Capri

Sometimes I feel like any excursions I write about are not so much about the place we went to see as much as about the errors we made and obstacles we encountered in getting to said place.  I've often wondered whether travel goes this way for everyone, or if we just don't plan enough or motivate enough or get organized enough.  Likely all of the above.  Vesuvius was our exception, and that was on our last morning in Naples, Sunday.  So by then we'd had enough of our own nonsense.

But Saturday was Capri.  Sunny.  Warm.  We drove to find the always unfindable metano for the Fiat -- no matter how many directions we got, the metano eluded us on that Naples trip.  Sunday afternoon, what should have been a two and a half hour drive back to Viterbo was a six hour drive because of the holiday weekend (All Saints' Day) traffic.  We stopped for gas along the highway -- I guess it's autostrada here; highway in Massachusetts; freeway in New Mexico -- and when we finally found a station with metano, the line for metano was ten cars long, so we opted for benzina.  Then we got back on the autostrada, or rather, Daniel continued to drive us, per usual.  Sunday night, once we were home, Daniel said to me, "I think I forgot to pay for our gas when we stopped."  Surprised that he pumped the gas before he had to pay, he pumped, got in the car, drove away.  An honest mistake.  Perhaps at home we would hunt down the gas station on whitepages.com, make a phone call, send a check or give a credit card number, or wait for a note/ticket/bill in the mail, explain what happened, and pay.  But here in Italy we couldn't take such a risk: fines are normal and high; the car isn't ours; we've already had sent to owners of car the seventy euro ticket for driving into Pisa and the forty euro ticket for going into an intersection when the light was turning red.  Cameras are everywhere.  When Daniel contacted the owners of the car, Pat (he and his wife Linda own the car) texted, "We all know it was an error...but it could be construed as theft...I don't think I will get arrested but it could create a mountain of bureaucracy."

Six hours driving home on Sunday.  Six hours driving the autostrada looking for, finding, and paying (yes, they were waiting for him -- "Fiat?  Arancia?") for the gas on Monday.

But really, I was going to write about Capri.

We headed to the port -- no gas, but ATM, and then croissants and coffee by the bay on a gorgeous morning.  I thought, Should we just stay here and skip Capri?

Riding down winding steep roads with my eyes closed (I am losing motivation to learn to drive here -- pathetic, I know, but it feels daunting at the moment), we make it to the port sent on WhatsApp by our airbandb host.  No more ferries today: last one left two hours ago.

Daniel: Which port did you look up directions to?
me: The one on the WhatsApp message.
Daniel: Oh, no.  I knew there were no more boats for today; the host told me.  We need to go to Naples or Sorrento.

We drive some more.

By 1:30pm we are on a ferry to Capri, where we want to see the Blue Grotto, hike up to Tiberius' imperial villa, and get my favorite perfume.  Twice I got a bottle for me a bottle for my mom.  Hers lasted years because she wore it only on special occasions.  I still have the little pamphlet from the store from over twenty years ago, and we are finding the perfume this trip.

We take a boat ride around the island, listening to the history and myths, e.g. if you kiss the one you love when we go through this upcoming arch of rocks, you will stay together forever; Tiberius threw people into the sea from his villa up high, and then he would go to that promontory half way down the cliff to see whether they were dead yet; there is a statue of Mary.  (Sebastian takes photos and videos going through the arch, just when Daniel kisses me.  Mary, oblivious to the camera/phone, and scared about making it through this small opening, frets visibly.  I'll try to attach video.)

The waves are too big, so the Blue Grotto is closed.

When we get back to land, we start walking uphill fast: it's 3:20, and Tiberius' villa closes at 4pm.  Connor really wants to see the villa.  I want the walk up the hill because I remember it as so pretty.  We walk, run, lose each other, find each other.  The path is on the most narrow, sweet road.  There are little stores, restaurants, and flowers.  Flowers.  It's so quaint.  The path is prettier than Tiberius' opulent villa ever could have been.

The villa is closed.

But we go in anyway and wander around, debating which rooms were for servants, which for guests, which for the emperor himself.  It's not a mansion: it's a mansion of mansions.  How could one person have a place this big?  We decide that he likely had a huge entourage, so he had to have space for them all.  We are in awe, amazed at the size.  (That night I skim some Suetonius to learn a bit more about Tiberius.  Gracious.  My awe turns into disgust as I read what he did to folks.  Paranoid and tyrannical, he tortured many both in Rome and out on Capri.)

We walk more slowly back down the path.  As we near the center of town, near the bottom of the path, Daniel asks a woman about my favorite perfume shop.  She points over his shoulder, across the mini-road.  It's there, she tells him, but closed now until March.

It's only in writing this now that I see how my three points of interest on Capri were closed.  In the end, it didn't really matter.  I guess, even in the moment, it didn't really matter: we still took the boat ride and explored Tiberius' villa (treating it as not closed), and I (happily) caught Daniel ordering my favorite perfume that night online (price was four times what it was back in 1996, the last time I bought it...ahhh, well).

Capri.