I’m actually writing this on the 9 hour flight home because I have been unable to get on line since yesterday afternoon. I realized that my need to be online roughly synchronizes with the Italian grad students’ need to step outside and smoke. Ah, one sweet lungful of bits is all I crave.

Anyway, yesterday was quite wonderful. After breakfast with Derrick, class started again at 10AM. We talked about Internet time (threads vs. moments), whether the experience of the Web will universalize or localize knowledge, and other topics like those. Have I mentioned how lucky I feel to be allowed to participation in such discussions?

At lunch time we went for one last meal at the same ol’ delicious restaurant (Hint: Real Italian restaurants make The Olive Garden look silly) where I learned that my participation was over; after lunch the students and Derrick were getting together to talk about what we had talked about. I felt bereft. I had only been with these people for 1.5 days, and yet I was sad beyond my expectation. Yes, they are all bright, but I don’t usually choke up leaving bright people. Because of some combination of their seriousness, openness, the connection of their beliefs to their personalities, and the integration of those beliefs with what matters in the world — also, they’re a fun and warm group — I felt I had come to know them in just a couple of days.

So, they went back to the meeting room and I went to my hotel to try to figure out what to see on the island. I would have gone to Marina Piccola (the small harbor) because it is less touristy, but, there were no buses in the afternoon from Anacapri to there. So, I took a bus to Capri. The person in the hotel had at first recommended that I walk from the Capri bus stop to Arco Naturale (all spellings approximate!), a natural geologic arch. But they said it was 2 hours each way. I pointed to my flab and explained I wasn’t up for a 4 hour walk. So they suggested the Giardini di Augusto.

To get there, you walk from the center of Capri, with its ridiculously swank stores, to the other side of the island, and then north for a bit. It’s only about ten minutes. The garden is nothing special when it comes to flowers, but the view is spectacular. You are on a promontory looking down some knee-trembling distance to the sea. To the left are the famous rock towers protruding from the sea. To the right is Marina Piccolo. On the map it looked like Marina Piccolo is about 5 minutes from the Garden. What the map doesn’t tell you is that town is down hundreds of feet. To get there, you can either plummet over the edge or walk down a set of switchbacks that would make a mule dizzy. I opted for neither.

So, I instead tried to find another site the hotelier had recommended, about ten minutes away. But along the way I saw signs for the Natural Arch and decided, what the heck, I can walk part of the way.

The streets start out by taking you up and then up some more, through residential areas that are only lovely and fascinating, not spectacular, inhabited by the locals serving in the aristocrats’ wonderland. As you walk further, you see actual agriculture, albeit on small plots. Along the way, I sat on a couple of benches, watching a cloud circle Capri’s highest peak, and, frankly, writing a poem too awful to share.

Soon the land becomes cliffs with conifers sticking up and nasturtia falling down. To get to the Natural Arch you have to decide to go down an indefinite series of steps. With a sigh I began and in only a few minutes was at the top of a natural rock arch that seemed about the size of the one in St. Louis. A more determined tourist would have gone down to its base, but I figured looking at up it wasn’t all that different from looking down on it. After a few minutes of staring I felt I had exhausted the experience, so I climbed back up and went to a cafe/restaurant (Trattoria le “Grottelle”) notched into the cliff along the path. You hear and smell a pine forest, but you are looking at the sea. I had an plain bottle of beer that was one of the best I ever drank.

Cafes at the end of walks are uniformly among my fondest memories. I don’t remember much about being in the Lake District in England with my wife-to-be 27 years ago, but I do remember the small tea shop at the end of a long walk through two green waves. Great tea. Great place to be in love.

The way back into Capri brought me through its Medieval District, a zone of twisty, hilly alleys (not all the same) that take you past the real stores of the village. I even found a hardware store.

Then I hung around the town center, shopping for little souvenirs for my children — “Here’s something for you to remember a trip you didn’t get to come on, kids! Enjoy!” — waiting to join Derrick for dinner with one of the deans of the University of Napoli, my host. Eight of us all together went to Paolino’s, an outdoor restaurant with a natural roof formed by the fruited branches of lemon trees. Somewhat spectacular. Much of the conversation was in Italian, of course, which I valiantly tried to understand, usually getting a few words and trying to figure out how, say, “New Pope,” “children,” “balcony” and “slap” could have been used in a sentence. It was a lovely evening.

This morning, I awoke at 6 to take a bus to the boat to the train to the train to the plane to the plane to the taxi home. Total travel time should be about 22 hours, if all goes well. But, unlike usual, I’m not complaining. I’m only sad to leave Italy — although I am jumping out of my skin as I write this two hours into the transatlantic flight, eager to see my wife and children — a place to which I have no historic or genetic connection but which always feels oddly like home. [Technorati tags: italy capri]

Categories: Uncategorized dw