Spring Break in Italy: Day trip from Rome to Capri

One destination that caught our youngest’s eye when we were planning our trip to Italy was the Isle of Capri. Long storied, various ancient Roman emperors had villas there. It’s also the site of the famous and overcrowded Blue Grotto. We almost made it there some years ago when we were staying in Sorrento, but ran out of time then.

Location-wise, it’s roughly an hour ferry ride from Naples, which in turn is about an hour train ride from Rome. If you are short on time, it is a doable day trip from Rome, where we were staying, though it is a long day.

Getting there

Some people book tours for this, though it’s straightforward enough to do on your own. The general advice is to start early to avoid lines and crowds. The transit from Rome to Capri involved a few steps for us:

Take an early fast train from Rome Termini to Naples (72 minutes). The slow trains take 2-3x longer, so make sure to book a fast one. We took the 7:00am train, arriving at 8:12am. We ate our breakfast pastries on the train.
Immediately take a taxi the Naples train station to the Naples Ferry terminal. It’s maybe a 10 minute ride. There is technically a bus too, but this will cause you to get on a later ferry.
From the ferry terminal, buy tickets to Capri and hop on. We had enough time to make it on the 8:35am ferry. When we went in April, prebooking wasn’t necessary or helpful. The ferry takes 50 minutes.
By 9:30am, you’re in Capri!

There are naturally many ferries and trains, these are just what we took to get an early start and avoid crowds. Check current times and prices.

Around the Island Boat Tour

We followed our guidebook’s day trip recommendation to start with a boat tour around the island, including the Blue Grotto. We used Motoscafisti Capri, but didn’t pre-book anything, just bought a ticket on the first boat that was available on the dock after we arrived. Though we’d recommend double-checking about pre-booking during peak summer periods.

This was a really nice ride, it took about 2 hours. We effectively circled around the entire island, and the boat wasn’t too big – maybe it had 20 people.

Roughly 80% of the way around the island, we got to the Blue Grotto, which was an extra charge. It’s worth visiting if you haven’t done so, though it’s definitely on the tourist trap side of the spectrum. The Blue Grotto was the personal swimming hole of Roman Emperor Tiberius, and has an unusually brilliant blue color from an underwater reflection of light.

You don’t spent a ton of time in the grotto – maybe 5 minutes – but it’s memorable. One other aspect to be aware of is that at high tide, or during choppy wave weather, it might not be possible to enter; the entrance to the cave is quite low to the water. Here is the tide schedule.

After finishing the grotto, we completed the tour, and went back to the Marina Grande docks. At that point is was just about noon.

Town of Anacapri

After the boat tour, we took a taxi up the hill to Anacarpri, where we explored and eventually got lunch. There are buses for the route as well, but these were somewhat of a wait. It was a fun ride up in a bright convertible, though I’ll note that the taxi driver probably charged us more than the proper fare.

After eating, there was a church in town that we visited, as well as a small museum in an old house called Casa Rossa. There were a number of boutiques as well. It was a fun place to amble on a spring afternoon after lunch.

After that, we took the chairlift to a viewpoint at the top. The view was really beautiful – the seaside and everything in view, we were glad we went up there.

After taking the chairlift back down, we took a taxi back to the Marina at the bottom. There were buses as well, though these seemed to be a bit of a wait.

We could have visited the town of Capri as well (the main towns on the island are Anacapri and Capri). But we felt like we’d seen what we came to see, had enjoyed our time there, and were a little tired at this point.

From the ferry area on the bottom, we hopped on the next ferry back to Naples. I believe we all rested or napped a bit on the hour-long ferry back to that city.

Naples Stopover

Our pre-booked train tickets back to Rome weren’t until 7:40pm, and we made it back to Naples around 4pm.

One contingency we had planned was to take the subway from the port to the Naples National Archaeological Museum, which was in fact quite worth visiting. We don’t have photos from this stop, but it contains a lot of artifacts from nearby Pompeii. We did visit Pompeii on a previous trip, which is also quite worth visiting.

Otherwise, we did a slow walk through Naples towards the train station from the Museum, and we stopped for pizza (pizza is from Naples, and is a speciality there).

Naples itself has a bit of a gritty reputation, but it also had quite a youthful energy to it. We liked it more than we expected. It’s quite the opposite of preppy, beautiful Capri – perhaps more like the old school Times Square. I’m glad we stopped there.

Soon enough, it was time to take our fast train back to Rome at 7:40pm, where we arrived just before 9pm. It was a long day, but quite a memorable one.