Capri and New Year's Eve

Capri and New Year’s Eve

December 31, 2018

An early rise and breakfast to get to the Sorrento port for the early boat to Capri.  It’s a fast catamaran:

We took only about 35 minutes to get to Capri:

The harbor is below the town:

And you take a funicular up and up to a point midway between the water and the top of the mountain.  From there you can see the road to the top; according to our guide it’s called “Via Mamma Mia:

Capri town looks down over homes:

There are fabulous estates here.  This one, at the top of a cliff, belonged to Friedrich Krupp of the German steel company, who died in 1902.  There is a walkway named for Krupp also:

The middle level of the island is where the town is, and the town is Rodeo Drive in Italy.  Designer store after designer store along a lovely street.  We walked an incredible path which had phenomenal villas on both sides—upper and lower.  On the upper side you could see almost nothing because of a stone wall, but we did get peeks of the lower homes:

At the end of the path is Punta Tracara, a huge villa designed by Le Corbusier, now a hotel.  It famously was the site of a meeting between Churchill and Eisenhower during WW II:

 After that walk we took a car along the Via Mamma Mia to Anacapri, a small town up high along the mountainside, and visited Villa San Michele, the home of Swedish author Axel Munthe, who was made famous by his book The Story of San Michele.  Built at the turn of the 19^th c., the villa is stunning.  Here’s Munthe’s bedroom:

We took the fast boat back to Sorrento with lots of time to get to the main square for the 6:00 donkey.  We really didn’t know what to expect.  The square was packed with people, and there was a roped off area in the center of the square with a platform on it:

We heard a brass band, and it came to the square from a side street, preceding the donkey who followed.  Click the arrow for the video:

 The donkey, packed with fireworks, was placed on the platform:

A loudspeaker announcer led the crowd in song, and then, precisely at 6:00, a fuse was lit and the donkey began exploding.  Here are the eyes:

  

The ears:

 The rear:

And the grand finale from a massive phallus:

The crowd roared!  After that, an enormous fireworks display was launched from an adjacent rooftop:

It was quite a scene.  We then went back to the hotel, changed, and went for our New Year’s Eve dinner, which was accompanied by much wine, dancing, and festivity.  Here’s one of the centerpieces, a butter sculpture surrounded by smoked salmon  slices.  Made no sense to us:

Here’s our table of three couples, lovely and very compatible people on our trip:

At midnight, most of us went to the roof of the hotel for the Bay of Naples fireworks.  Every town and village on the Bay had fireworks which went on for 35 or 40 minutes.  This video was shot 20 minutes into the display:

 We get to sleep in on the 1^st.  Happy New Year, everyone!