Adventures of the Former Elginista

In my head, the Isle of Capri was drowning in tourists shopping for overpriced luxury goods and waiting in long lines of boats to get into the famous Blue Grotto.

Still, I’d heard it was fantastically beautiful and worth the trip. And since it was only a 20 minute jet boat ride from Sorrento, it was an easy (if expensive) excursion.

I’m so very glad I went. Capri may have been my favorite day of the entire trip. But I strayed far from the beaten path.

After taking an early jet boat chock-full of tourists in tour groups, I shuddered at the thought of herding into Blue Grotto lines with such crowds. Instead, I remembered a side-hike one of my books recommended: the Villa Jovis. Tiberius lived there in the first century AD, high above the sea, hiding from assassins in Rome. The hike sounded long but relatively simple, and it was. I took the funicular lift up from the marina to the town of Capri proper, then followed some narrow lanes until I got away from the city. The little roads don’t allow cars (or even Italy’s ubiquitous scooters), and I could nearly touch both walls if I stretched out my arms. I saw a couple of small, officially sanctioned electric trolleys picking up trash and making deliveries to the numerous villas dotting my path. Each had its own name, gate, and gardens, with everything from grapes and tomatoes to squash and lemons, growing nearly within arm’s reach.

So tempted to hop the fence and grab some tomatoes.

Halfway up the steep (but easy) hike, I stopped at a little cafe for a cappuccino, rested a bit, and watched the world go by. I saw a fair mix of locals headed up or down the mountain to do their shopping or errands, and other tourists likely  headed the same place I was.

The last half of the walk up was even more scenic as I climbed higher up the mountain and the sea spread out below me. The space between villas grew larger, and everything was more quiet. Suddenly, I arrived at a relatively nondescript little hut offering the best admission fee I saw all trip – a mere €2, or about $2.60.

Villa Jovis, with a view

You followed a series of arrows to guide you around the ruins. The signage was minimal, but it was still fascinating, with relatively few other tourists exploring. And the views were incredible. I kept thinking about how long it must have taken Tiberius’ fleet of slaves to drag each and every stone up the mountain to build the sprawling villa. And as I gazed at the sea far below, I shuddered at the thought of the emperor flinging his enemies from these very cliffs. Goats grazed on the next mountain over.

I could live here.

After I left the villa, I headed back down the mountain, stopping for a quick (well, as quick as eating in Italy gets) panini and water as I watched the view. According to my hiking book, Arco Naturale was well worth the relatively easy hike from the town of Capri, and I had seen signs for the turnoff as I had headed up to Villa Jovis.

Two paths diverged… and I took both.

The hike was indeed relatively simple, if far more rustic than the paved roads that took me to Jovis. Before I knew it, I had reached the Arco, a nifty natural rock formation with a view of the aqua water below. The path to view it was relatively narrow and carved into rock, so the few people there all struggled to lean back far enough to get a decent photo. But the image is burned into my memory, the contrast of the tan and the blue, framed by verdant life.

Arco Naturale

Next, I headed on down the mountain, up and down ancient, crumbling brick steps, around the perimeter of the island. I stopped several times to marvel at the natural, wild beauty of Capri.  I passed a small cave filled with ruins, where Roman soldiers had helped guard the emperor from intruders. But eventually, I meandered my way back into Capri proper and the hordes of tourists and shoppers. (It was a Saturday, meaning that there were lots of local tourists, too, over from Naples or Rome for the day.) I bought some granita and sat on a bench, flipping through my book and deciding what to do next.

And then I discovered Mt Solare. My book said to take a bus to the island’s only other town, Anacapri, and from there, take an alpine ski lift up to the top of Capri’s highest mountain. So I did.  On the ride up, I realized too late I should have had my camera handy, so I very, very carefully tried to use my cell phone camera to take a few pictures without dropping it into the fields below.

At the top, I found perhaps the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. The Sorrentine peninsula stretched out before me, as did the white rocks of Capri, all surrounded by startling blue water, as far as the eye could see. I took dozens of pictures, and the mood on the mountain was one of excited awe as strangers remarked to each other. I just stared off into the distance, pleased and happy and content with the world, grateful I made the trip.

