Capri

April 16, 2007

Rome, Italy

Yesterday was the last free day on the classics trip. Now we have ahead of us 30 whole days of exploration without a single break, until we have exams and are free to go. I did enjoy having time to myself without being dragged to an archeological site, but knowing that it was the last one made the whole experience kind of bittersweet. From now on, its just go go go!

We woke up early, our bodies will not let us sleep in anymore, even if we wanted to, and had breakfast before heading out into the bright Sorrento morning and boarding the ferry to the nearby island of Capri. This place is famous for its beautiful rocky beaches, lovely little villas set into the cliffsides, and majestic clear blue water, that skirts the island in a brilliant wash of blue color. We stepped off of the ferry and into what looked like a movie set. All around us were tourists in brightly colored shirts, street vendors hawked their wares, and little white rowboats stood at the ready in the narrow stretch of the bay. However, according to Ambrice, the best part of Capri was the view from the top, which was only accessible by taking what looked like an elaborate skilift up the mountainside and into the other part of the island.

We bought tickets and waited in line for a while before stepping into what looked like a short subway car that had been stretched in photoshop so that its parallels were all out of wack. Nothing was at right angles at all—we stood on a level floor but the windows, and ceiling all had a crazy slant to conform with the slope of the hillside. And with a jerk, we were off, moving out of the station and up over the slopes filled with lemon groves and the clusters of white houses that shone in the late morning sunlight. And past the craggy steep cliffs, the ocean glowed in the distance. It was absolutely breathtaking, and I was so happy to be there. This was one of the few days that the Classics Trip has felt like a vacation…

We stepped out of the station and into the little town at the top of the cliffs and into a square packed with cream and yellow covered buildings, decorated with intricate scrollwork at the top and packed with designer stores at the bottom. Over the terrace, Capri stretched below us in all of its Hollywood glory, and ahead of us in the streets stretched all of Italy’s upscale fashion. Within five minutes we had spotted a Prada, Gucci and Dolce and Gabbana were not much farther away.

The streets were tightly packed, and hung with awnings of white and dotted here and there with a stand selling gelato or lemony ice drinks, and we wandered around and around for hours, stopping in at this or that ridiculously unaffordable shop. After a while, I grew tired of it, and the only place I was truly excited about visiting was a (still rather upscale) specialty bookshop that contained antique volumes and original pieces of art but along one wall contained a number of history books dealing with Capri and its origins. I saw one very unusual book called Venus in the Kitchen, a collection of recipes put together by an eccentric European who had lived on Capri for a number of years and published a good deal of travel/adventure novels taking place on the island. This, his last work, was a cookbook with recipes ranging from the mundane to the highly impractical, all designed to aid in the procurement of love. It was written in both Italian and English, and sometimes at the bottom of the recipe the old gentleman would add a comment like “my good friend Mr.-So-and-so tried this a few years ago, and he swore it made him feel 10 years younger!” I decided that such an unusual book would be worth the weight it added to my suitcase, and bought it.

I enjoyed the morning, but after a long and expensive sit down lunch I really wanted to see the beaches and the water that Capri is so famous for. Unfortunately, I never got the chance—the girls I was with wanted to keep shopping at the designer stores and with no other recourse at my hand I followed them until at the last 5 minutes I could see the water on the way to the ferry. Kind of disappointing. I think if I got the chance I would avoid that upper town on Capri entirely, and devote my whole day to hiking, seeing the famous blue grotto—a cave filled with limestone that reflects the blue in the water all around the walls, making the whole place glow (I did not see it in person, but the pictures looked wonderful), and a natural arch of limestone that arcs down over the water. Hopefully I will get the chance to return and rectify my mistake.

We returned to Sorrento in the late afternoon, and I came to the hotel room and stayed just long enough to put on my running clothes, and venture out into the town. Moving away from the coast this time, I headed back toward the cliffs and out, away from the bustle of the shops and the people and into a more remote neighborhood. Gradually the crowds cleared away and the streets faded into smaller roads, and then I finally came to what looked like the end: a hotel perched on the edge of the mountainside, and the road curved around and headed back toward town, on the right a small path continued down into a park. I went down here for a while, but the path to the park faded into a crowded residential district so I headed back up, reaching the hotel again.

