Sorrento, Capri, Naples

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44. Sorrento, Capri, Naples

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My original schedule sent me over to the Adriatic coast of Italy today, where I would catch a ferry bound for Greece. But I wanted to spend an evening in Naples (had to have pizza, obviously, and Piazza Bellini sounded nice), plus my friendly hotel staffperson seemed to think it was rather absurd to have come to Sorrento without planning to visit Capri, which I had whittled away from my itinerary. So this morning I took the half-hour ferry to this island, and I must say it was another of the great highlights of the trip! Getting off the ferry, I ran into the folks from Spokane I had met earlier in Pisa. Quite a coincidence. An enterprising shop owner near the end of the pier has a left luggage, so I was able to leave my bag here. We headed over to the chairlift up Mt Solaro at Anacapri, which is an astounding place. The mountain below the chairlift slopes relatively gently, with lush green trees underneath. But when you reach the top, you look straight down an amazing 600m cliff into the ocean. It's a fantastic sight, with the Sorrento peninsula and Vesuvius spread out to the east and north. The ride between Capri and Anacapri is also remarkable, with the road at one point situated in the middle of an extremely high vertical cliff.

We grabbed some lunch from an excellent shop in Capri town, and my friends then headed back to Sorrento. Even this far off season, the town is not uncrowded, and there were places where the lanes are so narrow that I was seriously annoyed trying to get past the incredibly slow-moving package tour groups. I took the 45-minute hike out to Villa Jovis at the far eastern end of the island, with another great view. Unfortunately, they've put a stop to the wild pansexual orgies since the death of the Emperor Tiberius two thousand years ago, so there is limited fun to be had here. If I had to do Capri again, I'd skip Jovis and just spend more time at my next stop, which is at the bottom of Via Krupp, directly over the ridge on the opposite side of the island from the ferry port. This street is named after a German fellow who moved here in the 19th century; he was married with family but once here apparently developed a strong preference for the local boys. It's said the island has an interesting effect of conversion on the straight men who visit it, but I never tested this assertion.

I started down the street winding down the steep southern face of the island, and I was briefly flummoxed by a locked gate which said that the road was closed. However, signs such as these in southern Europe are merely advisory, I think. Some Australians coming up just climbed around it, so I headed down. The trail down to the coast is quite steep and treacherous, but it's well worth it. There are huge rocks at the base of the cliff for sunbathing. I sat near a rock which had a ladder attached, making it convenient to get in and out of the water. The weather was brilliantly sunny and warm — hot, even, on the hike down. Something about the Mediterranean is remarkably bright, and you can't help but be in a great mood here. I had a lot of fun swimming and sunning around the rocks.

I had one problem here, which was that the rubber wristband on my Swiss Army Startech watch broke off as I was hiking down, and the watch landed on a rock. The crystal was fine, but the second hand snapped off inside the watch! For the rest of the trip, I kept the watch in my pocket, but I had to align it carefully, because when the second hand moved around and got in the way, the other hands got stuck. The digital part of the watch would occasionally stop working entirely, and then reset itself to midnight on 1.1.2001. I had liked this watch because it looked good and it had an altimeter, but it had had a lot of problems, and now I was going to have to replace it with something completely different. I had always thought Swiss Army watches were good quality, but apparently not (though I must say the altimeter was amazingly precise). When Berlusconi comes charging over the Alps, I think they aren't even going to know what time it is!

I would have loved to stay longer in this place (days, even), but I didn't want to get to Naples too late, so I walked back over to the port and caught a ferry around 17:30. The ride to Naples takes about 45 minutes. Being somewhat frightened by what I'd heard about Naples, I decided to take a taxi to the train station, check my bag, and then look for hotels nearby. This proved to be entirely silly, because it wasn't scary, and the first hotel I tried (Hotel Siri, €50) was not only quite empty despite being a prominent listing in Rick Steves, but was also an extremely short walk from the train station. Now it was time for laundry again, and here I had my only great laundry failure — everything in Naples was already closed by 20:00. So it would have to wait.

I had pizza at Trianon and it was delicious (but perhaps not as much better as I expected, compared with the best pizza you can find in the US). The place across the street was supposed to be the most authentic, but it seemed to have an enormous line. This one had a smaller line, but plenty of seats. So I think the lines are actually people waiting for take-away, and you shouldn't necessarily be daunted by them. From here I walked west. Naples probably wins the award for the most characterful city I had visited. It is pretty gritty, but in my experience this was more interesting than it is scary. It occurred to me that perhaps the cities of northern Europe had been almost too sterile, in a way, and now I was really on an adventure. The small backroads are actually the least pleasant place to walk in Naples, because they are just exactly wide enough for one car to go through. Which means that if you're walking and a car is coming, look out. They really should just ban cars outright from the center. I walked over to Piazza Bellini, where I had a gigantic brownie with ice cream at the nice leftist Intra Moenia. However, I wasn't able to talk with anyone here; the square was fairly deserted except for a few couples. Perhaps it's better in the summer season. Then I looked for the Sunrise dance club listed in my guidebook, but as far as I could tell, it doesn't exist. Anyway, I was getting tired.

Jonathan's Travel Blog :: Europe

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44. Sorrento, Capri, Naples

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