7/19 After a night sweating to death in my tent cabin I was ready to go somewhere. I decided to take the excursion to Capri that is offered at the camp for 25€. I was at the beach to meet the boat and was all by myself. I wondered if they would run the trip if there were only a few people. I needn't have worried. About 50 or 60 German high school (I think) students showed up so it was me and all of them.

When I saw the boat I thought there was no way we could all get on it but we did . Leaving the camp we had a nice view of the coast which is almost entirely cliffs. The excursion took us around the island of Capri (it's small, only 4 miles by 2 miles). There were just massive cliffs everywhere. That's one reason Capri was made famous as the vacation hideaway of Roman emperors Augustus and Tiberius starting in 27AD; there's only one point of access for the island.

Probably the most famous attraction on the island is the Blue Grotto. We sailed by and saw the chaos as hundreds of tourists transfer from their boats to little rowboats so they can enter the grotto. Often it is closed because rough seas close off the small opening. As it is you have to lay flat in the rowboat while your rower pulls on this chain to get the boat through. It's quite a spectacle.

Rick Steve's calls Capri a world class tourist trap. I'm not sure it was that bad. The first thing everyone needs to do is pronounce the island (and city) correctly . It's
KAH-pree, not kah-PREE (like the pants).

We were dropped off at a little marina where we then took a small shuttle bus into the town of Capri. There's essentially one long road on the ridge of the island that is the main drag. In Capri, it's compared to Rodeo Drive. I didn't stay long.

I wanted to visit the Blue Grotto so I had to take 2 more busses to get there (isn't that crazy to take 3 busses to get somewhere on such a small island?). Driving is ridiculous on the island. The roads are barely wide enough for one car and there are tourists walking everywhere. The tourist busses can hardly negotiate the switchbacks and there are a lot of 3 point and 5 point turns. In some places you can't even believe they built a road since you are way up on the side of a cliff (major Dramamine territory).

At the Blue Grotto you walk down lots of stairs to get to the sea. We had a little wait but the rowboats would come over and pick up 2 or 4 tourists at a time . There were maybe 20 rowboats and lots of people waiting on larger boats. You pay 9€ to go in plus a tip to your rower. He sang O Sole Mio a little bit since I guess it's a little like Venice.

Once he pulls you through the 2 foot opening you are in this huge cavern. There were 10 boats inside the cavern which was about the size of a standard school. You row around a while looking at the brilliant blue color of the water. The unique colors are created when the sun hits the limestone inside the cavern (I'm sure Lee would have a more scientifically precise explanation but that's what our rower told us). It was all very cool and worth the effort.

I took the bus back into Anacapri (the other town on the island) and took the chairlift up to the top of Mount Solaro (1900 ft.)which is the highest point on the island. The lift takes 12 minutes each way so you had plenty of time to enjoy the amazing views. You could easily see Mount Vesuvius which looms over everything around the Bay of Naples. At the top you could literally look down the cliff at the sea. The island is just amazingly vertical.

I walked around town some before meeting back up with the group to board the boat back to Sorrento. The boat guide continued to point out features of the island including a house where Eisenhower and Churchill met near the Faraglioni Rocks. We sailed through a small natural arch which was very neat.

Capri, despite the gazillions of tourists, was quite fun. The sheer geography of the island plus a couple of good attractions made for a nice trip. It was also easy since it is so close to Sorrento.