Capri

This morning fit onto the up-and-at-em’ category with a 7:00 am wake up call to run. My dad and I ran the same trail as yesterday and just turned around earlier, finishing with a four mile run. My calves and quads certainly felt the two very, very hilly runs within 12 hours. When we got back to the hotel I took a quick shower before publishing by blog from yesterday because the wifi didn’t work last night. Next, we walked to our hotel’s breakfast buffet, but we found nothing that we could eat so we returned to our bungalow for some bars, fruit, and rice cakes for breakfast. At 9:00 we arrived at the meeting point for our boat tour to Capri. I was very proud of my self for running, publishing my blog, eating breakfast, AND arriving at the meeting point on time, which I didn’t think was possible.

When we boarded our boat we were among the first people aboard and wisely picked a seat next to a window with a clear view to the front of the boat. This, my mom insisted, is what kept her from getting sick on the boat after forgetting her dramamine. The ride over was a bit rocky with a few stomach-in-throat drops, but it was over all smooth. We got to port roughly an hour later and decided to join. a small tour our boat offered. Everyone in our group spoke Italian but us, however our guide translated everything he said into both languages so it wasn’t a problem. Our tour bus took us straight to the town of Capri away from the Marina and our guide surprised us by saying about 13,000 people lived in Capri and about 15,000 people arrived everyday for day trips. That blew us away and we contemplated the idea of so much tourism as we got off of the bus in Capri. Our guide led us to a small garden in which he said there was one of the best views of Capri. The view was certainly amazing and I’m sure it is at least in the top ten views of Capri. After marveling for a bit and snapping lots and lots of pictures we left the garden and my dad stopped on the path back into town for some lemon gelato. Lemons seem to be Capri’s thing so getting Lemon sorbet was fitting.

We walked back through town to get to the bus and looked into the windows of a few stores. When we arrived at the bus we departed with Anacapri in mind. Anacapri is the other town on the Island of Capri. It’s a bit less run down by tourists, but it is still swarming with them. When we arrived we had lunch at a restaurant recommended by our guide because it was for locals, which I do not believe. At least half of the people eating inside we in Korean tour groups and most of the other tables were full of tourists speaking in English. Never the less, we sat down with another woman from our tour. At the beginning of lunch she told us she spoke almost no English, but after a few minutes we discovered she is from Argentina, so we communicated in Spanish. I was tired and not awake enough to try to understand he accent so I stayed pretty quite and enjoyed my delicious pizza while catching little snippets of vocabulary words.

After lunch we headed to a nearby chairlift, suggested by our guide, that took us to 500 some meters above sea level for an amazing view. The ride itself provided an amazing view of mainland Italy and Capri, but I found it a tiny bit lonely on the one seater chairs. It was also really weird to ride a chairlift in flip-flops and shorts when my feet are typically glued to skis. When we arrived at the top we of course took lots and lots of pictures and enjoyed the view. We could see three pretty rock formations just off of Capri and the water below where many boats was anchored was clear enough to see to the bottom. After 20 minutes of staring in awe at the perfect water and coast, we headed back down the chair lift to return to our bus. The view was just as good down as it was up and we could enjoy it even though we were cutting it close on time. When we did arrive at the bus we were 5 minutes late, but that isn’t terribly bad after being on time this morning.

Our bus took the group back to the Marina and we had some time to poke around there. I stopped in a few stores to find something for one of my friends and then we walked down to the beach. It’s a rock beach just like Nerano, but its waves were bigger, though still small. We took, you guessed it, more pictures with our toes in the water and faces in the sun.

The time passed rather quickly and we walked back to the docking area. We managed to slip past the lady corralling people from our boat, per our guide’s instruction. This was we were in the Marina with the rest of the people who took our tour when the boat came. Other passengers of the boat were still outside the Marina so we got onto the boat first and the best seats for taking pictures, not getting pukes on, and for preventing my mom from getting sick. The boat took us the long way around the island so we got to see lots of the coast and even go under a small arch in the rock formations in our boat. The views we saw were absolutely beautiful but when the boat returned to Nerano I was happy to be off of the boat. This was mostly because I was exhausted and had fallen asleep in an uncomfortable position on the boat, but the nap was well worth it.

We returned to our hotel and Hannah and I each read for a bit, went through our 287 pictures from the day, and blogged. After a take out dinner from the hotel restaurant we all settled in for the night.