Capri’s iconic Faraglioni with lots and lots and lots of boats down there

I’m sure I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: Capri is the most beautiful place on earth. End of debate. This is our fifth summer traveling as nomads and our fourth visit to Capri (we missed 2016). And after those three previous visits I was genuinely wondering if I would be a little blasé about it. Would it have that “Been there, done that” feel to it? Would I find the hordes of day trippers just too much this time? Would I be frustrated by the relative lack of good food and high prices?

Not to worry. The day crowds are there and the prices are high, but there is a reason Capri has been the location of choice for those who can get there since (at least) the time of Caesar Augustus. From the incredible limestone cliffs to the stunning flora and the perfect water, from the ideal summer climate to the beautiful shops and people, it’s a gorgeous place.

Another view of those rocks. And yes, that’s David Geffen’s boat again.

One of the amusing things about Capri is how different it is in the mornings and evenings compared to midday. We arrived midday and getting to the hotel was kind of hellish. The massive crowds trying to get from Marina Grande, where pretty much everyone arrives, up to the town were oppressive. And once you get up there you still have to walk 10 or 15 minutes to your hotel because the narrow lanes are far too small for cars. (To be sure, lazy people can hire some little cart thing to take your luggage but we’re too proud to do that.) And the town was just absolutely packed.

By evening, though, three-quarters of the people or more were gone. It’s by no means empty, but it is peaceful, something you couldn’t remotely say earlier in the day. And the next morning as we walked to town out for our daily adventure it was quiet, peaceful, and beautiful.

Nighttime, when the crowds are gone, is the perfect time to be in Capri

The secret, then, is to get out of town during the daytime and come back when most people have left. For us that meant two days at the beach and one on a hike. When I say “beach,” though, don’t think sand and surf and wide open vistas. Think rocks and cement infill that chairs and umbrellas are packed in to as closely as possible while still letting people move around. It’s not something that I would imagine liking, but here it works. The water is amazingly clear and blue and – at this time of year – reasonably warm. The scenery is unbeatable. And there’s an (expensive) restaurant serving genuinely good food. So that’s what we did on two days.

Lunch down at the beach

The middle day – we sent four nights on the island, meaning three full days for adventure – we headed up to Anacapri, the slightly less fabulous town on the western, higher end of the island. From the town you hike down to the western coast and hike along an old trail connecting forts from the Napoleonic Wars. The forts themselves aren’t that interesting (OK, not interesting at all as far as I’m concerned) but the views are stunning.

There was just one problem: even though we’ve done the hike twice before, we couldn’t find the trail. It was incredibly frustrating. There was a small sign on the road pointing to the Sentiero dei Fortini (Path of the Forts), we followed it, and it trail quickly petered out. Twice. Then we found another place where the trail was marked, and it pointed us back whence we’d come. It seemed incredible that the trail was so badly marked and that we couldn’t find it, even though we’d done it twice. Eventually I figured it out – there were two options on a map but one didn’t exist anymore and we just didn’t see the second one – but by then Mark was frustrated and tired and hot and thirsty – we’d hiked probably 90 minutes just to get to the trailhead – so he headed back to Anacapri while I finished the hike.

Water, boats, trees – that’s the hike

Once I got on the trail it was just as beautiful as I’d remembered. Great views and almost no one else on the trail in the mid-summer heat. There were a lot more boats than I remember from the other times we’ve done the hike, just a constant hum of boat engines, but it was still a nice hike. One strange observation was a villa that we admired along the trail four years ago. It was way out on that western coast, isolated, with a beautiful pool and a private stairway down to the water. It seemed like it would be the perfect place and I’ve always thought of it as the perfect fantasy. The last time we did the hike it was empty and I just assumed that it was a vacation house closed for the season. But no, this time it was obvious: the building was abandoned, the pool empty, the landscaping becoming overrun. Hard to imagine what’s going on because it has to be a really expensive place, but that seemingly perfect vacation spot is pretty much trashed. Strange.

That’s supposed to be a beautiful villa but these days it’s abandoned. Maybe we should make an offer.

So those were the big experiences on Capri, two days on the beach and one on a hike. What else did I learn from four days on Capri? I thought I’d seen a lot of yachts on the Amalfi Coast, but this place makes Amalfi & Positano look like pikers. Lots and lots of boats, small, big, bigger, and massive. Yes, David Geffen is obviously stalking us, as his boat was again prominent, but there were lots of other really expensive yachts, too.

And yes, all those beautiful shops are really expensive. At lunch the first day we sat across from a little boutique clothing store that had a men’s sweater in the window. I liked the looks of it and asked Mark how much he thought it would cost. He said €180. I said €250. We were off a little; after lunch I went in and found that it was €498. I didn’t buy it.

