I swam where the Romans swam..

My last two days in Italy, I went on a Semester at Sea excursion to the Island of Capri. We rode a ferry from Naples, where our ship was ported at the time, over to the Island of Capri. As soon as we got to Capri, we rode a bus up an extremely steep, narrow, and winded road to Anna Capri, which means “upper Capri.” If my fear of heights hadn’t been tested enough, we then took chair lifts up to the highest peak of the Island. We were literally in the clouds! It was incredible!! After taking pictures and hearing a brief history on the Island we rode the chair lift down a few hundred feet, where we ate lunch and then went to our hotel. The rest of the day was spent relaxing in Anna Capri.

The next day, we woke up early to beat the crowd of tourists wanting to see the Blue Grotto. If you don’t know what this is, Google it! It’s stunning. Capri has several different “grottos”-I think the colors are red, green, white and blue. They each have different types of glowing algae that literally illuminate the caves. It was by far one of the most beautiful naturally occurring sights I have ever seen.

In order to tour the Blue Grotto, you first ride a large boat over to the cave with a big group. Then you jump in rowboats with about three other people and enter the cave. Luckily, we had a very entertaining rower. He gave us quite the tour with his singing, animated story telling and….mischievous nature. Once getting us into a corner of the cave, he told us we could actually get into the water. Of course, I jumped in! Little did I know, this is not really allowed, however, I wasn’t really upset about breaking this rule.. I swam where Romans once swam.. This was definitely up there on the Top 10 coolest experiences of my life. After leaving the Blue Grotto, we got a group together to rent an inflatable, motorized boat and went cruising around the island to find the other grottos or caves. Needless to say, it was a great day!