So, it’s January. Again? So soon?

I’m becoming one of those people who exclaims frequently, “I can’t believe it’s January!” or “I can’t believe it’s 2012!” or “I can’t believe the Kardashians’ 15 minutes aren’t up yet!” (That last one isn’t totally relevant but still true.)

I don’t generally do New Year’s resolutions because I make too many to-do lists as it is, and Lord knows I don’t want one full of terrible items like “go running more” and “do my taxes before 10 p.m. on April 14.” That’s really a buzzkill way to start a new year. And I hate running.

I did successfully make a few (well, two: get scuba certified and host more dinner parties) resolutions in 2010 by following three rules:

1. They must be fun.
2. They must be flexible.
3. They must not inspire guilt.

I liked those guidelines because they made me choose goals that I was actually excited about, not resolutions that I shamed myself into picking.

This year, I’m trying something different: a one-word New Year’s resolution. A few friends have told me about this idea, and I love it. Instead of writing a laundry list of tasks I want to accomplish (and may resent by February), I am selecting one word to be my theme for the next year. I hope it will help me stay focused on what my priorities are and be a positive, gentle reminder when I get off track.

My word is for 2012 is: Grow.

I would like to grow in:

• My personal relationships
• My work
• My travel experiences
• My foreign language skills
• My culinary endeavors
• My reading
• My support for causes I care about

Just to clarify, I would not like to grow in:

• My waistline
• My road rage
• My Veruca Salt-like impatience

What’s your word for 2012?

Boat ride to Procida

In brief:

• My Italian isn’t the best, but it’s a whole lot better than it was a year ago (I may have graduated from toddler to preschool Italian, very exciting).

• I have mostly gotten used to driving here; sometimes, I even enjoy it. And I’m warming up to the idea of getting a moped.

• At least once a week, I say, “Oh sweet Jesus, how am I going to live without this when we move back to the States?” while eating or drinking something amazing.

• I never get tired of walking around tiny Italian towns with cobblestone streets, sampling at local wineries or eating in family trattorias with red-and-white checkered tablecloths.

Another fabulous winery, Sardinia

• Life moves at a slower pace around here, and I’m starting to accept that my impatience does nothing except infuriate me.

• The mulled wine sold at outdoor markets in winter is perhaps the greatest thing ever.

• La vita è bella. It’s been a wonderful year, and I can’t wait to kick off 2012.
  

Buone feste!

I know. I feel like a jerk-face for having such a sweet travel opportunity. Does it make you feel any better to know that we’re not able to take the private jet and are having to fly coach and take trains like all the other commoners? I thought it might.

While we were planning this trip, I realized three things:

1. Brian and I have never traveled together for such a long block of time (the closest we’ve come was our 2005 road trip from New Orleans to Sonoma and back).
2. I haven’t traveled for three consecutive weeks or visited so many cities in one trip since I studied abroad in 2004 and then moved back to France in 2005.
3. Traveling at 28 with your husband is probably different than traveling at 20 or 22 with your girlfriends.

On all of my college and post-grad travel adventures, I had very little money (thanks for not letting me starve during the lowest points, Mom and Dad), very few plans and probably very little common sense. But we had a blast.

Gettin’ piratey in Mykonos

Among the highlights:

• Losing my passport on the train from Paris to London and getting yelled at by the mean English lady who worked at the American Embassy
• Crashing for the night in an anarchist squat with Nay Nay and Parisa in London (and feeling wretched the next day after eating the free vegan shepherd’s pie)
• Karaoke-ing up a storm with Kaila and study abroad program friends near Place de la Bastille in Paris

Kaila in her natural Scottish habitat

• Getting locked out of the Christian hostel in Amsterdam (the only one available that night, which happened to have a curfew) with Nay Nay and Parisa and trying to sleep in the train station after the bars closed

WWJD?

Parisa (Trouble #1) and Nay Nay (Trouble #2) in Amsterdam

• Winning the pick-up lines bar trivia contest in Barcelona with Nay Nay and a team of Irish guys (and getting mugged on the way back to the hostel that night)
• Getting lost on a mountain hike north of Barcelona and meeting a delightful old man and his goats
• Befriending a bunch of New Zealanders with Jenna in Santorini, who convinced us to go swimming in a hotel pool (not our hotel), resulting in us running from security guards and going dancing at a club in our wet bathing suits

Jenna and I discover you can buy 1.5 L bottles of wine in Greece for less money than bottles of water

• Taking an 18-hour ferry with Jenna from Greece to Italy with no supplies except snacks, a pack of cards and a bottle of whiskey (we befriended awesome Germans who stayed up to play cards with us)

I pulled out the last comprehensive Europe guidebook that I purchased, a very well-worn copy of Let’s Go Europe 2004, that I used on all of these shenanigan-filled trips. I love some of the notes I’m discovering in the margins:

• Brick Lane: Indian food, hipsters. Camden Town: shopping, coolness. (London, from Nay Nay)
• Kebab = good (Zaytoons, Dublin)
• I ♥ U (St. Malo)
• LAME (Mulligan’s, Dublin)
• Shelter City = psycho “Jesus is Lord” hostel (Amsterdam)
• Obscenely well-lit (Cafe de Jaren, Amsterdam)

A gallery of Nay Nay awesomeness:

Sad Venice: killing mosquitoes in our weird spaceship-shaped cabin outside the city

Happy Venice: Eating the zillionth gelato of the day

A record low on food desperation: saltine crackers and mustard on the ferry to Corfu

Yarrrrrrrr! Can you tell the eye patch is homemade?

