Sorrento-Capri

This weekend I was joined by three of my friends on a trip to the town of Sorrento and the Isle of Capri. These locations are pretty well known tourist stops in Italy but we were looking for an escape from the city and the chance to see these places without the crowds. The weather wasn't very cooperative as it was sunny when we left Roma, then continued to rain until we arrived back in Roma. However we still had an excellent time and experienced Capri and Sorrento in their non-traditional environment.

overview map of Italy with red dots at Roma and Sorrento

A close up!

After our review on Venerdi (friday) we took off the Termini station around 2. The trains in Italy are quite the time because there are 3 types of trains which each have at least 5 types of tickets. I resolved this problem by devoting an entire afternoon to surfing Italian train sites and trying to decipher the language as best I could. The train network in Italia is very good, running to all decent sized cities or tourist destinations for cheap. We spend E10.5 one way to Napoli (Naples) which is 50 cents cheaper than a ticket to get the Fiumicino airport outside of Roma.

The Isle of Capri

We took the slowest and cheapest train which took around 3 hours to Napoli, from there we discover that the second rail line we needed to travel, the Circumvesuviana was on strike, but only till 8 oclock (more of strikes later). So we went out onto the Napoli streets (not a good ideas.)

BRIEF NAPOLI DESCRIPTION!
dirty, ugly, lots of angry people, street vendors everywhere selling cheap stuff, busy, people everywhere, smells like burning and cotton candy, 100 mafia related murders in 2004, excellent pizza.

Thus at 8 we were forcing our way onto a train that was only meant to carry 1/2 the capacity. One hour later put us in the nice town of Sorrento.

Sorrento is great. Its a quintessential small tourist town situated along a 2 km long high cliff line with only a gorge to access the water. The first thing I noticed when I got off was how relaxed I was, the second was how I hadn't felt wind in 2 weeks. It was great, and exactly what we wanted. However it was late, so we went straight to the "hostel" for the night. Now the hostel we stayed at would be more appropriately described as a luxury hotel that happened to have cheap rates. We paid E25 a night which was only 5 more than a typical hostel would be and I will let the picture tell the rest of the story.

the lobby

Brief Sorrento description.
Beautiful, alive, friendly, wind, water, luxury hotels, angry dogs

The following morning we rose to catch a ferry to Capri. It was raining. The ferry ride was a quite 25 min. ride that gave us fun views of the coast just north of the Amalfi Coast.

arriving at Capri

Arriving in Capri we decided to climb Monte Solaro which is Capri's main summit at 580m (1900ft). It was raining still. Many many steps and winding paths brought us through lemon groves (which Capri and Sorrento are famous for) and unique houses.


After lots of panting and wet feet we arrived at the village of Anacapri, the higher neighbor to the town of Capri. We continued our winding path (we had no map) until we saw our target, which wasn't easy since the top was shrouded in clouds most of the time. We set off to blaze our own trail to the summit and not long after reached what we assumed was the summit since there was no where higher to go (we just found out that it was instead a small false summit, but significantly cooler since the only built thing was a cross). The top is usually reached by a chairlift. Visibility was around 30 feet if you were lucky and we had no orientation whatsoever.

the "summit"

hiking back down

After a hearty lunch of Nutella, crackers, and cheese we decided to head down to the Faraglioni Rocks via a different made up route. This was a bad idea since instead of finding the valley that cuts a narrow channel, we found the cliffs that drop 1000 feet to the sea. Also, in finding those we had to bushwhack through kiwi, fig, walnut, and many other "fun" head high shrubs.

this is a path

overlooking the Tyrrehnian Sea

It was a great time, after an hour of it we found ourselves very near to the place we started down from, thus we gave up and descended our ascent route. We did get to the rocks and as a victory toast we went into the only bar (bars in Italy and not just bars they are cafes as well) open and had victory ciocolatte (hot chocolate) which was simply heated chocolate pudding. We then decided we were wet enough and went back to the ferry only to find that they decided not to run until 6 which gave us 3 hours.

The Faraglioni Rocks

caffe

With those three hours we decided to hang out at the pebble beach next door. This beach wasnt anything spectacular except that it had the most beautiful color. Bleached white rocks and blue blue water (even while raining) made for a fun wade. To waste some time we got in touch with our architectural roots and built some arches, which we then needed to make a seawall fort to protect. The Napoli Bay light up as the sun went down, and we rode the ferry home dripping wet from getting hit by many very large waves.

capri beach

evening

To top the day off we went to a nice restaurant and got the cheapest pizzas and pasta (mine was Sicilian!) there was and a nice bottle of wine. It was a good day, and it was still raining!

With not much left we lingered around Sorrento for a few hours the next day and then rode the train back only to stop for a quick pizza run in Napoli (really, don't go there). Then we were home in Roma, and it made me appreciate it even more!