Capri, italy

​The next stop on our adventure is the glamorous island of Capri, Italy! After a 3-hour flight from Helsinki to Naples and a 50-minute ferry ride, we arrived to the gorgeous island that is famed for its rugged landscape, upscale hotels and shopping, from designer fashions to limoncello, and is a top vacation destination for celebrities. I can definitely see why!

The hotels are located at the top of the hillside and to get there you need to take a “funicular”, which is cable railway system. We arrived at the island at the same time as a cruise ship (or 3 apparently) and were crammed inside the funicular whacking people around us with our giant backpacks.

Oh, that’s right, I forgot to mention earlier that we decided to backpack this trip! We’d missed backpacking ever since our 6-month adventure about 8 years ago and thought this would be a great opportunity to do it again. We somehow used every nook and cranny in each of our bags and way over packed. What were we thinking?? We didn’t weigh our bags but I swear they are each over 50 pounds and I’m definitely going to need some massage therapy when we get back.. Lesson learned, next time we’ll cut out all extra stuff like shoes I’ll never wear, books Marshall won’t have time to read, and about twice the amount of clothes we really needed.

Once we reached the top of the hill on the funicular, we zigzagged through various streets and eventually found our hotel. It had an incredible lush walkway and we were really excited to check out our next room. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite ready so we dropped our bags off at the front desk and grabbed lunch at a restaurant next door called Villa Margherita with a great view of the valley and ocean. We both had a delicious pasta dish and a refreshing cocktail. Mine had some fluffy raspberry foam on top. Yum!

​After wrapping up lunch, we went back to the hotel to check into our room. It was a grand luxurious suite that felt like it was made for a queen. Seriously, this thing was like half the size of our house and had a patio with lounge chairs facing the gorgeous ocean views. Such a dream room! We changed into some cooler clothes and ventured off into the winding streets, window shopping at the ridiculously expensive high fashion clothing stores while smelling the perfume wafting from stores and dodging tourists with half melted gelatos. 

​After a few hours, we stumbled upon a bar called Capri Rooftop Lounge Bar that had breathtaking views of the ocean and cliff side hotels. The craft cocktails were also super unique. This is my kinda place! I had their version of an espresso martini that was clear at the bottom and had coffee foam on top. So good! As we were admiring the views and shoeing a few birds from our bread basket, a LOUD 60+ year old lady at the table next to us was talking to the two gentlemen with her about how she loved to dance on tables, lol. There’s a variety of characters around here, that’s for sure!

​We came back to our room and relaxed out on the lounge chairs on our balcony sipping on a bomb limoncello slushie that you’ll see all over the island. We both fell into a deep much-needed nap after only sleeping a few hours each night. That felt amaaaaaazing!
 
It then started to pour down rain so we ran back inside and just waited it out in the room until the rain cloud passed over. Apparently, it had been raining for like a month straight and the northern part of Italy had really severe flooding. Several of the locals told us how nice it was to have a clear day finally. We got super lucky with our timing to say the least!

Later that evening, we made our way to dinner at a nearby restaurant called ll Geranio. Once again, we both had tasty pasta dishes and some local red wine (I mean, when in ‘Rome’!) and spent the rest of the evening sipping wine watching the sunset over the ocean view. 

The following morning, we hiked up a steep alley to get to a little coffee shop called Caffe Manari for a fresh baked pastry and coffee. I ordered their version of a Frappuccino which was chocolate gelato blended with espresso and milk. Delicious!

We had a planned private boat tour for the day to explore the coastline of Capri and see the blue grotto that is a famous attraction in Capri. A local skipper met us down at the marina (fashionably late). We boarded his traditional wooden gozzo boat and set off for a 3-hour tour around the island.
 
The first stop on the tour was the blue grotto, which I was so excited to see! When we pulled up to it, there were a dozen boats waiting their turn along with a cliffside staircase stacked with tourists that had arrived from a tour bus. In order to go into the grotto, you have to wait for a little row boat to come by to pick you up and take you inside (half of the rowers had small cigars hanging out of their mouths – such great multi-taskers). After waiting about 10 minutes, our skipper told us that it will be another 30-45 minute wait…that is unless we bribe one of the guys on a row boat with 20 Euros. Dude, why didn’t you mention that earlier? There were like 100 people waiting…. Sold!
 
