a taste, after which I considered making a cash offer for the whole bowl. A moment later, my own lunch arrived—a bowl heaped high with mussels and lined with wedges of lemon. I had watched lunch grow as I paddled. Now I was going to eat it.

The first inhabitants of the Amalfi Coast showed up around the fifth century. They didn't come to be near the Mediterranean so much as to flee the barbarian hordes who were sacking Rome. Ever since, people have been after the same real estate: the transitional area where the sea licks the land, a doodling band rich in beauty and suggestive of an erogenous zone.

Europeans are particularly afflicted. Each summer, they arrive at their hotels and perch on sun chairs facing the shoreline. The perch can be anywhere—a balcony, a beach, a patio—so long as the orientation is toward the sea. They stare into their books and steal glances at the deep-blue yonder. At lunch, they move to an outdoor restaurant with sea views, then head back to their beach towel or lounge chair.