Saturday 16 May 2009

Boat Trip Around Capri

Saturday 20 August 2005. If you can remember back to the last entry from this holiday, we were on the island of Capri where Mum was bewildering the locals and anyone younger than 70 by singing a non-stop medley of Gracie Fields songs, interspaced with sayings like "Eeh, cum on, lass, sing along!" and "Hey up! Whatever's t'matter wi' y'all?"

We have moved from the island onto a small swaying boat and here's Gino climbing up to the lookout tower (well, alright, but he was climbing up to something ok?) to give us a running commentary of what we would see. Despite the notice, we are not going to see the famous Blue Grotto. We don't have long enough as the grotto entrance is so low that the viewing involves putting off all the passengers in ones and twos to lie down in rowing boats to go into the cave.

We pass by the harbour at the town of Capri, where we landed this morning.

There's a figure on a rock up ahead. I took it just for someone sunbathing at first, but on closer viewing it turns out to be a statue.

"Is-a where the sirens sat to lure the boats onto the rocks with their singing," explained Gino, looking sternly at Mum.

We might not be able to go into the Blue Grotto, but there are plenty of caves along the way to look at.

The boat captain backs us into a larger one and we can see the reflected blue of the sea on the roof of the cave.

I'm so busy trying to take a photo that when I take the camera from my eye and turn round there's a hard rock cave archway about an inch from my nose...

The trip takes us past some spectacular scenery. There's a soaring rock archway high up on this hillside.

And then we spot the Faglieri Rocks in front of us. Ooh! Will we sail between them? Er... hang on... er... he isn't going to... he is, you know... Yikes!

I was awestruck, thinking we were about to sail between the two rocks, but no... We sailed through the hole in the smaller of the rocks.

We have just sailed through the archway in the left hand rock. I was having thoughts of Poseidon rising to hold the towering rocks apart for us like in Jason and the Argonauts!

And just look at the sheer size of this cavern set into the hillside of Capri. You'd get a whole shedload of sirens sitting in there!

We come to the Blue Grotto. There are several boats waiting to transfer people into the rowing boats. There are two of them behind the boats in the foreground whilst a third is disappearing into the grotto just behind the driver with white shirt and white hair in the left hand boat. A steady stream of people are walking down the steps on the cliff, waiting for their turn to view inside. We slow whilst Gino tells us what we are missing and then carry on.

This is a low archway rather than a cave, but just look at the colour of the water! Now it's time for us to head back to the larger boat that will take us back to Sorrento.

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