Pro tip: Regardless of the amount of research you’ve done in order to enter another country during the era of Covid, check again….and again, and fuck it, one more time. Because you most certainly forgot to fill something out. Also common sense for most people, if you are leaving for the airport at 5:00pm there will most definitely be rush hour traffic into the city. So probably give yourself some extra time. Or maybe it is because we had to keep going back to the house because Stefania forgot something not just once, but twice.
When you get to the airport and find out that you need to fill out something that you didn't fill out, instead of standing there like two fools on your phones panicking to fill it out, just get on line and do it. Be aware of your surroundings. There may be a long line. So get that process started.
A sports bra may be a good idea for an overnight flight, but it is not a great look when you are running through the airport to catch a flight you are very very late for. And when you are late, your gate is going to be the farthest thing from security. So it was a good three mile run...in a sports bra...heavily breathing trying to find your seat. But it was all worth it when you find out that the alcohol on the plane is free. You can say we went a little fancier than our Ecuador flight.
After about fifty trips back and forth to the airport this year, fumbling through a backpack for your passport, boarding pass, vaccination card, covid test, or any other bullshit that you need, we’ve discovered that a Danny Fanny is a life changer. Another pro tip: get yourself a Danny Fanny. It makes sprinting through the airport a million times easier…..and cuter. And yeah we got matching shirts, cuz we're corny like that. (I promise, the good pictures are coming)
Needless to say, we would have given a lot of good content and drama for the show Amazing Race.
Let’s play a game. How many modes of transportation can two fools take in order to get to one destination? I’ll tell you: a car to the shuttle, a shuttle to the airport, a plane to a train, a train to another train, a train to an Uber, an Uber to a ferry, a ferry to another shuttle. And good news, 14 months later, you’ve finally arrived at your Airbnb in Capri!
Maybe do yourself a favor and get yourself some Euros before going to Italy. Go to your bank ahead of time (and we don’t mean 2 hours before you leave for the airport). Because you will pay out of the ass to get it at an ATM, but luckily most places do take credit cards. But you will need some euros for the boat tour and the bus. Don’t be an idiot. Don’t wait until you get to Capri to get some money. Do that shit beforehand like a normal person. We are not normal, we think we are, but that’s all that matters. We also think we are rich (we are not by the way). Here's some cool pics of some paintings, and a cat on a motorcycle, because I don't have any images that relate to this paragraph or the next few. And it's our blog, we can do whatever we want.
Do your best to focus when your Airbnb host is explaining to you the million things that you can do around here, instead of focusing on a lemon decor in the middle of the kitchen thinking “wow that looks like a butthole.” She might be saying something valuable, but we wouldn’t know.
If you read our Ecuador blog, you will know that we are not the easiest to please when it comes to food, not because we have a developed palette and enjoy the finer foods, but because we eat like five year olds. Be prepared, Capri is heavy on the seafood. Ya know, it is an island, a small one if that. So if you are picky eaters, like Stefania and Amelia, you will struggle yet again. Prepare yourself and while you have wifi at the Airbnb, do some research on Yelp for the one dish that you want. For us, it was Gnocchi and spaghetti carbonara. And maybe you’ll find a restaurant that you are looking for and do yourself a favor and make a reservation, or you’ll end up at a dinky little table near the door. The pizza is good but hard to come by, shockingly. Major bummer, it seems garlic knots don’t exist in Italy. So you are not getting garlic knots for your birthday. You will get bread but you won’t get oil and spices that you would at a real Italian restaurant like Olive Garden. Do yourself a favor and don’t shove the bread down your gullet. Wait until you get your meal and dip your bread into your sauce. That’s what we would recommend. Good news is that we did find french fries and coffee everywhere we went. The coffee is tart so you’ll have to put a million packets of sugar in it. You must have a gelato once a day, that is an Italian rule.
The way that they pour a glass of wine, is barely a quarter of the way up. If you are Stefania and Amelia, you fill it all the way up to the tippy top. So when you order a bottle of wine at dinner and they pour you that first round, maybe be classy and don’t fill it up to the top. Just pour a little bit of it in and don’t be trashy. As soon as the waiter walks away, fill it up. Guzzle it, suck it down, and get yourself drunk.
If you want to take a boat tour around the island, get yourself a seasick patch from your doctor, pop it on and you will feel nothing. Call Marcello, he’ll hook you up...except when he tells you to jump in the water and says it's warm. Do not believe him...fa freddo (it's freezing). But don’t be lame, do it. Jump in the blue water, you’re in Capri. And when we say blue water, it’s like someone dumped a giant bucket of blue food coloring into the ocean. It looks like fake blue.
Those little boats by the Blue Grato. Not a tourist trap. Spend the fourteen Euros a person for ten minutes and just do it! It was totally worth it! If you have balls, swim in it. We did not have the balls.