But alas, the day was waning, and the chair lift was preparing to close for the evening, so I headed back down, this time prepared with my camera strapped around my wrist. No one else was coming up for the day, so it was remarkably quiet and scenic as I glided over orchards, vineyards and lemon groves, passing the ruins of a 12th century monastery and a few homes.

Gliding down from Mt Solare

When I arrived back in Anacapri, it was very quiet, as many tourists had already left for the day. But I wasn’t ready to go quite yet, so I consulted my book and found a hiking path that would take me on a more scenic route to the marina rather than just riding the bus. It felt like a forever walk to my aching legs – down hundreds of stairs is hard on the knees – but it was beautiful and so very quiet. And the timing worked out perfectly, as I reached the marina, bought a ticket on the second-to-last ferry out of Capri, and ate some gelato while I waited to board. Better still, as the ferry sailed east towards Sorrento, the sun set behind Capri, making it very worth braving the wind-whipped mist at the back of the boat, even if pictures didn’t really come out.

We docked at Sorrento just as the sun finally fell below the horizon, and there was a hush on the back of the ferry as tired day trippers held each other close. No one really wanted the day to end. I reluctantly disembarked and had dinner at a small pizzeria right by the marina – the very restaurant I ate at with my family during our Sorrento day five years ago. I mentioned it to the owner – who I remembered – and he brought me limoncello and dessert and told me to come back again. After dinner, I had to walk back up into town to head down to my hotel at the other marina, and I stopped and bought some lovely cameos – a ring and a pendant – from a small shop where the owner carved them from seashells, following the ancient tradition.

I didn’t see the Blue Grotto, but the day was full of such beauty and peace that I know I’ll carry it with me for much longer than a postcard.

On the second day of my adventure, I set off for Herculaneum, riding the Circumvesuviana train to Ercolano. The train was full of commuters and tourists bound for Ercolano or Pompeii. Both are on the same line, just other sides of Mt. Vesuvius. A small trio also boarded, playing “La Bamba” on the accordion and bongos. 

Five years ago, I had visited Pompeii and found it fascinating, if overwhelming and huge. I read that Herculaneum was a richer suburb, almost a resort town, back in the day. Much smaller than Pompeii, it was also much better preserved. When Mt. Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, Pompeii was instantly melted by pyroclastic (lava) flow, which rushed into the city at 100+ MPH and 900+ degrees Farenheit. Pompeii was destroyed in an instant, fossilizing its citizens in horrific positions. You could see terror in their body language. An entire city had been both melted and frozen in a moment.

Herculaneum, on the other hand, was buried in mud up to 75 feet deep, a much slower demise. This meant that the city was remarkably well preserved – including amazing frescoes, mosaics and more. Where the heat in Pompeii melted and burned everything, archaeologists in Herculaneum have found wooden furniture and containers, beams of buildings and more.

2000+ years old and beautifully preserved

It was incredible, and something I’ll never forget. Per my guidebook’s suggestion, I did the audio tour, listening to letters from Pliny the Younger about the devastation as I stared at a city stopped in time. When archeologists originally excavated the ruins, they found  virtually no bodies, which puzzled them. But then they began excavating the original marina (several hundred feet inland from the current shoreline, another effect of the Vesuvius mud). Huddled together along the boats, they found hundreds of skeletons of people who had tried to flee the city by boat and not escaped in time.

The ancient marina is on the right (the arches held boats). You can see just how deep the mud that buried the town was by comparing the right with left. In some places, the mud was up to 60-75 ft deep.

Similarly, I was surprised at how far down Herculaneum was, a testament to the mountain of mud that had buried the city. You could stand at the edge of the excavation and look down into the city. And yet, at the present day ground line, modern apartment buildings reach right to the edge of the site – likely sitting on top of still-buried ruins.

It rained on and off all morning, which fit the somber feel of the ancient city. I followed the map and my guide, marveling at how the town was laid out – from numerous snack shops and bars (the ancients didn’t cook at home) to bakeries and public baths. I also noticed how short the ancients were, as I stood up alongside bars and doorways.

Me, at a bar. The holes in the counter would have held pots of food.

My original plan had been to spend the afternoon on Mt Vesuvius, as I’d heard it offers incredible views of the entire area. But Vesuvius remained shrouded in rain clouds and fog all day, so I decided to grab lunch (pizza again) and head back to Sorrento.

