Sleep one town over

Positano is gorgeous and Positano is a scrum. The fix is not to skip it but to sleep somewhere quieter and visit on your own clock. Atrani, a five-minute walk from Amalfi, is a single tiny piazza and a beach the day-trippers never find. Praiano has the sunsets and half the price.

You will see Positano. You just will not wake up inside the crowd.

Move by water

The coast road is a beautiful, nauseating crawl in summer, and the buses are full before they reach you. The ferries are the secret: faster, cooler, and the only way the coast looks the way it does on the postcards — from just offshore, gold in the late light.

Plan your days around the ferry timetable, not the map, and the whole trip relaxes.

Early, or late, never both

Pick the famous thing you most want — the path of the gods, a lemon-terrace lunch, Positano itself — and do it at seven in the morning or six in the evening. The middle of the day belongs to the crowds and the heat; give it to a long lunch and a swim instead.

Do that for a week and you will wonder what everyone was complaining about.