Italy: Amalfi Coast: Day 1

CAPRI

Capri, so gorgeous! :)

Wow! I can’t believe its October already! Where has time gone? This weekend we decided to do a trip to the Amalfi Coast, which is South Italy (the toes of the boot). This includes Sorrento, Capri, Positano, Pompeii and Mt. Vesuvius. It is one of the spots that all of Europe vacation and many celebrities have summer or vacation homes. I can see why after visiting. The single most amazing and beautiful place I have ever been!

The view on our walk from our hotel to the
main port in Sorrento. It was very early
so the sunrise was beautiful!

We left Florence last night at 7:00pm and drove all night to arrive in Sorrento at around 3:00 AM. I sat with a guy on the bus named Mark who is from New Jersey. We talked most of the way when everyone else was trying to sleep…whoops! Glad I found a new friend though! We’re staying at a cliffside hotel and it seems pretty nice, not as bad as I was expecting. We got up at 6:30 so we could be ready by 8:00. We were all pretty exhausted from only getting 3 hours of sleep but after a couple cups of coffee, we were good to go. We had a 20-minute walk from our hotel down to the main dock and then took a huge ferry from Sorrento to Capri. The ferry was so comfy and we all fell asleep for the ride. Good thing there was only one stop or we would have totally missed where to get off. We got off the ferry at Capri and hopped on a smaller boat that just had our “Florence For Fun” group on it, for a tour of the island. So beautiful! The water is crystal clear and meets up with huge beautiful cliffs that jut way out into the ocean. We stopped to go into the Blue Grotto, a cave where only little rowboats can fit in. The water was an amazing color! A couple people jumped in to swim in the cave but there were so many jellyfish that it didn’t seem very safe. It was pretty incredible though.

The boats we had to step into for our ride into the blue Grotto!
They were so tiny and I still have no idea how the elderly women
in the next boat over made it into them! Very funny to watch!

The Blue Grotto cave. Not the most clear picture but shows
how stunning the water was! That little blob is one of the risky
guys that decided to jump out of the boat with the jellyfish!

When the tour was done, we took a tram up to the city piazza then walked down the other side of the island to the beach. The path down was so beautiful! I took way too many pictures (our guide was a little annoyed with me dragging behind the group the entire way down to get pictures haha). Then we grabbed some sandwiches (they were HUGE and so cheap!) and went to the rock beach. The water was freezing but was so blue! You look up and see a huge beautiful cliff side with trees and houses scattered throughout. We lucked out on having such great weather today!

The little beach cove area where we spent our
Friday afternoon basking in the sun!

After lying out and swimming in our little cove all afternoon, we made our way back to our hotel. A tram back to the piazza/city center in Capri, walked down to the main dock, a ferry back to Sorrento, walked to meet our bus, then a bus ride back to the hotel. Whew! What a process! We were so exhausted by the time we got back to the hotel but had a pretty small window of time to get ready for dinner. We ate at the hotel in the big dining room that overlooks Sorrento and Mt. Vesuvius. We had an amazing dinner of spaghetti (home made by the old women cooks at the hotel, they were all so nice!), bruschetta, salad, and fruit. So much food! After dinner we all went out together to a little pub downtown where there was dancing. The atmosphere was so much fun! Lots of Italians, which we don’t see a lot when we go out in Florence. Overall, a very amazing day filled with beauty and lots of Fun!