I hopped a quiet Circumvesuviana train bound for Sorrento, well before the evening rush. I people-watched and wrote a bit. I heard announcements in Italian, but no one on board seemed to react, so I didn’t really pay heed. At one point, I glanced up and thought the scenery looked unfamiliar, but rationalized that my morning express train had been packed, standing-room-only, and skipping stops. After a few more stops, though, I decided to get up and look at the

The modern town of Ercolano is quite literally built on top of the Herculaneum ruins, which were buried under up to 75 feet of volcanic mud.

map. (The trains were woefully inconsistent with announcing stops, and many maps were missing, so you often sat far from one.) Suddenly I realized that at some point, my train had switched to another branch and was no longer bound for Sorrento but for another town. As I stood there and tried to count back how many stops I needed to go to transfer to the right line, a young local saw my perplexed look and confirmed what I needed to know. (My blonde hair tended to stand out a bit – people could instantly tell I wasn’t local.)  A Welsh couple had made the same error, so we waited together, chatting to pass the 30 minutes and then making the transfer together.

Of course, right as we arrived in Sorrento, the skies opened again, pouring down sheets of rain. I rushed into the nearest enoteca to grab a glass of wine and wait for the worst to pass before venturing out for dinner. As I sat down, I heard my name – and saw the same Welsh couple from the train, with the same idea. We shared a bottle of wine and chatted while the rain subsided.

After the rain let up, I wandered the town and enjoyed the passeggiata for awhile, window shopping and people watching before grabbing dinner and dessert and making my way home for the night. And as soon as my head hit the pillow, the rain started again.

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Mt. Vesuvius, lurking and looming behind Herculaneum, shrouded in clouds.

When I packed for my trip to Sorrento, I obsessively watched the forecast. Nary a drop of rain was predicted, and every day was supposed to be in the upper 70s and sunny. I stuck an umbrella in my suitcase, then removed it.

I arrived on Wednesday night, Sept 12th, reaching my hotel right as the sun set for a lovely, clear night. Exhausted, I checked into the hotel, freshened up a bit, and set off to find dinner. I ate fresh clams and pasta while sitting just 10 feet away from the shoreline of Marina Grande, chatting with a nice Welsh couple at the next table who urged me to “ring my mum” and let her know I’d arrived safely.

But the next morning dawned dark and ominous, and by the time I headed down to breakfast, it was raining. By the time I finished breakfast – served every morning in the cave-like grotto beneath the hotel, replete with fresh pastries and fantastic cappuccino – it was raining much harder.

Undeterred – this was vacation, damnit – I recalibrated my plans. I had planned to spend the first jetlaggy day in Sorrento anyway, but now I thought I’d take the bus into the center of town rather than make the 20 minute hike. That way I could stay a bit drier until I bought an umbrella.

Sorrento’s main street, nestled against the mountains

Of course, while waiting for the bus, it poured. Monsooned. A 30 minute, wring-out-your-underwear deluge while the late bus was stuck in traffic.

Never fear. I still made it into the center of the medieval town and went exploring, drying out while in the Museo Correale di TerraNova. After spending a pleasant hour looking at nifty old furniture and artifacts from pre-Roman times (Sorrento was Greek before it was Roman), I left the museum to wander.

The town used to be divided along this gorge. Pictures don’t do justice to the steepness of the drop.

It promptly began to pour. Again. So I ducked into a small pizzeria for lunch and had my first “real” pizza of the trip. Pizza was born in nearby Naples, made with the fresh mozzarella and tomatoes for which Sorrento is famous, fired in a wood-burning oven. With a glass of local wine, it was perfection, especially on a chilly, rainy day.

Arches everywhere – and so cool. I could touch both sides of this street/lane/alley if I stretched out my arms.

The rest of the day was much of the same. It would stop raining for an hour or two, and I would start to dry out and explore, and then another downpour would hit, driving me into a cafe for coffee or wine. My pictures from that day aren’t great – they’re gray, and some are rain-streaked, literally. But the medieval part of town was incredible, with some buildings dating to the 13th century. The lanes are so narrow that, in places, I could nearly touch both sides if I stretched out my arms. And once you get off the more touristy streets, the little side lanes were very charming.

