Roma If You Want To: Once upon a time...I fell in love with an island

I’m writing this post from my sea view balcony in the Amalfi Coast—but more on this week next time. I spent last week in Capri, hiking all over the island and participating (minimally) in a design workshop with Italian architecture graduate students. The combination of spontaneous, unexpected adventures and the island’s captivating scenery, not to mention lots of ah-mazinggg food, all added up to it becoming my best week abroad…or ever.

While the rest of our class headed to northern Italy for a field trip, I boarded a train and hydrofoil boat to Capri with my good friend and classmate, fellow ‘adventure extraordinaire’, Eric, and our professor, Romolo. We arrived on the island in time to drop our bags at our fancy-shmancy hotel and grab drinks with Romolo before lunch with the other workshop professors. After pizza and complementary lemoncello, Romolo led us on our first hike of the week to see the Arco Naturale, a naturally formed arch, the Grotto Matremania, a large cave that was used around the time of Christ by a religious cult that primarily worshipped Mother Earth, and views to the Faraglione, large rock formations just off the island’s coast.

We kicked off each day with a big breakfast at the hotel before setting off to hike or meet with the design workshop crew. On the first day of the workshop, Romolo led the whole group to Villa Jovis, the ruins of a villa built on top of one of the tallest peaks of Capri where the emperor Tiberius ran the entire Roman Empire from for much of his rule. Using a lighthouse with a large fire and reflective panels, Tiberius could send messages from the Villa with a system of signals similar to Morse Code along a chain of lighthouses all the way up the Italian coast faster than any mode of transportation could travel at the time.

In the evening, Eric and I set out to find a bottle of wine and some snacks and ended up following signs to a Bellevedere (translation: beautiful view), landing ourselves at a panoramic overlook to Capri at dusk. The minute I turned the corner to the (literally) breathtaking view was the moment I fell in love with the island. I celebrated my new-founded love for Capri with dinner at Michelangelo’s—a restaurant that we had all to ourselves where we befriended the entertaining host/waiter, Edvino, and the jolly chef, “Papa!”.

The off-season in Capri is actually ‘off’ for all but a few tourists, and beyond the main streets in the town center we didn’t see anyone. Eric and I didn’t mind that the shops weren’t open for us, and the lack of tourists made the island that much more magical because it felt like we had the entire island to ourselves. Once Romolo headed back to Rome, Eric and I were free to explore tiny passageways and deserted trails that we stumbled upon without any hesitation…there was no one on the island to catch us!

Our explorations led us up and down cliffs where we relied on sketchy rope ladders to keep us from falling into the sea below, and to an abandoned lighthouse that we reached by pushing through waist-high thorn bushes, and to up-close views of the Villa Lysis, and Casa Malaparte, and the Faraglione...just when we thought we had seen it all, there was more to see.

On Thursday morning, Eric and I set off for what we would eventually title ‘The Mother of All Hikes”: an 8.5 hour hike on which we walked around more than half of the island’s circumference and climbed over 1900 feet in elevation. (Check out his blog for pictures that put mine to shame). The trek began at Marina Grande, the main port, from where we climbed hundreds of steps to Anacapri, the upper town of the island and home to Villa San Michele, the museum of Axel Munthe—a doctor/architect/archeologist who, long story short, not only saved the ancient ruins of Capri but also saved the island from multiple epidemics. We grabbed lunch-to-go at a market in the town and stopped by ruins of Villa Damecuta—an Augustan fort/villa—on our way to the the Sentiero dei Fortini, a trail which winded us along cliffs, past ruins of Medieval forts, down to grottos, and between terraced farms and lemon groves. Three hours later, we began our steep climb up to a trail along the very edge of the tallest ridge of Capri. With a sheer drop down to the ocean on one side and a view over Anacapri on the other, the trail eventually led us to the highest peak on the island. Out of breath and almost out of water and daylight (but totally amped from our mega-hike feat), we headed down another trail, switching back and forth through dense woods and ending back in town near our hotel. Woah!

That night, Eric and I returned to Michelangelo’s where we found ourselves at a special dinner event celebrating international Women’s Day. The evening consisted of a delicious 4 course meal (cooked by “Papa!”) with a side of a suave Italian man singing along to pre-recorded music while pretending to play the keyboard, flashy club lights, a disco ball, and a restaurant full of old ladies (and me and Eric) dancing with wine-filled bellies and tambourines.

All of our dinners were as satisfying as our island adventures and included some form of fresh seafood: penne with just-caught salmon, a big bowl of mussels and clams, seafood pasta, fried calamari and octopus…it all added up to undeniably the best food I’ve had in Italy so far. (Don’t worry, Ma, your cooking is still #1).

With Capri still dominating most of my brain, I’ve decided it’s experiences like these that studying abroad is all about...you know, like, spontaneous dance parties with old ladies shakin’ it to remixes of Mambo #5 after hours of hiking across the most beautiful island on the planet.