Spending the day at the Island of Procida

I’m going to start this post by putting up the song Napul’é by Pino Daniele to set the mood :

Recently, Cart decided on a whim to join his friend who was already vacationing there, in Napoli for a short getaway. I’ve always adore Napoli. Despite it’s issues, I find it a very charming and enchanting city.

So, on Wednesday, so we hastily packed our bags and got ready for our road-trip. It took roughly about two hours drive from Rome to Pozzuoli which is a town in Napoli. And for those who are curious, the toll costs about 13.90 euro in total.

We reached the Solfatara camping site by nightfall, so we couldn’t do much sightseeing and could only have dinner before our trip the next day so we stopped by a restaurant called Taverna Viola, which I remembered from my trip while dating Cart many years back!

It was dark, and while we had candles, we could hardly see anything – not even the menu! So we had to improvise and use my phone flash-light feature to illuminate what I was eating.

This is my wonderful l’insalata di polpo. Boiled octopus sprinkled with olive oil and some herbs. Deceptively simple but really delicious!

Unfortunately, my appetizer alone was so filling, I could hardly touch my main course. I ordered pizza as it’s something to has to be eaten in Naples.

I could only managed to eat 1/8 of it before asking for a doggie bag.

We then went back to our lodging and the next morning, we got ready to go to the island of Procida and parked the cars near the port, where I noticed this interesting crossing.

I saw people walking in and out casually. People with babies, walking their dogs … etc. When the light turned red, there was be a person blocking the entrance when the train was about to pass by. I guess this is interesting for me because of the barriers that are made for the SMRT.

We got our ferry tickets at one of the vendors called Gestur. It’s always a good check the timetable so that you could plan your trip or risk to be left stranded on the island.

It costs about 7 euro one way by ferry.

Something which I found interesting about the ferries is that you could bring your own transportation on board. I saw mainly cars and vans and this makes me really want to get a better scooter so that I could do a road-trip on a two wheeler.

It’s a dream for me to do a road-trip around Italy. Imagine zipping around places and sightseeing on your two scooter. I find it more convenient, and it’s such a liberating feeling.

After we boarded on, soon we were off!

It was a beautiful day. And all throughout the ferry trip, I was enjoying the scenery and the breeze.

And 40 minutes later, we reached Procida! It was so cool seeing the bustling of vehicles exiting the ferry.

Prodica to me, is like the less glamorous cousin of Capri which I visited in 2007 and in 2011. Nevertheless, it’s still a lovely and charming place to be.

You could take the autobus to get around the island, but as there were 7 of us, it makes more sense to take a taxi.

We planned to go to the Ponte Vivara beach, and to get there, we had to pass through a small and windy road. I am always amazed at how Napolitan people drive. Take a look at how close our driver is driving near the wall!

At length, we entered a restaurant where they also rented out umbrellas and deck chairs and we starting to lounge.

As we were surrounded by volcanoes, the sand is black here, filled with iron and other minerals. It was always extremely hot there as it was August. I was yelping each time I had to walk around barefooted.

The sea on the other hand was really cooling and quite clear. I didn’t take any picture while I was swimming, as my camera isn’t those waterproof type. But believe me, the deeper I went, the clearer the water – I could see my feet even when I was half way submerged in the sea.

When I got tired of swimming, I headed back to the deck chairs. There were loads of eye-candy to be seen and I made a game of trying to spot out men in speedos 😉

But I really am not a beach-bunny, and it was really uncomfortably hot for me. So randomly, I toss in a picture of a Torta Caprese that Cart got for me. We were quite famised as we didn’t have breakfast prior to that.

The picture below sort of reminds me of a set from a music video.

It always amuses me at how dark Italians can get when they tan themselves and turn the same shade as me.

It was time for lunch and we headed back to the Vivara restaurant where Cart had paccheri with eggplants, tomatoes and mozzarella.

Alessandra had grilled mixed seafood

This is Fabrizio’s sword fish with agrumi

And this is my grilled Tuna with tomato concasse. It was medium done, but it was absolutely delicious. I’d like to try this myself. Shouldn’t be too hard 🙂

For dessert, I wanted a cool treat, so I gave this a try. I’ve never seen kit-kat ice cream before and was curious to give it a try.

It’s kind of weird eating an ice cream with a hard chocolate bar right in the middle of the cone that though. I was indecisive to bite through it or lick around it.

While Cart and Fabrizio had a fig cake with honey and cherry syrup on the sides.

We lounged and hanged around later for a 2 hour coffee until it was nearing our time to head back to Pozzuoli.

While waiting for the ferry, I saw a family of cats. A little scrawny, but they are adorable nevertheless.

I was so tempted to bring this little kitten home as it was so cute and affectionate. It wasn’t afraid to follow me around. I was sorry that I didn’t have any treats for it.

Time really seems to pass by quickly when you’re on vacation.

And we were back at the Port of Pozzuoli again.

I end this post by showing you a picture of the Vesuvius volcano in the foreground.

Watch out for the next post where I head to the Volcanoes 🙂