The day started in the usual way with a wonderful breakfast. This morning, she added a very tasty spinach pie that had a super flakey crust. It was excellent!!
We had walked about 1/2 way down the stairs to the beach when I realized that I had on my flip-flops rather than my Chaco sandals so I had to run BACK UP the 150 stairs to change shoes. But, in the long run, it was a good decision.
This morning we decided to take the ferry to the Isle of Capri. By the way, it is pronounced CAP-ree and not Cap-REE. Our original plan was to take a boat to see the Blue Grotto, but we realized that ALL of the tour boats and most of the people on our ferry were planning to do the same thing. Since only a few people are allowed inside at one time, we decided that we didn’t want to spend our day waiting so we started reading the guidebook to find other things to do.
The ferry ride was great and we passed some beautiful sights. This is the private island that was once owned by Nureyev……
and I loved these outcroppings…..
Our first views of Capri showed us an area similar to Positano, but not nearly as pretty…..
The town was completely full of tourists and I cant imagine what it would look like during the “high” tourist season. We decided to get off of the beaten path and try to find a place with fewer people.
We momentarily thought about renting a scooter, but decided that it was just a traumatic head injury waiting for a place to happen, so we looked elsewhere for out day’s fun. We had read that there were a set of stairs that led from Capri to Anacapri, the other town on the island so we started looking for it. We asked one of the scooter rental guys where the stairs (scala) were and he just shook his head and said “no….too far”. Not to be deterred, we went looking and found the entrance and started upward. There are 880 stairs to reach the top and we climbed every single one of them.
The lower ones were well kept and obviously traveled a lot, but they got wilder and less standardized as they progressed upward. It was interesting to see houses built along these paths as well and are still amazed at what they would have to do to bring home groceries…..
We passed a much younger British couple who also had the idea of climbing and had a fun discussion about how everyone at the bottom tried to discourage us from this endeavor.
Here is a photo that shows the route that we took….
When we looked at it from this angle, we were amazed to see exactly how far we had climbed.
Here are numerous photos showing the ascent…..I used the need to take photos as my reason to stop. And really, it had NOTHING to do with the fact that my chest was heaving and my legs were cramping!!!!!
We reached the town of Anacapri and found it to be pretty much more of the same as Capri….simply another tourist town with tons of shops and eating establishments.
We went into one church that had this interesting Majorca tile floor….
We decided that we had worked hard enough for one day so we caught a taxi back to the Marina Grande. But, this was no ordinary taxi……it was a open air vehicle and we had an enjoyable trip to back down to the beach.
However, it is always interesting when you meet a bus going the other direction…..
After that, we pretty much just ate our way thru Capri, stopping first for pizza, then again for gelato and finally for coffee and tea. While we were sipping our drinks we witnessed a “dust up” between two Italian drivers. We are guessing that there had been some sort of collision, but we really just enjoyed watching them both gesture as they yelled…..
We caught the 3:30 ferry back to Positano and enjoyed talking to two Australian women who were sitting next to us.
The bottom line is that I would not return to Capri…..it is just for tourists, but at least I can say that I have been there!!!
Oh, by the way, we have changed our itinerary so that we can stay an extra day here in Positano and will not move to Naples until Monday. This was the original suggestion of Salvatore (Michael’s colleague in Naples), but today we saw the wisdom of the idea……why should you leave paradise before you absolutely have to!!!!