Capri - For cruise ship junkies

  Anacapri, Italy
Wednesday, June 7, 2006

When I was researching the ferry schedule for Capri from Naples, one of the hits was a guy who found it, and I quote, "grotesquely difficult" to get there. I am happy to report that it really wasn't even a little bit difficult. (I'm kind of curious how he made it so hard.) We did have to walk back and forth between several ticket windows at the marina until we found the appropriate company (Caremar), but that was it. And in the parking lot a small girl on a bicycle, complete with training wheels, asked if we had any money, presumably to give her. As she was well-dressed and had the aforementioned bicycle, I don't know if her parents even realized that they may need to give their daughter the "Do not hang out at the marina and ask strangers for money," talk.

The ferry to Capri was a little disappointing, because the only outside seats were on the back of the boat, where all the smoke was going and where the view was only so-so. But it was only a 75 minute ride and not actually unpleasant, due to the lovely sunshiney weather and the view behind us of Naples. Once we got off at the town of Capri, we looked around for a place to drop off our bags. Everyone at the station assured us there was such a place, just go to the shop that sells scarves. We thought there might have been a communication barrier, but we walked into a shop that sold scarves and china, and, sure enough, the lady had a back room that kept luggage for people. We almost left because of a huge sign over the bags reading "18,00," and we assumed it meant 18€ a bag. Nope. It meant she closed at 6pm and looked at us as if we were fools. Which we sometimes are.



We caught the bus up the side of a cliff to Anacapri, the other town on the island of Capri, feeling superior at the way the other tourists gasped whenever we were so close to the edge of the road that we couldn't see the guard wall, or when we came only two or three inches from a vehicle coming down. We know from buses.

Anacapri was very similar to Capri, except a few fewer tourists. Capri not only gets the tourists that manage to blunder their way there, like us, but it gets cruise ships disgorging passengers in droves of hundreds to spend their two hours frittering away time. It's one thing to make the honest effort to get somewhere (even if it's "grotesquely difficult"), but to just get dropped off? That's cheating. After a very brief time wandering, we found the lift to the top of Monte Solaro, and managed to arrive at the *exact* same time as one of the groups from a ship.



The twelve minute chair lift ride, though, was definitely worth it. Once you were in the chair, you couldn't really hear very much other than the wind blowing through the trees and vineyards on the island, and the nearest other tourist was twenty feet behind you. That was really the only time on Capri where I could see how people fall in love with it. I took so many pictures, trying to capture something of the experience, but I fear all I really ended up with are twenty nearly identical pictures looking out over the sea to Naples.



The schedule for catching the last ferry to Sorrento was kind of tight, so we grabbed a fast pasta for lunch (it was very good) and went to wait for the bus back down the mountain. The first bus down was so full that only two people could get on, and we were about nine people back in line, so we didn't make it. We watched the cruise ship buses drive away and started checking the time and discussing getting a taxi, expensive or not. We really didn't want to be stuck on Capri overnight. Finally, another bus pulled up, slightly less packed. People started filing on, in some semblance of order, except some girl from the back of the line, who tried to "permezzo" past all of us and get to the front. She was in the process of physically shoving me off the step of the bus when Sarah put her arm on the guardrail so the girl couldn't get past. So the girl started trying to move her arm. All of us and a small dog ended up with a corner to stand (the dog sat) eventually, but we have no idea why she felt she was so very special. Because she was Italian and half the line wasn't? What did the other Italians think of her?

We easily caught the ferry to Sorrento, with time for a gelato first, and found the hotel, an old convent in Sant'Agnello, with minimal problems. We only walked the wrong way for maybe a kilometer and got on the wrong bus once. From the outside, the convent is a lot more run-down than the surrounding buildings, but it's pretty nice inside. High whitewashed ceilings and an orchard out back. When we walked up Sarah said, "Of course it's us. It's the dilapidated one." True that.

The only thing open around our convent was the Moonlight Ristorante, so we went there for supper not knowing what to expect. It was so good we nearly made our way through the entire four course meal. We ended up doing only three courses and an appetizer, but we think with practice and less bread we could have made it. The fruit was superb and the bread was the best we've had in Italy. That was probably the best watermelon I've ever had.

Of course, with dessert we had a cappuccino (I'm so unclear on how to spell that. Does it have two c's or not? In English it does, but some of the Italian menus only have one.) so we were up for hours. We decided the best activity around was to explore the five hundred year old convent. In the dark. After finding the crypts under the building and seeing something moving down in the garden and realizing there were two entire floors of the convent that had no obvious doors, we found out the slogan on the church that it belongs to reads "Relief in suffering" when translated. Creepy. Since we'd scared ourselves enough already, we stopped poking around and started getting ready for bed. The final straw, though, was when I was down in the foyer area by myself typing email and I heard a funny squeaking/scritching sound from the window next to me, and while I was turning my head to look, it slammed violently shut. Though I am logically aware it was either A) the wind or B) a cat, I nearly jumped out of my skin. After that, I huddled under the covers reading until I could sleep. No more eleven pm coffee for me.



Capri was, in summary, not spectacular. It had charm, particularly in the less-traveled areas, but nowhere that can really absorb the tourists, like bigger cities could. We didn't see any beaches nearby, but that's not to say that other places on the island didn't have them. I'm sure it was pretty pre-cruise ships, but as a fellow tourist, there's only so much I can complain about them. (Even though they definitely cheat.) I'm reading a good book I picked up in the Naples hostel right now about a similar topic related to American tourism and media in the East. It's called "Video Night in Kathmandu," by Pico Iyer, and beside making me want to go to Indonesia, it points out the hypocrisy inherent in wanting to freeze a spot "as you remember it." Will give a final rating when I'm past the first essay, but, so far, it's spot on even though it was written twenty years ago.