OK, so last time out, we’d gotten through our first night in Sorrento. Lacie’s napping, so here’s day 2 of the honeymoon (still no running, for those of you only interested in that)
On Monday, our first full day of no-travel honeymooning, we decided to visit the island of Capri. Capri is a small isle about 3km from Sorrento; it’s basically an extension of the Sorrentine pennisula, and has been a resort/vacation destination of choice for quite a while. The emperor Tiberius, in fact, retired to Capri (to the Villa Jovis, the ruins of which we didn’t see) after he left the throne.
How best to describe Capri? I think that if I could only descibe Capri well enough, I’d be one of the better writers working today. The island is fantastically beautiful - with rocky cliffs, forested hills, and scattered villas adorning its slopes (OK, so I guess I’m not one of the better writers working today. Take from this that Capri is more beautiful than I can possible describe). The two major towns on the island are Capri and Anacapri; both seem to feature mainly narrow streets, fast-moving buses, taxis, and scooters, shops of all shapes and sizes, and an endless variety of people. I heard easily a dozen different languages between our two days there.
Anyways, back to the trip itself. We arrived on Capri courtesy of the hydrofoil ferry, which is not a bad way to travel if you can manage it. Once off the boat, we had some lunch and hit the beach for some relaxation time (little realizing that most Capresian beaches are very, very rocky). After some time on the beach (part of which was spent watching Crazy Naked Kid, who was running around - well, naked), we decided to head up to Capri proper. See, Capri and Anacapri are both mountain towns. To get to them, you have to make it uphill by the method of your choice.
For our first trip up, we rode the funicular (cable-car). It spat us out in the middle of town, from which point we just sort of struck out randomly (hey, is that Piazza Umberto I?). Lacie found some fantastic things to explore that afternoon, starting with the gardens for the Hotel Luna. While we were walking around there, we ran across an older woman who told us about the Carthusian monastery and the public gardens nearby, so we went off to look for those sites.
The monastery was remarkable; it turned out to be the Certosa San Giacomo, which we’d seen in my Rough Guide to Italy, but hadn’t planned to visit. Missing it would’ve been a big mistake, I think, despite the main portion of it being closed on the day we were there. We were able to peek into various bits and pieces of the place, and it looked amazing - great gardens, a huge public space, some really wonderful ironwork in the gates. As we made our way around the monastery, we came to a lookout point from which we had a perfect view of the Faraglioni; two gigantic rocks separate from the main part of the island that appear in probably 75% of the postcards you can get from Capri.
After the monastery, we took off towards the Giardini Augustos (August Gardens), where we saw some really interesting statuary and a few more breathtaking views - both of the Faraglioni and of the heights from which we were looking. At this point, however, we were both starting to get pretty tired (as I’m sure you are reading all this), so we headed back to the port to catch the hydrofoil back to Sorrento. A calm night followed - poor foreshadowing for the adventure that was to follow on Tuesday!
Day 2 pictures taken: 66
Total pictures taken: 71
TO BE CONTINUED