As per a blog comment yesterday from a friend back home, a day trip to Capri transitioned from a consideration to an absolute definite and I’m glad we listened. We found an indivdual price for around 30 euros return by a shuttle boat which appeared to be the best price we could find. Speaking of average, that amount is close to exceeding my daily allowance but I was happy to relax my budgetary regulations for this special trip and push the boat out 😉
We made it to Capri quite early at around 10am ensuring we could stay on the island as long as possible. To further keep costs down, the plan was to eat as much at breakfast as possible therefore only requiring some snacks and fruit later on in the afternoon. These were tips my Mother instilled in us from a very young age – as was bringing stuff away from the breakfast table, hey Mother 🙂
This proved to work out well and it also meant we didn’t need to eat in Capri and instead eat back on the mainland. Speaking of breakfast, we had this lovely room all to ourselves this morning this morning! (The benefits of low season travel).
As such, the chef/owner also took it upon him to layout some food for us in advance. As you can see, I’m in turmoil as to where to start 🙂
So with our stomachs full, we had to get into Sorrento to depart from the port. Unsurprisingly we didn’t fancy that epic walk again and the buses weren’t amazingly reliable so it was time to ask about train travel. We enquired and were told by reception: ‘Just walk 10 minutes that way and you’ll find a station. The train will take you five minutes to reach Sorrento’.
‘Oh’ we both thought and laughed with a little embarrassment considering the marathon walk from the day before. Still, no regrets with that one-off as we saw and ‘felt’ so much of the villages prior to Sorrento. Mother, you realise you could have caught this from Sant’agnello too?
Sure enough, and after a very quick train ride, we were down at the marina awaiting sea transportation. Here is our view of Sorrento marina as were departing for the 30 minute cruise.
And here are our first images of having successfully docked on Capri island:
And here I reckon I’m beginning to pass more as a proper Italian each and every day 🙂
Speaking of which, I’ve just remembered from the Vatican last week one of the tourist mobsters asking me if I was of these nationalities and I repeat these in this order: Brazilian, Spanish and French. New ones to add to my ever growing ‘where’s he from’ list.
Our first hour on Capri island was a bit of a disappointment. This was because we were unprepared for the masses of business touts repetitively asking ‘Do you want to rent a boat for the day’! Fine at first but annoying pretty soon after. This initially tarnished my first impression of the island but thankfully this would be forgotten about later on.
Secondly we waited for another darn bus for 20 minutes before I saw the light and realised I remembered a word from my Naples travel – funicular. Anyone remember that? I described it as a vertical metro I think? Anyhow it was a train/tram vehicle that would transport us higher up the mountain. Indeed it did this and in less than a further 20 minutes, we were at Pizza Vittoria. We looked at out map and thought we could reach another marina on the other side of the island by foot especially as it was downhill. So we ventured on and were wowed by the scenery and the view for the next hour:
And now a popular attraction here named Faraglioni. Essentially this means a stack of coastal rock and these well known ones off the short of Capri are a cracking view from distance. They offer boat rides out here but we politely declined but fair play to those that went out to visit these. Still, what a sight!
Here are a couple of my other favourite shots – I hope you like them.
When we were finished down at the marina we had a dilemma as although there was a bus that did come down here to take tourists back to the top, we new this would be another lengthy wait simply because of the amount of people in the queue – let alone how long it would take the bus to return those few times. Instead we ‘did it well’ and asked the approximate cost of a taxi from a nice restaurant owner and to ring for one. Prior to that I had found us two more Brits to share the 20 euro cost and so each of us were more than happy to pay 5 euros to promptly get us back to the top and we did so in style with an open-top (shade provided) taxi. This is the taxi, our fellow Brits and us on the way up enjoying the good life on the way up. Needless to say this makes it in as a top-tip here on Capri.
Now back at the top of the island we walked along the nice streets looking into the nice shops. There were no touts up here and it was how this place should be! There was one other significant attraction which took our eye. Well, it was also hard to miss! Only a single seater chair lift to the top of Mount Solaro at nearly 600 meters high!
We made it up to the top but sadly it was overcast up here. Down at the bottom of the island it was still fairly hot but up here in the clouds it was hard at times to see through the heavy clouds and therefore I wasn’t able to take many decent pictures which was disappointing. Still, half way up and half way down I managed to grab a couple with some sunshine. Notice how the following pictures will get progressively darker and cloudier:
If you didn’t notice Kate in the last image, here are a couple more half way up our ascent:
We got back on the mainland around 5pm a little exhausted. It wasn’t due to the amount of walking we had done today but rather a build up of walking over the past few days. Well, weeks for me. I would say you could easily cover the vast majority of Capri in two days. Ideally you would stay over one night and therefore have two full days here but not a problem if you can’t do this. We even met people that had come over after midday and still left the same day! Each to their own and all that…
As were already at the marina we ate out and then walked back in time for our third cracking sunset in a row:
Leave a Reply