Ferries in italy

Does it even need to be booked ahead? I didn’t.

In October 2919, I didn’t book Naples to Capri, Capri to Sorrento, Sorrento to Amalfi, Positano to Amalfi nor Amalfi to Salerno and had no problem boarding the next ferry for any leg.

Thanks. She’ll probably wait till she gets there since they don’t know the times yet. Thank you for the answers

we took ferry from Sorrento to Capri and back. We just went down to the wharf that day or the day before. They have a bunch of tickets windows - one for each company. The ferries were no where near to full (Oct 2021). They are huge and pretty nice. (By comparison the boat that took us from Positano to Salerno was more of a fishing boat size with a rougher ride).

One thing I did not like about the experience was that it was very limited. Like you had precisely 3 hours in Capri otherwise you are swimming back. Capri had the rudest restaurant experience I had in Italy - where we weren't even finished, and they kinda rushed us on our way to put other customers at the table. Super expensive there too. That element of it sucked. But the nice part of Capri was walking past the shops along a long sidewalk with ocean views and eventually looking down on a bunch of little boats, and huge rock formations.

@Railrider
Rushing customers out of a restaurant is typical of most restaurants in the US. Basically they take the plate from under your nose sometimes almost before you get the last morsel,mwhile they hand you the check. I cannot describe how much that pisses me off. I have written off my list several SF Bay Area restaurants because of that, and will never patronize them again.

In Italy that is considered extremely bad service. And if they did that to an Italian, it would start a fist fight. Once you get a table, the rule is that you will not bring me the check unless I specifically request it. Otherwise dishes will be flying.

Unfortunately you ran into a tourist trap that engages into that “American” practice (probably with non Italian tourists). At a minimum you should enter a very negative comment on TripAdvisor..

There did not seem to be a lot of restaurants in the upper city of Capri. We got some really expensive pizza. And I recall our expensive bottle water was not even empty and they took it and kinda took our plates. My worst dining experience in Italy was in Milan eating at a place with the plastic menus. Horrible food. horrible service. In France, even if you show up for lunch at 1 pm, the restaurants is booked, or the kitchen is already closed, etc. This is why I sometimes eat at McDonalds in EU when I never eat there in the US. Its ironic because one of the delights of EU is the food, and yet its so much hassle at times.

Railrider, it seems that for some reason, you're ending up in very touristy restaurants that have bad food and service.
As a rule, avoid restaurants in the very touristy areas, for example, the Trevi Fountain, the Duomo Square etc, also the ones that have giant multilingual menus with pictures on the entrance, and offer about 150 options, from pizza, to steak to pasta to hamburger... They're probably not good at cooking either of those.
Make some research before, look for reviews on Google maps or tripadvisor, but filter them to Italian (as the English reviews are from other tourists).
The opening times can in fact be a problem when you're on vacation, it takes a bit of planning to not be looking for a place.to eat at 3 pm and end up at.mc donalds

Coming late here, and Barbara's niece has come and gone from Capri but for anyone using this thread for their own research...

...we took ferry from Sorrento to Capri and back....One thing I did
not like about the experience was that it was very limited. Like you
had precisely 3 hours in Capri otherwise you are swimming back

Railrider, I'm confused why you thought the ferries only allowed you 3 hours on Capri? Even today (11/2/2022), going into low season, the first ferry leaves Sorrento at 7:15 AM (weekdays) or 7:45 AM, and the last one leaves Capri at 6:40 PM (18:40). The crossing takes 20-30 minutes. That's between 10 -11 hours in between. They just don't operate after dark or when the sea is too rough to be safe.

https://www.naplesbayferry.com/en/t/sorrento/capri
https://www.naplesbayferry.com/en/t/capri/sorrento

(Edited a misspelling)