Everything in you might say “hey rent a car and drive the Amalfi coast all by yourself.” But once you are about five seconds away from doing that you realize that everything is really telling you not to do that. Once, again due to poor planning, this is something that should have been expected. Even though the rental car is half paid for, as we are walking off the ferry and reading the confirmation email (which should have been done a week ago) we read that apparently you need some sort of international license to rent a car. So we say, “what do we do? Do we take a chance and go to the rental place? F’ it and see if we get the car? Or do we just say that this is a sign from the universe that driving these windy, scary, very dangerous roads is probably not the best idea.” We went with the latter. Last minute, we found ourselves a driver. It probably cost us triple of what it should have, but we’re rich, so fuck it. We ended up hiring the sweetest little man, Luigi, to take us down the Amalfi coast and back. Not only did he do just that, but he legit made every single one of Stefania's birthday wishes come true. She got her cannoli, she got her pizza, she got herself multiple bottles of wine (one of which cost us a small fortune), she got her spaghetti with olive and garlic. We went to the cutest little restaurant that no one even knows about apparently, because we were the only ones there. This time, do not listen to your gut. Just get the private driver (because who wants to share?!) and he will literally tailor the whole day around your wants and your needs. We knew we made the right choice when we found out Luigi did a tour for Danny DeVito (we saw picture proofs, so it wasn’t a lie). So you know we got our rocks off on that. While Luigi was one of the best guides we’ve ever had, he knows everybody and he will take you to the most expensive restaurants you’ve ever seen and he will tell you it’s the best. Problem is, as we mentioned a thousand times, we eat like children. A sixty dollar plate of ravioli is not going to taste any better to us than a two dollar plate of spaghetti and cheese. We had to wiggle our way out of that one. But if you are looking for some life lessons on love, he is the man to see. He is the Italian love guru. He will have you take a cheap ferry ride from Positano to Amalfi to get some great views of the coast. Get there supes early because you will not get a prime seat (the left side) but you may get the opportunity to see somebody fall down the stairs, which is even better than the left side views. They say New York drivers are the craziest. Anybody who has said that has never been to Italy, or out of the country for that matter.
If you rip your skirt in Positano, don’t worry, there are plenty of expensive opportunities to get yourself a linen skirt. They are V into their linens. Americans are more into the flowy skirts, which really threw us off. But good news Stefania did find a new skirt.
If you are in Naples, you have to try some limoncello. Luigi will take you to the best place, of course. But not only does this place have the best limoncello, it has the best spreads, jams, and nutellas, but it also has this amazing little outlook that only people buying stuff from them can use. It makes for amazing pictures.
If Capri is known for anything, it is known for a lot of hills and a lot of stairs. But if you are anything like Stefania and Amelia, you just pick an Airbnb based on how cute it is, but maybe do a little bit of research to find out exactly how many steps it takes to get up to your Airbnb every time you go home. Sixty two to be exact. Do yourself a favor and get your ass on a stairmaster for about two weeks before going to Capri. You’ll realize by the second or third day that going down steps is just as torturous as going up steps. So your method of taking a bus to go up and steps to go down, really starts to lose its glitz and glamour by day two. Your feet will hurt (specifically your pinky toe) and you will feel pain in your shins like you’ve never felt before. When you are walking back to your Airbnb, there will be a point where you have to walk along the road. The road is barely big enough for one car, let alone two in opposite directions. So the chance of you dying is a good six out of ten. But if you are a daredevil and smart, you will be able to get back to your Airbnb. We honestly don't know how we did it better drunk than sober. We must admit though, our Airbnb offered the most stunning sunrise views, but for oversized swine like us, still not worth the stairs.
Buses are cheap but the schedule is bullshit. They say they come every fifteen minutes, they do not. You’ll be waiting at a bus stop for a little bit.
We actually recommend going to Capri in October. It is not hot, it is not cold, it is completely perfect. October is the month to go. So to help you pack, here's some lame "outfit of the day" pics of Stefania that not one of you will care about.
Make sure you bring your converters for the outlets. Low key, one may explode when you try to use a hair straightener. Those things are assholes. Just accept that you might look like a rat for your whole trip.
If you’ve just gone to Ecuador and learned some key phrases in Spanish, you will have a really hard time learning some key phrases in Italian. But good news, there are way more English speaking people here than there were in Ecuador. There are enough English speaking people to get by where you can order yourself two cappuccinos without sounding like a moron. The language barrier is nowhere near the issue as it was in Ecuador, not even close. Thank god for those four years of Italian in school because it did not help at all. Amelia loves saying “domani.” She gets really excited when she gets a chance to talk about tomorrow. But our favorite is “caca.” It is poop. That way you can identify a good poop when you are walking down the streets of Capri, because sometimes there is some random caca. So you really don’t need to learn Italian, you can though, just for some funsies.
One more very important note. Since as we mentioned there are about a hundred different modes of transportation one needs to take to get back and forth to Capri, it's worth having everyone in your group set an alarm for the morning you leave. It's like a perfectly timed choreographed dance, and if your cab driver doesn't call you to find out where the hell you are after waiting 15 minutes, you will absolutely miss your flight home. If you don't set those extra alarms (because someone most certainly set theirs to 5PM, not 5AM), it will cost you extra money because the cab driver had to wait, and you will forget one of your favorite rubber Mr. and Mrs. wine glasses, and most importantly, you won't have a chance to get your coffee (scroll back up to see picture of said wine glass). We don't have any pictures of that very hectic and deliriously tired morning, but here's what Stefania was doing the night before instead of double checking her alarm....
So bottom line. Is it worth 400 hundred hours of traveling and more money than we'd like to admit, just for a measly 3 days in Italy? Yes, fucking yes.
Here's some more pics that didn't quite relate to any of the paragraphs, but are totally worth taking a peek at.
Planning a trip to Italy? Stefania and Amelia have been to different parts of Italy a few times, so reach out, we'd love to share what we know! Please enjoy this silly video of our Italian antics.