Leaving Taormina today on the train. The station at Taormina is very pretty, Mediterranean, and romantic. 
Sat on the train with a very chatty Canadian, then pretended to sleep for a while to get some quiet. Then actually slept for a while. Left train at Naples, then took a very scary taxi to make a ferry to Capri. Apparently red lights are only suggestions for Neapolitan taxi drivers. There was a great red light running left turn across three lanes of traffic, but it did help to make the ferry. At the ramp to what was definitely the correct boat, three sailors indicated that the boat was going to Sorrento. Joking because I was running to the boat. Then on the boat, another sailor said the boat as going to Ischia. Joking also. They were in cahoots and thought this all was very funny. On Capri it was very pretty. The town is on a mountain leading down to the marina. You have to take a cable car to get to the main town from the harbor. Then a main square and streets full of designer clothes. Capri is very touristy, but somehow still a lot more likeable than other tourist cities. Probably because it’s extremely pretty. Unreasonably pretty. I stayed at a family hotel, with views of the Mediterranean. It started to rain and we ran to the nearest restaurant, Isodoro, which was full. I had actually the best ever spaghetti and clams. As in both the spaghetti and the clams were the best I had ever had of all spaghettis and clams respectively. Then white wine, espresso, and a gratis limoncello at the end. I have to see if they sell limoncello at Spec’s.
The next day:
Capri continues to be cold. The water is very kicked up, and no boats are going out except for the largest ferry. So no blue grotto today. We hiked all the way up about a mile of incline through narrow alleys and very nice houses and gardens. The women walking down from these houses were well dressed and spoke standard Italian. This is a big change from the people in town and in Sicily who had much heavier accents when speaking Italian, and preferred their own dialect among each other. Dialect = incomprehensible. The town Italian is tricky too, as several phonemes see changed. Like “rosso” becomes “rosho”. And a lot of word endings disappear. Very confusing. Anyway, at the top of the hill/mountain is the Villa Jovis and a park with great views and questionable wooden railings. The Villa is where Emperor Tiberius liked to vacation. There are wild goats up here which like tourists. The villa is mostly ruined, but you can get a general feel for the scale of it, and the view of the sea.
the view
Then a short hike/climb through the woods/cliff to a modern modern villa, Villa Lysis. In the early 1900’s, a rich Swede basically kidnapped a teenager off the streets to use as his “muse” etc. He brought him back to this Villa, which was all white walls and gaudy gold decorations, and had statues and paintings made of him. After a time the Swede overdosed on drugs mixed champagne in his own personal opium den in the basement. Then left nothing to the muse in his will, because he wasn’t an aristocrat. The whole house is very eerie. The villa is run now by an old man who has handwritten signs to it all over the city. After, tried to go down to the Via Krupp scenic path but it was closed for weather. Then took a bus to Anacapri, the town above Capri to see what there was to see. The main sight was a now closed church where the floor is one continuous scene painting on tiles. 
Then a bus to the secondary harbor to see the waves. This is usually a beach, but the sea level was over the first floor of the beachside restaurants, and crashing up to the second level.
The buses seem at too large for the roads. On the way up from the little marina the bus scraped a wall, but this didn’t seem to be a big deal. Capri in the storm as almost deserted because of the ferry cancellations. We were probably the only customers of the night at Isidoro, which had been full the night before. The bed