anjette's blog

August 4, 2012

Filed under: — anjette @ 4:42 pm

Today we explored more of the northern coast, and after a thirty minute adventure lost in Sassari, we were well on our way to Castelsardo, a medieval town similar to Bosa, in which homes are built into the side of the mountains, presumably for protection from Moor invasions, then we made our way up to Valledoria, and finally to Isola Rossa, where we settled on a small beach with a cerulean sea.. Living here has made me quite a beach snob, I must admit. The vast beach of Valledoria, with sand split between a fresh water lake where horses stop for a small drink, and the crashing waves of the Mediterranean for surfers and small, brave children on the other side, was too much. Give me the private, azure blue sea, with water like glass in which I can see the chipped red of my toe-nail polish any day. Give me the calm, the peace.



Castelsardo

The ocean and the sea at Valledoria

Spiagge a Isola Rossa

D.H. Lawrence once wrote something regarding the Sardinians and their eagerness to be alone. In Italy, he says, groups of people form together in the market, gossip on a bench in the park, but in Sardegna it is not odd to find a lonesome shepherd walking for miles with no one but his flock of sheep. I find myself yearning to walk alone, the other night, I felt an extreme jealousy for the stray cat I have semi-adopted. How wonderful it must be to have no one to answer to, to tour the forests until you are hungry and then purr next to the first person who will listen. This must be part of the Sardinian sickness, the resistance to be anything tranquil, to be alone, not lost, in the middle of the Mediterranean. After all, Lawrence writes, “I am no more than a signal human man wandering my lonely way across these years.”

Alghero at night



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I want to meet the man who made the highways here. I would shake his hand, for they are phenomenal, masterful uses of land, almost as if they have been naturally carved into the cliffs, and yet they are the scariest pieces of roadwork I have ever been on. When it looks like you are going to head straight into a mountain, it is literally because you are heading straight into a mountain, into which a small two lane tunnel has been carved for your convenience.

Road to Isola Rossa


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Mom, Larry, Nick, and I are living like Sardines! (Insert great laughter here). This means we are stuffed in my tiny apartment, walking
around one another, and grateful for the large space of a towel on the sand when the new day comes. A road trip to Stintino, the most northern point on the side of the island, proved to be unbelievable, with a front row view of Asinara, an island off of the island once used as a prison, but now home to the albino donkey.


Tower & Asinara

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