The 50 kilometer stretch along Italy’s Sorrentine Peninsula is stacked to the mountaintops with the brightly colored facade of hotels, restaurants, and residences, covering up what lies just beyond the surface of one of the most beloved tourist destinations in the world.

You see, it is not the staggered pastel buildings lining the cliffside that demanded my abiding love for the Amalfi Coast. The dazzlingly blue ocean lapping up against the rocky shore is enough to make one’s heart beat a bit faster, eyes open slightly wider, but that too was not the sole reason why I still remember the place so fondly.

Upon a bead of further curiosity, I found alcoves which opened up into hidden villages, quiet, average lives, and an abundance of hushed contentment. There was something remarkable about the ordinary things hiding just beneath the garish extraordinary: a closet-sized pizzeria where two stocky, friendly faced chefs utter “No English” but speak a thousand words with a smile; where wide, gradual steps grow narrower between buildings, behind whose walls children grow up unaware that their home is quite possibly heaven; where roads feel miniature and the pedestrians like ants in a maze.

Possess a spirit of inquiry. You will find the shell of this common tourist destination peeled away, revealing the coastal region to be a normal home, albeit abnormally breath taking.

You will remember dining at a trattoria that seems to sit precariously at the edge of a sheer cliff, and you will remember walking winding steps that lead you further and further into an ever-expanding world living just beyond the postcard-esque surface. Most importantly, you will remember the quiet you find there.

You’ll remember the quiet thoroughfares just wide enough for two old women to walk side by side with grocery bags. You’ll remember purple flowers overflowing a window-side basket, and the way the sunlight finds its way down to peek through even the narrowest of alleyways. The sounds of tourist life– spring breakers, honeymooners, travel tour-ers– will have dissipated to such a degree you may wonder if you’re still on the same stretch of land. There will be new sounds, hushed sounds, familiar sounds.

Sounds of a place that is a home.