resolutions: check-in

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[a few outtakes from Stephen's and my trip to Sardinia]

In January, I wrote about my resolutions for 2012. I've been thinking about them a lot lately, since -- as much as I'd like for summer to last forever -- it's mid-September now, which means that winter is coming, which means that the year is almost over (what?!). So, a little check-in:

+ Figure out job/country/life situation. -- Ha.

+ Write daily. -- Not so much.

+ Run a 10K. -- Happening! I signed up for the Energizer Night Run in Cologne about a month ago, and Mandie and I are running the 10K version.

+ Write the first draft of a novel (= at least 50,000 words). -- In progress, kinda sorta. (There's still NaNoWriMo!)

+ Take a cooking class. -- Not yet, but there's a cooking school in Frankfurt that offers vegetarian group classes in English -- important if I want to involve Stephen the vegetarian whose German, while marvelous (Ich muss machen Sie pee-pee.), is not yet quite up to speed for a cooking class.

+ Take a photography class. -- Three-hour photography walk = done, with David Hagerman.

+ Be open to randomness. -- To the extent that I tend to equate "randomness" with "excellent and relatively spontaneous travel", so far so good: Malaysia with Megan. Freiburg with Mandie, as well as more than one trip to Cologne. Berlin, repeatedly, with Conor. London with Lucy. Munich, Valencia, Copenhagen, Sardinia with Stephen. Rome + the Amalfi Coast + Capri with Ann is coming up in under a month (!) -- although, given that this trip has been on my calendar for two years, I don't guess I can really categorize it as spontaneous. (It will, however, surely be excellent.)

I guess my main take-away here is: I travel kind of often, and with some good, good people. And even though I still consider myself a photography beginner, I feel as though I've had some fabulous opportunities to take pictures in very cool places, and a decent amount of the time I am actually taking the pictures I want to be taking. And improving as I go! As for the rest of my resolutions/goals, I'm going to go ahead and consider the list more of a push to move in the right direction than something that I need to hold myself to extremely rigidly.

Having said that . . . November looks like a mighty fine month for banging out 50,000 words of a crappy first draft of a novel.

sardinia VII: grotte di nettuno

  
To get to the Grotte di Nettuno, you drive along Capo Caccia until the road ends. It just stops: no turn-around space, no warning. There's a snack bar with the words "Grotte di Nettuno" on it and, at the end of the road, a set of stairs. It takes about fifteen minutes to walk down them, and the views are incredible. And then, at the bottom, after you get past the thundering wave that whooshes into the entrance to the grotto every thirty seconds, you enter another world.

sardinia VI: alghero & fertilia

  
Stephen said Alghero's old town reminded him of Disneyland, and I guess he's not wrong. Some of the streets off the main tourist drag were a little less crowded and a little more atmospheric, though. Plus we saw a spaghetti-eating dog, a.k.a. the essence of Italy.

We didn't find anywhere appealing to eat in or out of old-town Alghero, so we headed back to Fertilia, where we were staying (at Hostal de l'Alguer, basic but perfectly fine and the staff was super friendly) and got excellent roasted vegetables and pizza for dinner. Have you ever had onion pizza? It was delicious.

sardinia V: arcipelago di la maddalena

  
We got up bright and early on our second-to-last day in Sardinia and booked it from Cannigione up to Palau, where we drove right on to a ferry to La Maddalena, largest town of the Arcipelago di la Maddalena and jumping-off point for boat tours to the other, smaller islands. Unfortunately when we got there it was too windy and the water was too choppy for the boats to be going out, so we had to DIY an island tour of the two drivable islands instead (Isola Maddalena and Isola Caprera). There's a causeway from Isola Maddalena over to Isola Caprera, and I was glad we went -- at the bottom of Isola Caprera there's a narrow isthmus with views of the bay on both sides. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. (That's me in the top picture, swimming on the northern side of said isthmus. I wasn't going to let a little wind get in the way of being in the water, though once I got in I sure didn't want to get out and face cool wind and blowing sand.)

Possibly the greatest part of the town of La Maddalena, beyond the wonderful old houses and storefronts: pistachio amaretti cookies. Look at that green! We got them at Pasticceria Manunta on Via Amendola 27, opposite where all the day-trip boats are docked, and were kicking ourselves for having only bought two when we could have had dozens.

sardinia IV: cala gonone to cannigione

  
Highly recommended: renting a car and roadtripping through Sardinia. From the top: the view from our hotel in Cala Gonone (Villa Gustui Maris, highly recommended); some doorways and flowers in Cala Gonone; the beach at Cala di Cartoe; the beach at Cala Orsalla di Dorgali; the beach at San Giovanni; and the water at Cannigione. San Giovanni was probably the worst beach we went to in Sardinia, and by "worst" I still mean "better than anything remotely close to Frankfurt". (I occasionally think I might be living in the wrong country.)

sardinia III: road goats

On the way out of Cala Gonone, Stephen and I had to make way for goats. I nearly died of the amazingness.

sardinia II: the blue crescent

Did you know places that look like this existed in Europe? I sure didn't. The Cala Gonone area is stunning. We barely made it onto a day-long boat tour (just five minutes before the scheduled take-off! though, being in sunny laid-back Cala Gonone, no one actually took off right at eleven a.m.) and were so glad we did -- it was the best weather and most perfect day of the trip. Since we didn't bring food along, we were forced to eat Italian chipwiches off a snack-bar boat, in between snorkeling and swimming in grottos and sunning ourselves on fabulous beaches. Oh, the hardship.