Another bucket list tick. A visit to the Isle of Capri.
A visit to the Isle of Capri had been on my Bucket List since 1970, when a friend had just visited the Isle and described its beauty. It turned out to be ‘all it was cracked up to be.’ Absolute natural beauty! To get there from Naples we had to go by one of the many ferries which travel between Naples, Sorrento, Amalfi, Capri, Positano and Ravello.
We walked down to the harbour from our accommodation and found that the ticket office was not immediately obvious and, as usual, assistance from the local folk was not forthcoming. We were told, “it is down there in the red building.” Which one of the 4 or 5 red buildings was not too certain, but we did find it. While there we learnt that there were 3 ferries returning from Capri to Naples each day. These were at 09:00, 15:00 and 20:00. We had prebooked our tickets for a 13:00 boat trip around the Isle, so purchased tickets for the ferry leaving Naples at 11am giving us, what we believed to be, ample time. What did surprise us was that one could not purchase return tickets.
We arrived in the town of Capri where we had to register for the tourist boat and once again battled to learn where the booking office was. “Just up this road; it’s on the right; not far up that road etc” It took us a while, but we did find it, staffed by some really pleasant people. They were very interested to learn all about South Africa, saying that we were the first South Africans they had met.
We joined the queue and boarded the boat which left on time. We were not a large group of passengers and were all directed to sit on the top deck from where we had beautiful views. The photos tell it all.
On returning to Capri, we had to go to the Ferry Ticket Office to purchase our return tickets. Interestingly, there was no €10 tax per ticket as there had been for the tickets from Naples. As the return Ferry was due to leave at 15:00, we didn’t get an opportunity to see Capri itself, but we had seen such beauty already that it didn’t matter. All we saw was that it was a very busy tourist town built on the side of a cliff.
When we returned to Naples and were walking back to our accommodation we saw some more items of interest.
- At least 10 car transporters drove passed to the harbour
- Three huge lorries with hundreds of live chickens in small coops were driven to the harbour
- A church with a beautiful marble roof which was under repair
- A clock spire which I found from the internet is called the Spire of Portoslovo
- A church parade going through the streets carrying idols of Saints covered in flowers
A great end to what had been a really special and different day.
