We returned to Capri with our Road Scholar group today. Nothing we did on our visit a few days ago overlapped with this visit, rather remarkable for such a small island. There are two towns on Capri: Capri which is small and Anacapri which is larger. More of the exclusive villas are on the Anacapri side of the island, although “exclusive” is pretty relative in this location where everything is exclusive!
We took a ferry from Sorrento to Capri, then a shuttle bus over to Anacapri. As you can see above, the feral cats are protected. No sign that the mice, cockroaches and song birds are, though. In Italy, feral cats have the right to their territory, and the town must manage the colony through neutering. We’ve seen a number of plump happy cats on this trip.
We visited Axel Munthe’s San Michele to see the gardens. He was a Swedish psychiatrist who visited Capri as a young man and vowed to live there one day. He discovered Roman ruins on his property and incorporated pieces into his beautiful gardens. He loved animals. He was revered in the area of Naples because of his help during a cholera outbreak. The gardens are really beautiful.
We walked to an agriturismo for a farm-based lunch with vegetables, pasta, cream puffs, and a selection of digestifs to finish. The setting and the clarify of the day was so beautiful I felt a little teary eyed.
A large group was visiting and dining at the same time. They turned out to be the employees of a hotel that has just closed for the season. Their long table, gleaming in the sun and filled with platters of food, looked like a movie scene. Then the staff filled braziers with a smoky substance. What was going on? They were burning coffee grounds on and around the table to keep the yellow jackets away! Reality intrudes, and also seams a common human experience. Perhaps we will burn coffee grounds at our next late summer al fresco dining party; we certainly have the yellow jackets! Anyone have a brazier we can borrow?
We walked and shuttled back to the Capri side of the island to see a second garden, the so called Garden of Augustus. The garden has nothing to do with Augustus. It was built by the German industrialist
(steel and arms) Friedrich Krupp in the late 19th century. Krupp also built the a remarkable serpentine road to his estate, so that he could move from yacht to home without going through the town’s port. He loved Capri. Unfortunately, the powers-that-be discovered (or at least asserted) that Krupp was gay. He was exiled from this place he loved and had built so much of. He later probably killed himself, leaving his company to a daughter who had to hastily marry in order to continue running with a male “in charge.” The gardens were “donated” to the island and remain public, though there is now a fee to enter. The views were spectacular. The serpentine road is closed each fall for repairs to the road and maintenance of the fences, etc. that prevent or limit rock falls, but it is an accessible footpath in the summer.
We took the ferry back to Sorrento. We were entertained while waiting for the ferry but a series of large trucks driving off a car ferry. They had a narrow and difficult turn coming off the gangway. They were hauling massive amounts of building materials, and how these trucks will manage on Capri’s road is question in my mind.
Nice moonrise over the port as we disembarked.
We were not terribly hungry and found a trattoria that served us fried zucchini blossoms, ensalda mista, and focaccia with mortadella, pistachios and ricotta. It’s just so easy to eat good food in Italy, whether you want a little or a lot.
