Our final morning in Rome was spend running a few errands to get ready for our cruise. We have 14 nights on the Royal Princess, so we wanted to make sure we had our cruise ducks lined up.
For our transfer to the ship we had ’15 people with one large suitcase each’ travelling to the port at Civitiavecchia and the company we booked the transfer through sent two 7 seater mini-vans. You have never seen mini vans packed so high. We had people squished in, suitcases in between legs and on the front seat and the poor little drivers throwing their hands in the air trying to fit everything in. I think they should have sent a bigger coaster bus or something. Oh well, the drive through the country side was nice, and we were dropped right off at the port. Boarding went very smoothly, and we all managed to get aboard around 1pm even though we had a 4pm allocated embarkation time… there wasn’t much we could do about that with 11am hotel checkout times and an hour or so drive to the port.
Our ship is enormous – I’ll end up writing a second post on the ship when I have finally gathered a few good photos and have actually gotten around to see it all!
Today was our first port in Naples. We had two options – Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast or a trip over to the Isle of Capri. Luckily for us, the cruise loops back around the Napoli and we get to both. So today it was off to the Isle of Capri for a boat trip.
We took the hydrofoil over – about 1hr 10mins by fast boat to the island and then went looking for Augusto’s Caffe to meet our boatman – Gianni. We found Gianni and were guided to our boat for the day… thankfully LaMiaSorellini had arrange for a boat with a decent shaded area, because it was beautiful weather for being out on the Mediterranean – bright, sunny and hot, which of course is also optimal conditions for sunburn if you’re as white as an emo/goth chick at the end of winter.
Capri looks just like I remembered it… only busier. 🙂
All the beautiful blues. The water was a bit choppy and we had quite a bumpy ride to get around to the other side of the island. Plenty of beautiful rock formations and birds to look at, and odd little locals who somehow scaled down these very steep cliffs to drop a line in to fish
Once we got around the other side, it was considerably calmer, so after poking around in the grottoes a bit, we had a hunt for a nice spot to jump overboard and have a swim. The water was perfect temperature – cool and refreshing, and so crystal clear! Just love it. Reminded me of our week sailing around the Greek Islands in 1995 on the SS Silly Bitch… though with slightly less rocket-fuel masquerading as sangria!
The colours of the water are hard to capture in a photograph, but I did have to try… I love these gorgeous Mediterranean blues and greens as you enter the shallows in all the grottoes.
We checked out most of them – the Santa Maria grotto, the White grotto, the Lovers grotto, the Forum grotto and the natural arches. Our boat driver very skilfully manoeuvred our small boat right up into each of the grottoes so we could have a good look. Many of the larger tourist boats that were out for the day with 30 or 40 people on board were forced to hang back and not get too close, so the little boat, small group thing is the way to go here.
After our lovely boat trip, we had a few hours to kill before heading back to Napoli via the hydrofoil – and what better way to do so than to find a nice restaurant, order some white wines and have a nice long lunch while watching the world go by on the esplanade. It was pretty obvious that the seafood restaurant we choose – Augusto’s Ristorante (not to be confused with Augusto’s Caffe… seems Augusto has this place stitched up) – was used to shuffling people in and out of their establishment really quickly, but we found ourselves a nice table and decided to order in courses and share everything. We had some lovely charcuterie, a cheesy ‘salad’ to die for, a fruitti del mare pizza, some obligatory fresh calamari, a ricotta ravioli and some authentic Italian lasagne. All trickling out of the kitchen for us to share each meal. It was lovely food in a beautiful spot with fantastic company.
After lunch it was a small wander around the shops to have a look at some of the local handicrafts. Some new additions since I was here last – the Bells of Capri are a ‘thing’ and you can buy bells in ceramic, metal, jewellery or glass. And the Capri Watch which you apparently can’t buy anywhere else in the world is also a ‘thing’. I guess if you can’t find a niche market – you create one!
The hydra-foil back to the mainland went really quickly as I found myself engrossed in an in-depth chat with No1Niece about the recent Brexit poll, the ‘results still undecided’ election back in Australia, global economics, the asylum seeker/refugee/immigrant problems many nations are facing, and the impact of the Murdocracy on the perceptions of the masses. #KeepingItLight 😛
We then came back to the ship, had dinner in the Symphony and stayed up drinking until 4am… and that’s as much detail this blog is going to get of that night!