The Island of Capri

After my busy week at school with extracurricular activities and work from my classes, I was ready for more traveling. This weekend, my destination was Capri. All my roommates except Lizz were going on the trip, and I was just excited to see this beautiful island that everyone keeps telling me about. We had to be up even earlier than the Tuscany trip- we met at school at 6 AM this time, instead of 7 AM, meaning we had to catch the bus from our apartment by 5:30 AM. I'm still working on becoming a better morning person, but I definitely needed to go back to sleep once we boarded the bus to Naples. You're probably wondering why I was getting on a bus to Naples, but we had to take the ferry from there to reach the island. It's about a 3 1/2 hour drive from Rome to Naples, so I was all ready to go once we arrived in "Napoli," known for pizza and coffee. Since it was 9:45 AM, we decided to try out the coffee. We went to a coffee bar not far from our meeting point and I ordered caffe freddo (coffee with ice) along with a cornetto (crescent). It was not as good as I had expected, but Robin, my roommate, ordered a cappuccino and she said it was the best coffee she's had in Italy so far. Now it was time to board the ferry. My stomach had already been bothering me that morning, and the weather was not all that great. The water was kind of choppy and so the boat was rocky. I was NOT looking forward to my first ferry ride. I decided to just lay down and try to take another nap to get my mind off becoming sea sick. Somehow, I survived and made my way slowly off the boat. It was still an overcast sky and the water was rough, meaning we couldn't take a boat ride that day or do anything involved with the water.

We checked into the Hotel San Michele. Our view of the island was awesome. Even with the cloudy sky, we could see the blue water and the rocky beaches. The island itself is so beautiful because of all the rock formations with the green terrain. It's a different form of paradise than I'm used to envisioning, but I would definitely call it paradise. The water is so clear, but at some places it's so deep that the color looks purple. From the island, you can see three different cities: Pompeii, Sorrento, and Naples. After checking in, we decided to go to Anacapri, which is not the top of the island, but closer to the middle of the island. We ate lunch there, and I had ordered fish because we were on an island! It was OK, not the best I've ever had, but now I had some energy to walk around and shop! There were lots of shops there, selling limoncello, a licquor native to Italy, but especially Capri because lemons naturally grow here; they also had souvenir shops, places where they would make personalized sandals, and much more. We walked around the shops and decided to ride the chair lift all the way to the top of the island for some awesome views. The ride up was a little bit scary, but I survived. It was like a ski lift, but it was only for one person. After that, we decided to take a bus down to Capri, towards the bottom of the island. There were more shops down there, which were definitely more expensive designer stores like Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton, and even Swarovski. Because we were so cold from our lift ride and the chilly, dreary weather, we decided to get some hot chocolate and pastries. This was my first hot chocolate in Italy, and it tasted so good! We relaxed at the hotel before eating dinner there. I kept wishing that the weather would be nicer on Saturday.

Well, Saturday came and my wish came true! It was a gorgeous morning as we ate breakfast at the hotel with the awesome view of the island. Our AUR chaperones, Stefano and Kathy, decided to pay for everyone to take the chair lift to the top of the island. Even though the ride wasn't that fun, I was ready to see the view from the top of the island without fog and too many clouds distorting my view. And it was absolutely amazing!!! I can't even describe how the rocky island looks from atop. The water looks so blue and you are able to see the three cities clearer. I was not ready to leave the island; I was ready to explore some more!

So explore we did! After the chair lift ride and taking lots and lots of pictures, we rode a bus down to the port. It was another windy road and made me a little nauseous. Thanks to Shelby for always having a portable pharmacy with her- I was able to take some TUMS before we got on a boat. Everybody that's been to Capri says that you have to go see the Blue Grotto. Well, they weren't taking any boats to that Grotto because the water was just a little bit too rough. But it was safe enough to take a boat around the island and to any of the other grottoes. So Robin, Shelby, and I had taken the bus with some other AUR students and they wanted to take a boat ride as well. For 12 euro each, a man took us out on his boat and let us relax while we saw the island. We didn't ride all the way around the island, but we saw the place where Odysseus was probably seduced by the music of the Sirens (from Homer's The Odyssey). We saw the White Grotto and the Green Grotto and there was lots of coral near the grottoes. There were so many caves along the coast of island. Our boat driver even anchored the boat for about 20 minutes to let us jump off and swim in the beautiful water. I could see my feet in the water as I was swimming- it was that clear!!! It was so blue and really salty and a little bit cold, but it was so worth it. I wished that I could swim near the Green Grotto and dry out on the boat every day. This trip was definitely more of a vacation than a field trip. The boat tour lasted about 2 to 2 1/2 hours and the waves started to get choppy as we ventured back to the port. Good thing I took my TUMS so I didn't get sea sick. After drinking some lemonade (so good in Capri because of the fresh lemons) and eating a delicious pizza and some really good peach gelato for dessert, we rode the bus back to our hotel to grab our bags. I wanted to buy some limoncello before leaving the island, so we did that before taking the bus back down to port to catch the ferry. I decided right from the beginning just to lay my head down to avoid getting seasick; and it worked! I snuck a little half hour nap in before getting on the bus to go back to Rome. There was a lot of traffic and the trip seemed to take longer than 3 1/2 hours. I had such a relaxing day that the traveling was not going to bother me one bit- and the next day I would be seeing Gwen and Kristen, my friends from Robert Morris who are backpacking through Europe and are stopping to visit me in Rome!