After breakfast I quickly had a run around the streets, trying to follow the directs given to me by the hotel reception for an ATM. Eventually I found one inside a building. So with cash in hand we caught a taxi down to the harbour and caught the high speed ferry to Capri.
We left our bags at a place at left luggage just at the end of the warf, then discovered the Blue Grotto was closed due to high tide. So we caught a bus up to Anacapri to do the Monte Solaro Chair Lift. The buses here are very short in order to get around the extremely narrow and windy streets. This also means they are extremely crowded. The bus travelled through impossibly small gaps with millimetres of clearance as it wound its way up through Capri and along the cliff road. Eventually we arrived at Piazza Vittoria.
A few steps up the hill was the base of the chairlift, and after a short way we were travelling up the hill single file. The view on the way up over Anacapri was superb, but the view from the top was even more outstanding.
Down the bottom of the chairlift, and into the long queue for the bus. This was made worse by the fact that the buses arriving infrequent and were already packed like sardines, so few from the line made it onto the bus each time. Taxis in Capri are like open-top limos, so we decided to sacrifice our bus fare and take a taxi back to Marina Grande.
Back at Marina Grande we discovered that the next ferry to Positano was in a little over an hour, so we took the funicular up to Capri town and had a gelato.
The ferry ride to Positano took about half an hour, and we sat outside at the top in the sun and wind and admired the view along the coast.
The ferry only stops off briefly at Positano on its way to Amalfi township, so we quickly got off, and by some miracle were able to wind our way up the alleyways to Piazza Mulini and buy tickets up to Nocelle mere minutes before the hourly bus arrived. The journey up was even more narrow and windy than the bus on Capri, and lacking air-conditioning was quite hot.
Finally the bus arrived at the last stop – Nocelle. We were greeting by a drinks vendor, who provided us with a free refreshing lemon drink, and called up Nino to come and meet us. I already knew the path we’d be taking, so headed on up the stairs where we met Nino. We followed him back to his B&B where he showed us our room, and booked a reservation at one of the local restaurants.
We freshened up and admired the view, and headed down the step to the restaurant. We had a table near the nearest the front looking down over Positano. The food and service were excellent, and kind of pricey though if you’d had the same meal and same view in New Zealand you’d pay three times as much. It was so good as we left we made a reservation for the next night.
Next: Path of the Gods
Previous: Napoli