I took the ferry to Capri today, and found the way up to Anacapri on foot that I couldn’t find in 2003. Then, to the top of the island.
Eventually I got to this microwave tower, but I could see a structure much higher on another hill to the left and not accessible from here.
This was a dead end. So I went back down, lost the track, went bush for a while, found it again, went back to the crossroad, took the right path.
This path looked better, just kept going up. A chairlift was visible from time to time, so something worth visiting was up there.
Then, all the way down the path to Anacapri, and down all the steps to the port, then up all the hundreds of steps to Capri Centro that Bill Bryson complained about in one of his early books, “the Lost Continent”, I think.
A gelato, then down the hundreds of steps to the port to catch the last ferry back to Amalfi. From the ferry you can see some of the engineering that went into building the road. Stone arch bridges (Roman technology), the occasional short tunnel, lots of rock blasted out of the cliff. It’s an amazing engineering feat. It looked impossible that roads could reach most of the houses and buildings perched precariously on every available space. But they do, you can see parked and moving cars up there. They need roads to get the building materials (mostly masonry) to the sites.
Dinner in a nice restaurant. Two courses of real food, spaghetti carbonara and grilled sea bass. No beer, just acqua frizzante and a cappuccino. I know fine food when I see it. The portions are so small you need 3 or 4 of them. I could afford only two, but they were very good.
Raining heavily now. Capri Centro does not look so magical when sodden and half deserted. I walked up the hill to the hotel, glad to have a torch to ward off oncoming traffic.