After five days in beautiful, elite, expensive, magnificent Capri, we were actually looking forward to getting back to someplace ‘real’ again. So we ferried back to Naples and caught a flight to the Sardinian capital of Cagliari. And for a few days we got a great dose of the Sardinian version of ‘real’ — narrow streets colored by plenty of graffiti and laundry, sandy beaches with bright blue water, great stone walls dotted with palm trees and flowering jacarandas, and loads of fresh seafood. All of this is packed into a very pleasant city for strolling, people watching, and reading in the park.

We’ll spend 12 days altogether in Sardinia, probably traveling north along the western coast of the island — some of which we hope to do by bicycle. After that we’ll interrupt our island-hopping briefly to catch a flight to Rome so we can visit our friend Dara there. This wasn’t part of the plan until a few days ago, but if we can’t be spontaneous, who can?

OK, not much to add here about Capri. It’s beautiful with great hiking and good food and the clearest, bluest water in the world. We spent one last day hiking around the island and going to the “beach.” Note, of course, that if you’re thinking “sand” for beach you’re on the wrong island. It’s all rocks and ledges. But beautiful. And the swimming is so refreshing.

Now we’re off to Sardinia where we flew in yesterday afternoon. Just in time for a traditional Sardinian meal – a huge appetizer of grilled, marinated vegetables, sliced meats, and mixed cheeses. It was a full meal in itself. But we still had our main course, and since donkey was on the menu, I had donkey. Here’s the surprise: it’s really not very good. Pretty tough. I know, what would you expect from donkey meat? But it was supposed to be good. Horse in Sicily and donkey in Sardinia; we’ll try most anything!

Here are some final pictures from Capri. Final for this year, that is; I suspect we’ll be back before too long!

As Mark observed in his last post, we’re crazy about Naples; the intensity and the flavor and the energy create a unique beauty. And then just across the bay is Capri. It has been a favored spot for literally thousands of years. I’ve been enjoying Robert Graves’ books I, Claudius and Claudius the God, the classic 1930s novels about first century Rome, and it’s been great fun to read about Tiberius’s debaucheries out here where he lived for the last 11 years of his reign. Well, we don’t encounter much debauchery, but the beauty is still here.

We were here just last September; Mark fell in love with Capri for the first time while I was renewing my old love affair. And when we first started planning our summer several months ago, we decided we had to come back. It’s just that beautiful. So here we are.

This island has two towns on it, Capri and Anacapri. They’re both on hills and both heavily touristed – particularly in the daytime when cruise boats disgorge their hordes – but Anacapri is both higher and less heavily touristed. After staying in Capri last time, we’re up in Anacapri now and quite liking the more modest and laid back atmosphere up here.

So far we’ve been here for two days. We’ve hiked a bit, swam a bit, laid in the sun, rode a chairlift to the highest point on the island, and eaten some surprisingly good food. While our experience was that in the town of Capri the food was expensive and not so great, here we’ve found some much less expensive food that’s notably better.

Oh, and one more thing. We made it to the Blue Grotto. It was late afternoon, we were swimming over on the side of the island where little boats take you through a tiny cave opening into the grotto, and since there was almost no wait we went for it. Spectacularly beautiful. And, as a super-duper extra bonus, since it was late and there were no great crowds, our boatman suggested that for a good tip he’d let us jump out of the boat and swim. Now, there are big signs saying absolutely no swimming in the Blue Grotto; I remember that rule even when I was here in 1975. But we weren’t going to ask questions and just jumped on in. And joined Emperor Tiberius and Jackie Onassis as people who’ve swam in the Blue Grotto. 🙂