Capri

Our next day on the Amalfi Coast, we took a ferry from Sorrento to Capri.  It was a quick little ride, only about 30 mins or so, since the ferry moved pretty fast.

Downtown Capri and the “Marina Grande” are beautiful!  The water is a gorgeous color of blue and the colorful houses make for some pretty sights.

We decided to take a boat ride around the island to see the coastline, which is pretty darn magnificent.  Ben enjoyed the ride immensely, as you can see.  Little bit of a breeze, waves of the boat and sunshine and I could easily fall asleep too!

The coastline of Capri and Anacapri mostly looks like this.  Sheer rock, jutting out of the water.  It was really pretty and there were a few diving flags that we saw along the rocks.  I’m not sure I’d want to dive here (or anywhere) but it would be neat to see what it looks like under the water.

This rock formation is what the Italians call Faraglioni.  I’m really not sure what it means, but I read that the rock on the left is called Scopolo and on the right is Mezzo.  I wonder who got to pick names for the rocks.  Our boat went right through the hole in Mezzo.

This is Anacapri, which is on the opposite side of the island than Capri.

This is the green grotto.  I’m not quite sure why it’s called the green grotto, but it was really pretty.  There were people swimming underneath those rocks because there was a tunnel that went through the rock.  The water was so incredibly blue.  It would have been fun to swim a little bit.  Maybe next time.

The whole reason I wanted to go on the boat tour was to go see the Blue Grotto.  I had seen pictures from a friend, and have wanted to see it for myself ever since.  Our big boat pulled up and kind of got in line, which if you know Italy at all – lines don’t exist here.  It was just a big free for all, which was a mess.  We waited a LONG time for the little rowboats to come to our boat.  But in the meantime I got some good pictures.

I offhandedly saw a little one fall in to the water.  There was a set of stairs going down the side of the cliff, and people from land could get in the little boats to go see the grotto.  However, it was pretty rough water, and those boats were going up and down a few feet.  I heard a lady scream, and saw another lady jump in the water and then hand a small child up to someone and then climb out of the water herself, and then that child started screaming bloody murder (a good sign that it was breathing at least).  It was definitely unsettling to witness that.

Ryan, Mark and I piled in to one of these little boats.  You have to sit in the bottom of the boat and basically lay down to get through the tiny hole leading in to the grotto.  Here’s the picture of us going into the grotto.  You just lay back and hope to God the chain that they use to pull the boat in to the grotto doesn’t bonk you in the face.

Inside the grotto was beautiful.  There is a part of the wall under the water that is missing, which is why so much light is able to come in.  In the picture on the right, I edited it to lighten it up some so you could see the actual inside of the grotto.  The photo on the left is completely unedited – that was the actual color of the water.

We spent 10 minutes tops in the grotto and then the boat dude took us back to our bigger boat.  It was  a neat experience, I just wish we hadn’t had to wait for like an hour before we even got in to the grotto.  Seas were a little rough and more than one person was getting sea sick on the boat.

We finished our tour around Capri and Anacapri before we went back to the Marina Grande and grabbed some lunch.  We gave Ben a tiny bit of ice cream for the first time.  He wasn’t a huge fan of the cold.

After our lunch by the harbor, we took the cable car up to the top of Capri to look around a bit.  We got a few pictures for Christmas cards at the top.  Abbie was being a turd and not cooperating, but in the end we got one with us all at least looking in the general direction of the camera.  And we also got a group photo thanks to the timer on my camera with 6 out of 7 of us looking at the camera.  Not bad.

Capri was beautiful and someday I would love to go back (without kids or when the kids are much older).  Seems like a great place for a relaxing vacation!