Our skipper whistled a special ‘hey, we got twenty bucks here’ whistle and a guy magically showed up at our boat in a jiffy. We hopped on his row boat and was told to sit on the very bottom, below the seats. The opening to the grotto is so low that we all had to lay down as flat as we could on the floor of the boat so we didn’t hit our heads. The guy had to pull us as fast as he could through the small tunnel while between waves. I can’t imagine what would have happened if he mistimed that. We’d have a flat smoldering skipper on our hands, that’s for sure.
 
When we got inside the grotto, there were about eight other boats in there and all the rowers were serenading their riders with classic Italian songs. They call it the blue grotto because sunlight passing through the underwater cavity shines through the seawater creating a blue reflection that illuminates the cavern. So majestic!
 
As we continued cruising around the island of Capri, we checked out the Natural Arch, Punta Carena lighthouse and several more caves along the way. This tour is an absolute must for anyone visiting Capri!
 

​When we got back to the marina, we walked over to a nearby restaurant called J.K. Place Capri for lunch. There was literally nobody there so we got the entire balcony and 3 servers to ourselves. They brought us lots of free snacks which seems to be common here. The drinks and view were amazing so we ended up spending a couple hours just enjoying the view and the experience until we had to leave to ferry over to the next town on our journey. 

​Before getting on the ferry, we needed to grab our bags at our hotel, which was at the top of the hill. So, we rode the funicular up to the main square, walked to our room, grabbed our bags and headed back to the funicular again. What we didn’t account for was the funicular line to be as insanely long as it was. We felt like we gave ourselves plenty of extra time, but it was so long that we didn’t think we’d make our scheduled ferry. Good thing we’re pros at getting our way around a line! We wiggled and edged our way through the crowd (with MASSIVE bags strapped to our back mind you) and ended up right near the front of the line. Heck yeah! I’m sure we got a lot of stink eyes by the folks we banged into along the way, but hey, at least we made the next funicular down!

By the time we got down to the bottom of the hill, we had less than five minutes to get to the dock, find out which of the 13 ferry terminals we needed to go to and get to the correct one in time. We stopped to ask an attendant who looked at our ticket, looked back at us and said, (in classic Italian voice) “It’s the last, uh, terminal, you better run!” We looked at each other, looked at the super long dock, and RAN. We booked it as fast as we could winding and weaving through the tourists getting off the other ferries…. with 50 pounds on our backs. But, we made it… just barely. Phew, talk about a close call!

We picked a seat on the top deck so we could watch the view as we ferried the 50-minute ride to Amalfi. We sat next to a lively couple from New Jersey in their 60’s who were on their honeymoon. The guy was a classic Italian jokester telling us all about his life story and how his family is connected to the Italian mafia. If his stories weren’t crazy enough, as we were chatting with them, a guy on a speed boat rode past us standing up and yelling WOOOOHOOOO …… totally naked!! I guess some Italians can’t handle their limoncellos, lol.

Although we were headed to Amalfi, we were actually staying in Positano that evening. We’d planned to take the ferry directly to Positano which is way closer to Capri, but the dock randomly closed for repairs that day so our only option was to take a ferry all the way to Amalfi and then take a taxi 30 mins back up the coast to Positano. Grrr, so inconvenient! When we arrived in Amalfi, we found a taxi pretty quickly and negotiated a whopping 100 Euro ride. The driver said he would get us to the city center and we could walk just 5 minutes to our hotel. What a deal… the ferries were still emptying and a bunch of tourists were starting to ask the only remaining 4 taxi drivers for rides, so we took him up on the deal and got on our merry way.

The roads were barely bigger than a one lane road, but somehow cars, trucks, and busses are all able to pass each other by getting an inch from each other and the guardrails ‘protecting’ you from falling a thousand feet to the water below. Definitely not for the faint of heart! After about 30 minutes, we could see that we were close to Positano but we started getting into some heavy traffic. Then all of a sudden our driver got a call and suddenly stopped the car…. What happened next is something we’ll never forget. To be continued on the next blog….