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Sunday 8th September 2013

Sunday 8th September 2013

I have been very much looking forward to going to Capri and visiting the Capri Sun factory, to see how Capri Sun is made and to taste loads of different vintages of Capri Sun, but we must have gone with a crapola travel firm because they didn't even take us to the only thing that Capri is famous for. I was furious. I love Capri Sun.

The other stuff was all right I suppose. And it was cool to get out on the water and see the Amalfi Coast from the sea. The natural beauty is beyond question, but I am also fascinated by the human endeavour of engineering houses and roads and bridges on a steep and rocky hill. Just creating the coastal road seems like a superhuman and super-expensive endeavour, that frankly I would have thought would have looked more trouble that it was worth. Make a road on a winding cliff- face with loads of gaps that would require bridges? Yeah, sure, let's do it. After we've levelled enough bits of this cliff to build some towns on. Shouldn't we just go and live somewhere less rocky? No, let's give the seagulls something to envy.

Lots of stunning rock formations to visit, but the highlight was undoubtedly the Blue Grotto, a sea cave, which is accessed via a tiny hole in the rock and in which the water shines an unearthly blue, due to sunlight reflecting through an underwater cavity. But what's most amazing about it is perhaps the rigmarole required to get into the thing. Boats queue up in the water, waiting for men on rowing boats to take four people at a time through the little gap and show them what's inside. We had to wait for 40 minutes for a row-boat to get to us and then there was a queue of another ten minutes to get to the front of the rowboats and the trip around the cave itself was only five minutes at most. And it costs 25 euros for two people, which is more than it costs to get into Pompeii!

But once you've gone out of your way to get there and waited for 40 minutes, it would seem even more foolish not to go and have a look. And whilst I am considering giving up being a writer/comedian, buying a rowing boat and turning up at the Blue Grotto to coin in my 50 euro per boat load pay day, I did admire the theatricality of the men providing this service. They have steered boats in and out of this basically rowing boat sized hole many, many times and yet they still make it feel like there is a genuine danger to it, entreating their customers to keep their head down and making scared sounds as they duck down and propel the boat through the hole. And that is fun to be a part of. And the shimmering blue water in the dark cave does seem supernatural and magical and again it's worth seeing. And the man sang a bit of opera and told us that emporer Tiberius had swum in this secret lagoon. Which might not be true, but it could be. The Romans certainly used it as structures and statues were found inside the cave.

There was some fun argy bargy between the rowing boat guys too, which one suspects is genuine, as they compete for customers willing to throw money at them. I don't think they'd take kindly to me turning up and pretending to be one of them, but I'd quite like to try just to see what would happen. Even though what would happen would involve me being drowned.

I would be the only rower chucking in a free Capri Sun for every customer though. Which is why ultimately, despite being dead, I would make the most money.



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