ISLANDS
SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2006

On my first visit, I had only seen the more accessible, eastern half of the island, dominated by Capri town with its celebrated little square, the Piazzetta. Now our car roared along the lessvisited lanes of Anacapri upper Capri some 1,000 feet above the lower half of the island.
Luigi wheeled my luggage through crooked footpaths that seemed designed to confound marauding pirates but were now filled with espresso vendors and souvenir stands, and then he stopped abruptly at an anonymous metal gate. He pressed the buzzer, and the door slowly swung open to reveal an Italian ShangriLa: nestled in luscious swathes of foliage, the neoclassical Villa Le Scale stood gleaming in the afternoon sunshine. I climbed the steps past magnolias being tended by livened servants and fountains trickling into a swimming pool and entered the villa's sunfilled solarium, an enclave of high art, lavishly appointed with Neapolitan relics and sumptuous oil paintings. As I sunk into a crimson lounge, the statuesque manager, Vincenzo, wearing the latest designer clothes, emerged from the shadows bearing a flute ofsparkling prosecco and fresh pistachios.
Reclining in the sun, I decided the ancient Romans would have approved.
One key to enjoying Capri, Vincenzo confided, was to lie low from 11 am. to 4 p.m., when daytrippers tend to overcrowd the island. Keeping quiet about my former life as a daytripper, I could only agree: why rub shoulders with the hoi polloi? So I waited until later to venture outside the villa gates. The streets of the village of Anacapri were then eerily quiet as I wandered along laneways flanked by elaborate wroughtiron fences and glazed tiles, feeling like.

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