The little island that took my breath away----Capri, Italy
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| The View upon Arrival of the Port of Capri |
(This was the view taken when we climbed halfway to the city center)
1. The Most Breath-Taking View of the Island, the Coast, and the Nature.
From the port to the Capri Town, It took us half an hour to climb all the way to the Capri town. the whole island is built on a mountain, so if you need a good hiking workout, don't take the cable car at the port. Walk on the steps to reach to the center of the town just like the local people do. Trust me, the view along the steps only gets better as you climb higher.
Capri is a mountain style island. Places for visitors to swim or sun bathing were not very big like the ones in Barcelona. There's no sand bed along the water, but more like pebbles and stones. Weather was a bit chilling so we didn't stay long in the water. From the picture below you can see clearly how clean the water is, clear like crystal. Highly recommend come around July or August, and just relaxing in the cool water cooling off from the heat.
One activity that I didn't make enough time to do was to visit the Blue Grotto, the famous cave with deep blue water. I read about it, apparently it is also a great diving and swimming spot for experienced swimmers. Just thinking of it makes me feel excited, jumping into the deep endless water from one of the cliffs. This is a good motivation for me to practice swimming cuz I'm coming back to dive from the cliff next time!
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| Picture from Website |
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| Picture from Website |
3. The Biggest Lemon You Ever Found
Lemons are the favorite fruits in this island. People grow them in their own yard, restaurants serve lemon liquor shots as dessert, and lemon-themed souvenirs are all over the stores. Why is lemon so special to the Capri people? Because they are shockingly gigantic! I can't believe they are even bigger than grape fruits. Don't know the genetic reason of the lemon species in this town, but I guess the fresh nutritious water, sufficient sunlight, and caring people must have something to do with the well-produced lemon species in this region.
4. Fresh seafood is always something to die for
On our way climbing to see the Nature Arch, we stopped by a local restaurant "Lo Sfizio". Read good reviews about it from TripAdvisor, so we gave it a shot, and it was the best seafood meal that we had in this trip. We ordered a mussel dish, and it was the softest, and the freshest mussel that we ever had in our life. Did't know how they cook it, didn't see much seasoning, just the natural taste, so soft and delicious. We can't stop thinking of the awesome feels that it left us even long after we came back home. We know we gonna miss that tastes for a really long time.
One tip of dining in local restaurants, especially if you don't know much Italian, please at least learn some vocabulary about food if you are a eater like us. Local restaurants don't usually have an English menu. Google translation works, but not very well. A lot of words were translated in a confusing way, and it took us like 20 mins to get an idea of the whole menu about. If you are not confident with the google translation, but also don't want to order blindly, I would say do some research on the reviews on TripAdvisor. At least that will give you some pictures so you won't be too surprised when you see it on the table.
5. Shopping and Street Wandering
Roads on the island was very small. If you saw a road thinking this can only fit one car, surprisingly in Capri it's perfect for buses going both ways. Bus driver on the island is so used to driving towards another bus with his side mirror barely touching the other one on the upcoming bus, while his other side of the bus rubbing the curd of his side of road. Crazy, isn't it? Along these narrow roads and alleys, there are plenty local stores selling all kinds of merchandise. It will definitely take a while to browse every single one of them. My favorite part is whenever I felt tired of walking, I can always find a sweet store nearby, and get 2 scoops of gelato for a mini break.
Trees are very common seen especially when you climb towards to the Nature Arch. Flowers are not scattered around like parks, but more like on the steps of local people's terrace, or hanging on the balcony. I couldn't help stoping by and just smell these lovely flowers. Some of them smells so good!
These two pictures were taken on our way walking down the The Phoenician Steps. It has 921 stone steps all the way from the top of Anacapri town steeping down to the port where all the ferry parked at. You can see it started to get dark. But the view overseeing the houses and coastline was still amazing. It added a very nice touch to the end of the Capri trip. One last view from the top, and then we use all the energy we have left to climb down the nearly 1000 steep steps!
Farewell, Capri! Not sure when will be the next time I can visit you, but I certainly hope it won't be too long.
