Last weekend (April 16-18), we took a three-day bus trip with the students and faculty from the CUA Rome Program. This time, we headed south to the seaside region around the Bay of Naples, about a three-hour trip from Rome. We stayed in a very nice hotel in the fashionable seaside resort town of Sorrento, enjoying tasty meals and watching the full moon rise from the balcony. One of our favorite experiences was a day-long excursion to the Island of Capri. Susie and I took a jet-powered ferry out to the island, which rises high above the sea on spectacular sheer cliffs. There are only two small villages on the island, but it has become something of a vacation paradise because of its scenic views, year-round beautiful climate, and expensive shops and restaurants.
We rode the funicular (cable car) to the village of Capri high above the harbor. From there, we strolled through the village, window-shopping at luxury goods and sampling tasty gelato. We also took a hike to the cliffs at the far northeast corner of the island to see the ruins of Villa Jovis, a massive palace built by the Emperor Tiberius in the 1st-century AD. The palace complex was supplied with water captured in massive cisterns. The emperor lived there for the final decade of his life, communicating his orders to the mainland via a lighthouse at night and a huge signal mirror by day. The Italian word "capri" means "goats," and we saw a few wild specimens in the woods.
https://picasaweb.google.com/SteveDC505/Capri?authkey=Gv1sRgCPSsn__As5LWvQE#
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