Modern art in the center of Capri

On the other hand, some things aren’t so expensive. We tend to like the life on the main town of Capri better than Anacapri, but we more typically like the meals on Anacapri. So when we stay in Anacapri we find ourselves going down to Capri during the day, and when we stay in Capri we go up to Anacapri for dinner. And once per trip up in Anacapri we splurge for pre-dinner drinks at the Capri Palace Hotel, a beautiful five-star place that makes perfect Perfect Manhattans. So we go up there the second night and instead of a quiet, almost-deserted bar area there is some event going on. “Damn,” we both thought, “we’re not going to get in tonight.”

That wasn’t the problem, though. There was an event and it was called something like “Free drinks on the house night.” We never did figure out exactly what was going on but … drinks were free. The special of the night was a variety of creative gin and tonics, and we each had one, but what we really wanted was either a Perfect Manhattan or Negroni. So we ordered Negronis and they were free, too. Along with free drinks there was a never-ending supply of free hors d’oeuvres. And models who were slinking around on duty, just, well, slinking. We thought there was a chance we were going to get some mighty bill when it was time to leave, or maybe the police would chase us down but, no, it was all just free.

And now you wonder why I love Capri?

The night of the free drinks

At least once every visit we do the long climb from Capri to Anacapri, in part to get this view

The beach. Hard to imagine a more beautiful view.

And finally, Mark having dinner at what used to be our favorite restaurant in Anacapri. I say “used to be” because after several visits on earlier trips to the island the food just wasn’t that good this time. The fun part is that here, along with our favorite place down in the town of Capri, the staff and owners recognize us. We’re regulars!

Part of Positano climbing up the steep hills with the municipal beach (that we didn’t use)

Positano was our third and last stop on the Amalfi Coast, just a short boat ride up from Amalfi. While once a port town in the Amalfi Republic – when Amalfi was the big deal in these parts – today Positano feels bigger and more important than Amalfi. More tourists, more money, and certainly more yachts. More upscale. And more so than Amalfi its hotels and shops and bars and all that climb up from the coast into the surrounding hills, making for great views from many of the restaurants and hotels.

While once prosperous, the town fell on hard times in the mid-19th century. And then the tourists discovered it. It took a while, but in 1953 John Steinbeck wrote an ode to Positano in Harpers – “Positano bites deep”, he wrote. “It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone.” – and the hordes started coming. For good cause, I might add as it’s a beautiful little city.

The view from our hotel balcony. Not bad, though I tried to convince them to tear down that ugly building in the foreground.

A bit of a challenge at first, though. We arrived at the port and, as we typically do, looked at Google Maps to see how to get to our hotel. It didn’t look too bad, so off we went on foot. What we didn’t realize was that the direct route displayed consisted of 350 steps up to the hotel. Carrying our reasonably heavy suitcases. Should have paid the porter €10 to drive them up…

Once we got that behind us there were two big activities for us in Positano, the beach and the Path of the Gods. Our hotel suggested we go to a beach just slightly away from the main town beach and that turned out to work great for us with a lovely little restaurant up above the beach just a bit. Read, swim, read, eat, swim, sleep. Repeat the next day.

The view down to our favorite beach. Lots of boats as you can see.

Since first planning this Amalfi Coast visit I’ve been excited about a hike called the Sentiero degli Dei, the Path of the Gods. It’s a trail that connects an outlying village of Positano to another town high up above the sea. Once you get to the starting point it’s not that hard a hike, maybe a little under five miles of a modest up-and-down trail. I decided to walk to the start of the trail, though, instead of taking a bus, meaning that I had to climb the whole thing from sea level. Challenging, but ultimately beautiful.

Looking back on Positano from the Path of the Gods

So after literally decades of wanting to go to the Amalfi Coast we’ve done it. It’s probably as beautiful as I’d hoped, but there are a few things that will stand out in my memory. Yachts. Big yachts. David Geffen’s massive 11th-largest-in-the-world boat was here, apparently following us. But even leaving that one aside you’d see other huge yachts, the kind that must cost $50 million or $100 million or whatever. Lemons, too, the biggest lemons we’ve ever seen, often two or three times the size of standard lemons.

Looking down over Positano’s Santa Maria Assunta church with its tin-glazed pottery dome and David Geffen’s yacht in the distance. It made others look small, but many of them weren’t.

And then there’s the weird two-fork-one-knife thing. At pretty much every lunch and dinner – and I think it was literally every meal – you’d sit down to a table set down with two forks and one knife. We’d have an appetizer course and use one fork and the knife. They’d clean the dishes, including the knife and fork we’d used and then bring a new knife. It just seemed strange that every time there would be two forks and one knife. And then they’d replace the one knife.

I’m sure there’s an explanation, but we never figured it out.

From here it’s another boat ride out to Capri. It just keeps getting better.

Our favorite beach. Very European insofar as there’s not a speck of sand to be seen and the chairs are pretty darned close together. But when the sun is out – and it did come out, even on this day – it’s close to heaven.

The trail on the Path of the Gods was pretty easy to follow. You wanted to be careful not to fall, though, cause it’s a long way down.

And one last shot from the hike, looking up the Amalfi Coast. If it hadn’t been so hazy I’d have had a nice view of Capri but that’s OK, we’ll just go there and see it close up.