Since the town – and entire peninsula – is built into the side of mountains, it’s very steep, and getting anywhere involves climbing up and down hills and stairs. I quickly realized that to get from my hotel at Marina Grande to the restaurants and ferries of Marina Piccola required climbing a couple of hundreds steps up a mountain to a main square, then taking a similar number of steps back down the other side. My map didn’t show such elevation changes, so the first couple of days were pretty strenuous until I started strategically planning my routes.

I ended up grabbing dinner in a little trattoria as rain came down again. The restaurants was cozy, especially sitting by the wood-burning stove, and I watched the waiters use a deli slicer to cut antipasti to order. As I watched people around me, I heard thick Texas drawls at the next table, trying to figure out how to get back to the marina. I offered my map and guidebook and chatted with the family, and older couple and their middle-aged daughter. We snapped pictures for each other and talked about travel and Italy in general. When I asked for my check, I learned that they had already paid the bill for me – a very nice surprise!

Pizza, wine and the pizza oven in the background. Perfect.

When the rain let up, I left for a bit of a stroll, walking down towards the marina myself. As I passed by a small cafe, I heard, “Chicago!” in a thick Texas accent – and there was the same family, waiting for their tender boat back to their cruise ship. I joined them for a glass of wine, thanked them profusely, then decided to call it a night.

By the time I got back to my hotel – relatively early, as I was in the worst throes of jetlag – my socks and shoes were still wet nearly 12 hours after the initial deluge. I took a hot shower and collapsed onto my rock-hard bed, listening to another rainstorm blow in.

Lovely, even in the rain.

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“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

With that little snippet lurking at the back of my mind, I booked a week in Italy for mid-September. I had wanted to get away to celebrate graduation and to take  my first real vacation in a couple of years.

Capri

But where to go?

I’ve long had a fascination with Ireland, but the details wouldn’t come together in the timeframe I needed. So I daydreamed about some past trips and came up with Sorrento, in southern Italy. I had spent a single day there (less than that, actually) about five years ago when my family took a cruise that included a day in Naples. That morning, we had explored Pompeii – fascinating – before taking a bus on the scariest, most winding and steep drive I’d ever seen.

One of Sorrento’s marinas, from up high

Sorrento is small, with about 20,000 residents. Much of the town is built into the side of mountains that fall dramatically into the Gulf of Naples. Two small marinas are full of fishing boats and ferries bound for Capri and elsewhere. And the food? I’ve long said the lunch I had in Sorrento that day was one of the best meals I had ever eaten: fresh pizza (from the birthplace of pizza), seafood, and local wine.

I found the right airfare and a hotel that suited, near the marina but only a 20 minute walk from the medieval town center. I packed my bags, dropped the cat at my parents’ house, and set off for Italy.

I just kept buying – and eating – peaches

Traveling alone forces you to really pay attention to all around you – which opens your eyes to amazing things that are often relatively subtle. A natural introvert, it’s rare that I’ll strike up a conversation with strangers. But while traveling, there’s a certain camaraderie fostered among those who share a language in a strange land. I found myself talking to Brits (so many Brits), Aussies, Germans, Canadians, Malaysians… united by a common language (and in a place with very few Americans, since school has started again). Plus, I’d watch for people trying to take pictures of themselves and offer to snap one if they’d return the favor, which lead to several little chats about travels and destinations.

I unplugged from my daily life, where train rides are spent with Twitter and email, instead people-watching and scribbling notes and thoughts in a small notebook. I’d booked a room with a tiny balcony, so at night, I’d sit outside and sip wine, wrapped in a pashmina against the evening chill, watching people stroll to their homes and the restaurants along the marina.

From Mt. Solare on Capri

Ideas bubbled. And I exhaled, at long last.

A week is a long time to spend completely alone, but I’m so very glad I trusted myself enough to take the leap. I had no major catastrophes, though a few funny (in retrospect) stories and linguistic snafus.

I’ll share more in the next few days, roughly organized by day:

Day 1: Rainy, Medieval Sorrento
Day 2: Ancient Herculaneum
Day 3: Wild Beauty on Capri
Day 4: Lost in the Woods on the Amalfi Coast
Day 5: Mount Vesuvius

Inside the crater of Mt Vesuvius