There's no question that it's pleasant, but also a tad static. Those lucky enough to own yachts moor them a few hundred yards out, and they too orient themselves toward the land. An aerial view of the Amalfi in summer would reveal tanning bodies all pointing, like rows of radar dishes, at the coast.

All together, there are about fifteen miles of shoreline—sandwiched between the Bay of Naples to the north and the Gulf of Salerno to the south—and the Lattari Mountains hog almost all of it. Most people see nothing but the beach and maybe a marina or two, and spend the rest of their time walking around town. They adhere to the belief that they are visiting the Amalfi Coast, but it would be more accurate to say that they are visiting Amalfi's villages. As far as actual coastline goes, they experience very little.

The town of Amalfi stirs the emotions as well as any in Italy. There is a cathedral in the central piazza, which will come as a shock to no one, and this is where the heaviest crowds hang out, apparently unable to choose a direction in which to start their sightseeing. Closer to the water is the antique arsenal where, prior to the tsunami of 1343, eighty-foot galleys were constructed. The town has its share of curious shops, among them the oldest paper store in Italy, which supplies a substantial portion of Italian wedding invitations, and another that sells nothing but citrus. I went into one that deals in antique telescopes and wooden models of old schooners, where the owners constantly shouted at patrons to stop touching various objects. I bought a lure, paying roughly ten times what it would have cost at Wal-Mart. Federico and I threaded our way back through the crush in the piazza and then to the beach and our kayaks. I attached the lure to the end of my fishing line, and we launched.

As we set off, with the line stretched taut behind the kayak, I was firm in the conviction that a fish was both inevitable and imminent. After twenty minutes, I had forgotten all about it. Far to our left, a cruise ship was coursing its way up the coast, its passengers gaping at what they were able to see but not experience. Private yachts and tour boats motored by—too frightened by the prospect of a run-in with the sea floor to come closer than five hundred feet. Federico and I, by contrast, paddled near enough to the cliff face to strike a match.

Between Amalfi and Praiano juts a point of land called Capo di Conca, on which there sits yet another ruined fort. The experience of paddling around it is a heady blend of the historical, the natural, and the physical, and so the fish-strike caught me completely off guard. A panicked scream erupted from the stern of the kayak, and it took me a few seconds to realize that it was the reel, spinning madly and spooling out yards and yards of line.

I shouted, believing that Federico might somehow be missing the unfolding drama. He wasn't. He had paddled next to me and said, "Mark, wonderful. Mark, you have a fish." I battled the fish until it tired, and reeled in the excess line. Plunging my hand into the Mediterranean, I pulled out a silvery-blue specimen with big round eyes. Federico looked at it, smiled, and said, "Ah, sgombro."