Friday-Saturday-Sunday

Friday, April 3, 2009 Island of Capri and the Blue Grotto
Another beautiful day so we have decided to spend it visiting the island of Capri.
First of all, in order to get the best prices, we needed to make the 8 AM train for
Sorrento where we walked downhill, with many steps, to the main port where we picked up the ferry boat that will took us to Capri. You can pay more money and pick up a big hydrofoil boat that goes much faster and more often…. But we enjoyed the ride over on the slow boat. Next we purchased tickets for the boat, the held close to 100 people, for the ride to the Blue Grotto. A bonus for this was we did not realize that this boat was also going to take us on a ride completely around the 4 mile by 2 mile island so it was a long boat ride with a gorgeous Italian stud of a cruise director who kept us entertained the whole trip. The views of the stones in the sea and walls around the island sometimes took your breath away. But, the main attraction was the Blue Grotto. Once our boat reached the grotto we were surrounded by small rowboats (another ticket for the rowboat, plus money for the rowman) you had to step from the big boat into the rowboat usually 4 people to a rowboat. Then he proceeded to take you into the grotto under a low hanging rock…we all had to lie down in the bottom of the boat and then he had to catch the wave just right to get us inside the grotto. But…. Once inside it was like magic…. The water so clear and it’s eerily beautiful blue sunlight reflecting through the water is so impressive…… well worth the effort, time and money to see. The unexpected boat ride was a real bonus as we met 2 very nice couples from the states and had a lot of fun.
Back at the Marina Grande (the dock area) we rode the Funicular up the hillside to the Town of Capri, a small touristy shopping town with a church & old fortress just off the town square. We walked down to the bus station where we caught a bus uphill to the town of Anacapri. Our main goal here was not the hiking paths that so many people use but the chair lift that goes all the way up to the top of Mount Solaro which is 1900 Ft high and gives you a wonderful view of the Bay of Naples. The water is so clear that from on top we could look down and see the coral reefs in the water far below. The chair lift was a lot of fun …. You never got more than 30’ off the ground as it climbed the mountain.
Coming down the mountain we were each enjoying our banana when I spotted Patrick from our hostel going up …. With Sarah right behind him. I called his name…he had his camera out and got a picture of Martha, right behind me, eating her banana and she got a picture of Sarah following Patrick…It was so quick that only those with cameras ready got the picture…… after our mountain ride we walked around in the town for a bit looking to buy some bread for lunch….the stores were closed for their afternoon shut down… but one little market took pity on us and sold us a stick of bread. … we ate this as we made our way down to the dock area and then had some lemon gelato for desert. Checked out the local beach, which is almost always big stones over here, and these were really good sized ones, very few beaches have sand on them… Tested the water but it was very cold… even so…. we saw a large group of school children wading in the water and splashing about. We are ready to go home but, our slow boat back to Sorrento does not leave for another 3 hours….. we walked up and down the water front checking all the little shops and continuing to shake our heads NO to all the food people wanting us to come sit down and eat some of their food…every time we passed them they asked.
Finally they posted our dock number on the board so we walked way out to #5 to wait for our ferry….found a warm, from the sun, concrete bench to sit on and played some cards while we waited. Soon Sarah and Patrick walked up and waited with us. Martha got some great pictures of a jelly fish swimming near the dock area (they are posted in her blogsite slideshow) after a while we began to wonder why nobody else had come to wait for the boat as time was getting shorter and their should be more people here by now.
Well….. at the last minute we found that we were waiting at the wrong dock and had to run to catch our boat… think we were the last people to load.

Then after we arrived back in Sorrento I asked Martha where we could find the little red bus that she had told me would take us back up the steep hill (where we had come down all those stairways this morning). She said “no sense in waiting for the bus… we can walk back up” --- I said “what about taking a taxi” - - I really did not want to do this climb, but she was sure that I could do it and guess what I DID Climb back up all those stairs…she later told me that it was probably 500 or so steps to get back to the upper town where the train station is located. I am getting stronger the longer we travel and find that I can pull my own bags much easier now then when we left home.

Dinner tonight was Lasagna, we have found that our hostel really does offer the best deal on our evening meal and have eaten here every night since we arrived. Tom and Wallis joined us and we all shared stories of our days adventures as they had both gone to other places today.

Saturday, April 4, 2009 - Day to rest and catch up with our computers and pictures. We have so many from the trips to Amalfi, Pompeii and Capri that we both need to do some serious deleting of pictures and only keep the best ones. We had expected today to be rainy but except for some cloud it turned into a beautiful afternoon so we joined Wallis on the roof and shared her bottle of wine. Tonight they are having an all percussion band down stairs so am sure that it will get noisy later.. nice thing is when we close our window over the party patio we hear very little noise from below. Martha ran into some girls from Indiana University in the bathroom… they are doing a semester in Europe and are on spring break right now…. Small world … for those who don’t know this, Martha and I were raised about a couple of hours from this university.

Sunday, April 05, 2009 Last Day in Sorrento
This morning was Palm Sunday and we went to Mass at the church that is adjoining our hostel… we think that the church may own the hostel because the hostel is built right around the church and the roof top decks are over and next to the church & school.
This is such a beautiful hostel…. You can go online to www.sevenhostel.com and check out the pictures …. We feel like these past seven days have been a vacation within a vacation. This afternoon we took the train into Sorrento and walked around the old city and found lots of neat stores… of course several churches also. I found a hot pink scarf to buy and then we just had to have one more gelato…..
A side note… in church instead of palm leaves the people all brought branches from olive trees to be blessed. One lady had at a branch at least 3 feet long and had hung religious
Medals and things in the branches… but most just had a spray of leaves to be blessed during mass.

Tomorrow we leave in the morning for Rome …. We will be staying there for 7 nights during Easter Week. Martha’s daughter, Mary, comes in on Wednesday to stay with us until we all leave on Monday April 13th…. Each going our on ways for more travel.
So Ciao for now…. See you next in Rome.