A view from the top of Capri, Italy

THE Traveler: Scott Carpenter of Rogers.

The scene: Ristorante Monte Solaro, at the highest point on the Italian island of Capri, provides this scenic overlook. "Surrounding the restaurant are walking paths and overlooks of the vistas that unfold in every direction. The one that caught my eye was flanked by a Roman statue from the era of the emperor Tiberius. He loved the vistas so much that he used the island as his favorite retreat," Carpenter wrote in an e-mail.

The destination: Carpenter called Capri a revelation. "It showed us where the ultrarich go to play, unchanged from the days of Tiberius. The yachts in the harbor and the designer shops we walked past in [the town of] Anacapri were fascinatingly out of our reach but beautiful to look at," he wrote. He and his wife, Diane, had taken a short ferry ride from Sorrento to Capri. "Our trip started in Naples, then Sorrento, on to the Greek temples of Paestum, Italy, a 10-day tour by rental car of Sicily, a flight to Malta for several days and back to Naples for the return flight to Minneapolis. It was three weeks we will never forget," he wrote.

equipment: "My camera is a Canon G15 with a polarizer filter," Carpenter wrote. "I chose this camera for our travels because of its pocket size, zoom lens and very nice optical quality. It offers far superior enlargements and a crisper image compared to a camera phone and is much easier to carry around than a larger camera."