Europe’s COVID stricken summer was drawing to a close and borders were tightening after a short summer tourist season; but Olena and I still had the rest of September off and we were determined to make the most of our free time. While I was biking to Copenhagen she was busy figuring out where we could travel to. She explained our plans over the phone while I was riding along endless cycle paths in the middle of nowhere.
“Flights to Rome are the cheapest,” she began.
“OK,” I said distractedly.
“But you and I have both been to Rome and they don’t have nice beaches,” she continued.
“So we aren’t flying to Rome,” I said.
“No we fly to Rome but then take the train down to Naples. Then we take a ferry to Capri and spend the night. Then we take another ferry to Positano. After a night there we go to Sorrento,” she rattled off excitedly.
“Wait. Where is Capri,” I asked.
“An island off the coast of Italy,” she said, like I was crazy.
“This seems like a lot to do in just a week. Shouldn’t we just pick one place and hang out on the beach? This is supposed to be relaxing, after all.”
“No, no, no. It’ll be amazing, you’ll see,” she said.
Boy, was she right.
That’s how—not even 12 hours after getting back to Berlin from my Copenhagen bike trip—I found myself making my way to the airport at 5 a.m. to fly to Rome.
After our flight and a few trains we made it to Naples around noon and started walking to our hotel. We dodged scooters coming from all directions while avoiding piles of trash and mystery liquids in the gutter. We dropped our bags and made our way right back into the fray of Naples, meandering along the Via dei Tribunali in search of lunch: pizza. A neapolitan pie quickly made all of the disarray of Naples seem worth it and it gave us all the energy we needed to charge through the rest of the day’s activities.
We explored a handful of churches, and as much of the Spanish Quarter as we could handle. Which really isn’t much. We hiked up to the San Martino Monastery for views of Mount Vesuvius and refueled with espresso along the way. After 10 hours we’d already seen all of Naples that we wanted to see, and capped it off with a rich pasta dinner and a bottle of wine.
With Naples checked off our lists, the next day we made like tourists and took the train to Pompeii. Neither of us had been entirely set on going to Pompeii but once we were there we had a blast getting lost among the city’s ancient streets and exploring villas from another time. But after four hours in the Italian heat we called it a day and made our way back to the hotel. On our way we grabbed a pizza from the famous L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele (Eat, Pray, Love, anyone?) and scarfed it down before passing out.
The next morning we zipped up our bags and made our way to the ferry port for our trip to Capri, a small, picturesque island known for limoncello and mega yachts. After shuffling on to the island with a load of tourists we made our way to the scooter shop to get our hands on some wheels. It wasn’t going to be cheap. But it sure beat getting a ton of taxis or sharing air with a dozen other people on Capri’s tiny buses.
I reassured the scooter shop that I knew how to ride a scooter before swerving out onto the street with Olena on the seat behind me and our bags tucked in wherever we could find space. I pulled the throttle back as far as it would go and the little-yellow-scooter-that-could coughed its way up the hill surrounding Capri’s harbor. I struggled to navigate the hairpin turns with the scooter so heavily loaded but after a harrowing ride we made it to our hotel in the mountains.
Not wanting to waste a minute on the idyllic island we tossed our bags in our room and hopped right back on the scooter to explore. The turns were much easier to navigate without bags so we started to enjoy the ride as we made our way up the mountain and over to the south western tip of the island to the beach.
We laid out in the sun and listened to the waves lapping against the rocks. Oh, and the children screaming at the top of their lungs as they jumped into the water. Families swarmed around us, teaching the young ones how to swim and splashing each other in the hot sun.We succumbed to our hunger pangs before the sun got too near the horizon and buzzed on our scooter back to town for dinner and the sunset.
We set our alarms for just before sunrise and rushed out onto the terrace as the sun’s rays turned everything orange. We took picture after picture until the heat of the sun started to overwhelm us, not even 30 minutes after sunrise.
Then, with sunrise over, we made our way straight to La Fontanilla, an exclusive beach club and restaurant that felt like a dream. We soaked up the sun until we got too hot to think straight and then jumped into the turquoise water, over and over again. All morning and afternoon we rotisseried until we had to leave to catch the last ferry to Positano.
