Beautiful Capri!
Today we started our morning off in beautiful Amalfi with the free breakfast provided by our hosts. Free breakfast makes all the difference in travel. If it is a buffet style like I had in Milan then you can generally even forgo lunch if you stuff yourself enough. Here it is a way to reduce lunch, generally cut costs, low stress morning meal, and a great motivator to start your day early as they only serve breakfast from 7:00-9:15.
We had breakfast and immediately headed for Amalfi to catch our ferry. No I hate boats. Anyone who knows me well knows I hate boats. I get completely sea sick and even on cruises I can feel the ever present “motion of the ocean.” Ew. Anyway this ferry was supposed to be like an hour or so I thought but actually ended up being like 2 hours as we not only stopped at Positano simply to pick up some of those “come buy our VIP island package” people but we then did a scenic route around the entire island of Capri which was cool, sure, but completely unnecessary, time consuming, and I hate boats.
Once we Finally got to the island of Capri we got assaulted by the usual “need a taxi” “boat rides” “private tours” aka no thank you. As we were trying to catch our barring one man in particular who claimed he was a local did pique our attention with a private boat island tour for 140 euro total (a great discount from the 190 normal price!) with refreshments as well as free lemoncello (the local lemon infused alcohol). This ran us approximately 47 euros each and after we were then approached by a similar “private tour” of 25 for 40 euros and no drinks we decided it was a steal. Little did I know (and I’m now fairly convinced) this was a phenomenal deal. Two girls in our hostel before paid 100 euro each for a similar tour with 12 people on the boat and the taxis were 100 euro a day to get around the island. Insane.
The guy had a really nice little boat and we were able to sit up front while he drove us around the island, serving us drinks, and telling us all these little fun facts about the island and the history and the culture around Capri. It was a real luxury and a real treat and I'm so glad that we decided to do it. We just had fun, took an obnoxious amount of photos, saw the beautiful island coast line, and relaxed.
The island has a population of about 12,000 but around peak season nearly 20,000 tourists a day arrive and flock the island. I should add here again how much I hate boats. I was able to suppress this motion sickness for about an hour and a half but as we finally neared the shore I was not feeling good.
I’m going to take a moment and say that the wifi in the place I’m staying right now is literally so bad that it is such a pain and a hassle to add photos right now. I can’t even access my website right now because the internet down so I’m writing this in “Text Edit” right now so I can copy paste it later. I’m going to post all of my words now because I can but it will be until Monday or Tuesday until I can upload the pictures so check back.
Anyway back to Capri. Capri is a beautiful island, when it was first found, the Roman’s thought they had found literal Mount Olympus where the gods lived and stuff and they really weren’t that wrong. The place is beautiful. It has two cities, Capri and Anacapri and is quite a lovely place. It also has a place called the Blue Grotto which is a little sea cave that apparently lights up from the sea water to be a beautiful luminescent blue. If you’re curious I suggest googling it because it is quite pretty and I definitely didn’t stand in the 2 hour Disneyland level line going down to it. Also I was just done with boats.
We instead opted for a light lunch in Anacapri where I had a delicious lemon, creme, and shrimp pasta. It was wonderful as is all the food here and reasonably priced which is not quite as common. This area can charge what it wants in general and I have considered myself lucky that they haven’t been jacking up the food prices. A decent pizza shouldn’t run you more than 10 euro and I can usually find pasta under 12. Now have I stumbled upon a million places with appetizers in the 20’s and 30’s oh yeah. But luckily everyone has a good enough view that that hasn’t been too restricting.
The real estate though. Here’s a moment to note that. Staying on Capri, Positano, or anywhere really along Amalfi that isn’t specifically Atrani will run you anywhere from 200 at the low end to well over 600 a night for a room. They don’t mess around here. The nicer the view, the more you get, etc, you can easily pay over 1000 a night to stay in this area. It is amazing how much money they have going through this community economy and I am just thankful that they have enough places for people like me who want the beauty without the crazy expense. My hostel here is a kind $35 a night (plus free breakfast) and they have public transportation (the crazy busses) for quite cheap around 1.00-2.40 euros one way.
The busses on Capri were similarly priced but so freaking packed it was insane. More on that in a moment. After lunch we decided to do the gondola which takes you to the highest point on Capri in about 10 minutes and you have a wonderful view of the entire surrounding. We took some photos of ourselves and then helped a long line of tourists who found us extremely helpful with their photos. It honestly was nice too because once we were helping everyone then people were willing to patiently wait and then everyone got the best shot with no elbows or random people in the background.
I like helping people take photos, it is so important for memories and infuriating when you ask someone to take your photo and they either take only one, or are simply awful photographers, can’t figure out your camera, or somehow get their finger in the shot while taking it. And there are just awful photographers. I don’t even get it like. Do I look centered? Is the photo completely tilted? Can yo SEE the background? DID YOU EVEN LOOK!? I’m going to go ahead and label it a pet peeve. Or those people who take one and walk away. Like do you think I’m going to look good in one shot? At least take two in rapid succession in case I blink. It’s an iPhone not E.T. Like knock knock, have you heard of our lord and savior zoom, angles, and the touch screen picture taking button?
Anyway. We helped people. They’re welcome.
After our fun tour up the mountain it was already somehow almost time to go. Time on that island seemed to fly by. It was actually pretty impressive. We took a public bus back down to Capri and that was quite an ordeal. For 2.50 you can get from Anacapri down to Capri. A taxi will run you A LOT more so we waited in line for the bus. They don’t mess around though on Capri and we were jammed into what I assumed was a full bus. I was wrong. The three of us were put on the steps. I had one step and a glass door I wasn’t so sure about between me and miles of terrifyingly steep and curvy roads and a bus driver like all the other drivers in the area who was clearly an anarchist. I was the only one of us three facing the crowd of people who didn’t make this bus and a few people smiled, laughed a little with pity, and waved at me. I felt like I looked like a sardine being put behind bars… They seemed to think it was funny and like I’m sure I looked comedic to be fair.
The ride down was reasonably terrifying with me pressed up for dear life holding onto the only thing I could hoping not to tumble out of the door on the wrong angled curves which the bus driver I swear did not break for. When we finally got out we did some walking through Capri proper and I saw a beautiful dress I liked which ended up being 650 euros. And Prada. So needless to say I didn’t buy it.
We walked down a beautifully set of stairs down the mountain essentially to get back to the docks and boarded our ferry for home where we set off for Ravello by bus. I won’t get too much further into it until the next post because that will have a ton of photos (eventually) as well as a lot to say so I’ll cut this one for now. So much to say!