Is this the natural rock arch?

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The alarm went off at 6:00am. I resisted the urge to snooze for an extra eight minutes of sleep. Why am I getting up so early, I asked myself? The only window in our room at the hostel showed that it was still dark outside. The other five roommates were still asleep. Slowly, but surely, I climbed out of my upper bunk bed and woke Grace to get ready for the day. We tip-toed around the room hoping not to wake anyone at this ungodly hour! Today, we are headed to the island of Capri and to save money, we were catching the early ferry - 10 Euro versus the 17 Euro ferry departing an hour later. We were up too early for the free breakfast provided by the hostel. Therefore we left the hostel a bit earlier to find a café. Luckily, there was one right around the corner from our hostel and on our way to the port.

The ferry ride took over an hour and once we docked, we stopped at the tourist office to see what Capri had to offer. We already knew that we wanted to relax at the beach, but also wanted to explore some of the natural attractions of the island. We avoided the blue grotto because it would cost us 15-20 euro/person for the boat ride and entrance into the grotto.

There are two towns located on the island; Capri and Anacapri. We walked around Capri before starting out nature expedition. The town was filled with designer boutiques like Versace, Gucci, Prada, as well pricey cafes and upscale hotels and restaurants. The town itself does not have any motor vehicles, except for the shuttle buses and golf carts (used by hotels and restaurants).

After, we headed to rock arch. Even early in the morning, the weather was hot and humid, which made hiking uncomfortable. To make things worse, we were faced with thousands of steps to climb. This brought back memories of climbing Mt. Moses in the Sinai of Egypt, without camels on the trail and darkness of the night. Both Grace and I were in our tank tops halfway through the climb and we could only think about jumping into the refreshing water at the beach. Making our way up the stairs we noticed something that looked like an arch, but was not the natural rock arch. So the journey up more stairs continued. We finally made it to the natural arch and felt a sense of accomplishment. The arch was impressive and definitely worth the hike. Then we headed to the public beach, which was a long hike away as well. Fortunately for us, it was all downhill. We were able to grab one of the few open spaces found on the pebble beach. The water felt extremely refreshing, but sun bathing was near to impossible, because the humidity just left you feeling sticky all over. We cut our beach bumming short after one and half hours and decided to catch the cheap ferry back to Naples.

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