We trained from the suburbs into St Peter’s. At 9am the queues were growing and we had no tickets to anything. Idea here was to buy €78 tickets to see the Vatican Museum, St Peter’s Basilica, get the right to enter the Colosseum if there was a vacancy. It all looked too hopeless.So we went to a cafe just outside the Vatican wall.. No beer or coffee for me today. Tour groups kept drifting by. This was during a lull.We walked to Ottaviano Metro station, figured out the subway system and headed for the Colosseum, here taking a diversion for the Piazza del Populo.Walking toward the Trevi Fountain, we encountered the Spanish Steps. Nobody was sitting on them.Now THAT’S a fountain.Cab to the Colosseum cost only €9.The privileged people with tickets were inside the Colosseum.Nothing fell on us.We went to lunch instead, on the rooftop terrace of a nearby restaurant.
And took a cab to my favourite building in the whole world, the Pantheon. Completed in 120, it had the largest dome until the completion of the Duomo in Firenze in 1434. One great thing about this building is that you can walk in without a ticket, spend as long as you like inside, seated if you wish, the only problem being the usual lack of a WC. I booked an apartment in Livorno and a ferry ride to Bastia.A few hundred metres away, the Piazza Navona.Relatively quiet lane.On the way to the Ponte Sant’Angelo.
Back to the Vatican precinct for a quick beer or two. The piccolo one is Don’s second round.First course of our most expensive meal of the trip at a restaurant near home in Ottavia.
I learned tonighton Google that Italians abhor the custom of dipping bread in olive oil, especially prior to antipasto. So, what is the bread for, what is the oil and vinegar for? They go together perfectly, but the waiters keeping whipping away my plate and the oil/vinegar, leaving me with dry bread.
Positano. Billy and I took a ferry to Isola di Capri while Don recovered from his chest congestion.Approaching CapriThen we took a boat ride circumnavigating the island. Cliff on which Tiberius’s Villa Hovis was built, and unfortunates were thrown off, 380m up.My yacht at anchor. Above it is the road hewn out of the cliff up to Anacapri. Just below the concrete abutment are the stairs to Anacapri I climbed 3 years ago.Traffic jam
Didn’t even touch the sides.
Queue for the blue grotto. Due to ominous weather it wasn’t blue anymore, just closed.Back in the Port of Capri it was crowded and the queue for the funicular up to Capri Centro was very long. I found another way up 16 years ago. Only a few hundred steps. Bill Bryson wrote about this in one of his early books.
CentroWe found an isolated restaurant in the farthest recesses of Centro. Looked like a bit of a dive, but the spaghetti with tuna, olives and lemon juice was one of our best meals IMHO. Strictly cash.
We came across the bus station. 2€ each way up to Anacapri. A rollicking ride, standing room only, swerving around the hairpin bends. Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh! from the standing passengers on each bend as we hung on grimly. Capri port visible here.It was raining steadily by now. Coffee and cake next, look in vain for a WC and queue in the rain for the bus down to Capri Centro.. Time running short for the 3:30pm ferry back to Amalfi.Then down the hundreds of stairs to the port and the ride home via Positano. I saw my excellent restaurant Chez Black on the Positano foreshore, but it was time to get back to Amalfi.Grotty looking apartment with balcony is ours, up 84 steps. Worth it for the view. As I write at 11:45pm on Sunday evening a firework display has just started on the beach below, I don’t know why.
We found an isolated restaurant in the farthest recesses of Centro. Looked like a bit of a dive, but the spaghetti with tuna, olives and lemon juice was one of our best meals IMHO. Strictly cash.