I noticed on the left hand side a staircase leading up into the mountain, a sign in Italian spitting out a lot of text, all of it indecipherable, but the sign itself was topped by a cross, and looking above I could see a small turret, so I guessed that the staircase must lead up to the church. It seemed like as good a place to run as any, and was utterly without any people to gawk at the crazy American actually exercising, so I started up the stairs. The stairs turned into a rough stone-paved path that swtichbacked all of the way up the mountain. At each of the turns on the path was a small ceramic shrine, painted with depictions of the stages of the cross—Jesus in each carrying it, stumbling, falling, getting picked up, being crucified, etc. And at each of the turns in the trail, in the steep ascent, the buildings stopped obscuring the view and I could look over Sorrento itself—the straight but narrow streets and peach and cream colored buildings dotted with trees, and then in the distance the sweep of mountains and that wonderful colored ocean.

I reached the church, stopping briefly to stop and savor the view. I could now see the whole city almost in its entirety, and was halfway up the mountain. The church itself was really more of an open chapel—statues of Mary filled niches to the left and right, and in the center, now closed with an iron gate, a crucifix stood, honored by lit candles and watched by a row of empty wooden chairs.

And then I noticed to the side of the church the winding path continued on, up and up, where the stairs faded out and I entered a narrow road, wide enough for only one car to pass and flanked on each side by orange and lemon groves and small houses. I continued up the steep path, huffing and puffing as I slowly passed villa after villa, until I reached what looked like a good stopping point and turned around to head back down the mountain. It took half as long to get to the bottom as it did to labor all of the way up to the top, but the view was just as good going down. I headed back to the noise and bustle of the city, returning to the room for a good hot shower.

That night we had dinner on the patio of one of the rooms. Scott and I split a salad we made with my newly decorated bowl, a good one with tuna and fresh fruits and vegetables, and we watched as the sun stained the clouds a bright orange and the light faded from the sky. Chris Vincoli brought out his laptop for music, and we ate and talked until it grew dark. It was a wonderful end to the freeday, a nice dinner on a patio with some of my favorite people on the trip—Jess Bradshaw, eating a peanut butter and jelly and banana sandwich, Vincoli with yogurt and cereal, Dan reading the Anead and Scott and I sharing a salad. We talked about our favorite books, and languages, and the craziness that is the Classics Trip until we all realized that we still had a lot of work to do and reatreated, reluctantly, to our own rooms to do our work, pack, and sleep. On to Rome in the morning.

Today we spent the whole day on the train, traveling to Rome, hauling our stuff up the stairs and down the stairs, through the heat and the noise and the bustle before we finally go to the familiar hotel Silva. We were going to go out to see some of Archaic Rome that day but it looked like rain and there wasn’t that much to see so Jarrett just gave us a lecture on the patio of the hotel, and we took notes there. Just at the end of his lecture, the skies opened up and the rain poured down, leaving us very happy that we did not venture out into the forum. Instead, Katie and I hung out in the room for a while, we all had a picnic dinner.

Then, when we were all about to do work, Chris Vincoli came in the room with a strange bit of news—he had seen Italian headlines featuring a shooting at Virginia Tech. We didn’t know what to make of it, or how serious it was, until Stewart checked her email and the details started to come out—many many students had been injured, and her sister had been witnesses to the ambulances coming into to survey the scene. We all sat in stunned silence, and suddenly everyone sprang into action, bringing the computers out and calling friends and relatives to make sure everyone was ok.

We stayed glued to the computer and email for the rest of the night, checking and talking about the horrors we were uncovering. 50 people shot, and 30 dead, by some crazed gunman apparently on a quest to avenge some perceived slight by his girlfriend. We all thought school was a safe place, and VT could have been any college campus. It could have happened. It was us out there, getting shot—college students put in a position that no college student should have to face. Katie knew someone in the classroom who played dead and was the only one to get out alive. A kid our age, in a school just like ours. I think we will all remember exactly how we found this out… where we were, and what will unfold in the coming weeks. This hits too close to home for all of us for it to be any other way, even when we are all of the way over here in Europe. I just cannot believe that it happened.

We all went to bed tonight with a feeling of unease; feeling a little bit sick to our stomachs.