Honeymoon: Claudia Schiffer!

Our first shore excursion to the fabulous and touristy Isle of Capri. I don’t mind the touristyness at all, as the island is very quaint and looks exactly like we all imagine a Mediterranean island with hill towns would look like. We docked at Naples, close enough to hometown for Dad's ancestors, and we acquired our tour guide, Ornella bless her heart, as we left the ship. She exhibited the trait that most European women who make announcements exhibit, she speaks so softly you can’t understand a word she is saying. We speculated that it must do with the different inflections between Italian and English, but this trait is particularly dreadful in a tour guide. We could barely understand her even after they handed out the little “Whisper” ear pieces that allow her to speak directly to us via radio. We made the jet boat, and had a nice trip to the island. Then we discovered there was a poor woman who couldn’t walk that had signed up for our tour, and that we were one bus short for the 5 tour groups. We spent so much time accommodating this woman, who should have been re-advised at the assembly point on the ship that she had made a very poor choice of tours, that we were the group that was short a bus. At this point Ornella, bless her heart, disappeared without telling us what she was doing and we were left to try to figure it out for about a ½ hour until she showed up again with tickets to the Funiculare, or the incline train, that would take us to Capri, not Anicapri as we had been promised. This took another ½ hour of organization (we could have walked up the hill faster) and by the time we reached the top, Jene and I had decided we could do this better on our own. We handed in our radios, and bolted to the left. Ornella, bless her heart, was stunned that we would do this, as we had already paid for lunch and would be missing this sumptuous meal. We found out later that it was too much food that was ill prepared, (which we predicted) and so we were just as glad to have missed it. We took a bus up the bigger hill to Anicapri, along a road that is narrow with no guard rail to impede your view, so it was somewhat like a roller coaster ride, particularly when the scooters shot past you through spaces too small for them to exist in. We got there, walked around, had lunch at a little café with begging cats (which was more fun than it sounded) and a fantastic view of the Mediterranean. Then we made our way back to the larger town of Capri. We found our tour group walking behind the poor woman who couldn’t walk who was now being hauled back to the ship on a luggage truck. We managed to pass by without being noticed by Ornella, bless her heart, who was busy with something that looked very non tour related. I felt bad for the woman who couldn’t walk, as she really should have been advised that she made a very poor tour choice. On the other hand, they had made the level of walking pretty clear in the brochure. As we continued down the road, we saw supermodel Claudia Schiffer, bless here heart, with very bad hair in the middle of a photo shoot. She was accompanied by a good looking Italian model who no one was paying attention to and frankly he was looking a little put our by it. At some point there may be some picture in a magazine tha thas Jene and I walking past CS and her Ciao boy, but I doubt it. Some woman from our cruise (you could tell by the stickers they plaster you with) exclaimed loudly as CS walked by that she thought that was a very bad hair color for her skin and that she should change it, bless her heart. We enjoyed Capri, sat in the piazza and had gelato and generally had a grand ole time without our tour. We managed to finegale a ticket back on the jet boat without Ornella, bhh, and ended a fine day by listening to the adventures and complaints of the folks around us. One gentlemen from Kentucky, not on our cruise, was conversing with the folks from our crusie and marveling at the size of the boat and length of the itinerary. He opined that that 5 days at sea with his wife would be fantastic as that was 5 days less shopping she could accomplish. His wife then kindly reminded him that you can shop on the boat. The evening ended with dinner and some music, and watching the drag race between our boat and the Royal Carribean boat along the same course, which we won. All those folks on the other ship had boat envy, as we could see them snapping pictures of us as we pulled ahead. We put in a comment card about Ornella, bhh, and we will try to get some money back, although I doubt we will succeed.