I’m looking forward to traveling with a little more cash and research on what I want to see and do (and I hope a wee bit more sense… no guarantees), and I know Brian and I will have an amazing, slightly more grown-up trip. We’ll stay in budget hotels and rental apartments instead of questionable hostels where you have to rent the sheets separately and sleep in a room with 15 other people. We’ll eat some good meals as well as bring bread and cheese for lunch on long train rides. Fingers crossed, we’ll return with all of our belongings and most of our dignity.

I’m probably a little too old to travel the way I did in my early 20s… but I am ready for my sweet ladyfriends to come back to Europe so we can see how we roll in our late 20s. Takers?

I finally started reading her delightfully unpretentious memoir, “My Life in France,” and halfway through it, I am convinced that we would have been best friends had we been contemporaries. I’m almost ready to take the plunge and buy her intimidating classic, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” There are so many butter-based sauces in my future.

I love how she falls in love with Paris, one of my most favorite cities, when she and her husband Paul move there after World War II. I love how she falls in love with French food and cooking and how she describes every memorable meal in mouthwatering detail. And I love how she falls in love with Marseille when she and her husband move there after Paris, even though it is not as outwardly charming as Paris and is often accused of being dirty and dangerous.

This is how my friend Julia describes it:

Marseille’s hot noise was so different from Paris’s cool sophistication. To may of our northern-French friends it was terra incognita: they had never been here, and considered it a rough, rude, “southern” place. But it struck me as a rich broth of vigorous, emotional, uninhibited Life– a veritable “bouillabaisse of a city,” as Paul put it.

Yes. She is talking about Marseille, a gritty yet beautiful city that I really like, but she could be also be describing Naples or New Orleans. Vigorous, emotional, uninhibited. Eccentric, vibrant, exhilarating. Just the way I like my cities.

When I lived in France, the country that is sort of famous for its cuisine (in 2010, UNESCO added French gastronomy to a list celebrating the world’s “intangible cultural heritage,” along with Chinese acupuncture and Spanish flamenco… no big deal), I would get insane cravings for foods from back home. I had Brian send me care packages with Cheez-Its, peanut butter and French’s mustard (not actually French, so it should really be called “freedom mustard” to avoid confusion). I smuggled cheddar cheese back in my luggage when I visited a friend in Scotland. I even sought out the French version of tater tots– little frozen fried mashed potato balls — so breakfast for dinner would feel more complete. I swear my eating habits weren’t this bad when I was in the States.

Mmm, tots.

In Naples, we do most of our grocery shopping at an Italian supermarket because I think it’s ridiculous to drive to the American Navy base to buy New Jersey olive oil and Kraft mozzarella. However, about once a month, we do hit up the commissary to buy the items we just can’t find in the local market: Tapatio and Sriracha hot sauces, sesame oil, Tony Chachere’s. It feels like we’re cheating by having access to a very American supermarket while living in a foreign country, but I’ll take it. MINE.

What I Miss, Volume 1

1. Food variety

Southern Italian food is really, really delicious. I am obsessed with mozzarella di bufala and real pizza napolitana and risotto alla pescatore. It is all excellent, and you can get a fantastic meal here for a good price at a little trattoria or pizzeria. However. It is very difficult to find any other cuisine besides Italian food in the Naples area. I love food, and I desperately miss having varied restaurant options: Mexican, Japanese, Indian, Thai, Chinese, Spanish. Italy is actually really close to Spain and France and Greece, so why is it so freaking hard to find those types of food here?

2. Coffee shops with free Wi-Fi

This is a big one. I have worked from home for the last four years, and I love it. Really, really love it. I set my own schedule, I have the flexibility to travel and I can write emails in my underwear and no one will ever know (note: not recommended; I try to uphold basic social norms, at least during my workday). I do miss the social contact of working in an office, so when I lived in the US, I would work at least half of every day from a nearby coffee shop to avoid becoming a crazy hermit.

Sadly, coffee shops with Wi-Fi are not a thing in Italy. Yes, they have five coffee bars on every block and their espresso is like crack, but the coffee experience here takes about two minutes. Pay 90 cents for a caffè macchiato, drink it in two sips, down a glass of fizzy water, leave a 20-cent tip and be on your merry way. I haven’t yet seen the equivalent of an American coffee shop, where you can sit at a table for hours, mooching Internet and working away for the cost of a latte. I miss you, Morning Brew hipsters.

Due cappuccini

3. Automatic transmissions

We sold our trusty ‘98 automatic Honda Accord when we moved, and I miss that car every single day. It was smart to sell it — Honda parts are hard to come by, cars get super banged up here and driving an automatic makes you stand out as an American with things to steal — but I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of acquiring a “Naples beater” with a manual transmission. I know how to drive stick, but I was really rusty when we moved here, and this is a darn stressful place to relearn driving skills. I have nightmares about stalling out at a busy intersection and incurring the wrath of Fiat drivers. STOP YELLING AT ME!

I actually do like the very beat-up ‘93 BMW I now drive, and it’s a lot of fun when I’m cruising down the Autostrada at 130 kilometers per hour. It is considerably less fun when I’m trying to avoid a collision with the two teenagers alternately fighting and making out on a Vespa or when I’m stuck in 40 minutes of stop-and-go traffic with Italians who are trying to make seven lanes out of three.

4. Things being open in August

The better part of Italy shuts down for the month of August. I don’t know where everyone goes, but no one invited me. While I’m happy for people who can take off for five weeks, it’s pretty inconvenient when you want to get anything done, from dry cleaning to car repairs. Plus, I’m jealous.

5. Air conditioning

It’s August. I want businesses and restaurants and hotels to be air-conditioned. I think the phrase, “It’s hot as balls” loses something in the translation.

What do you miss about home when you are traveling or living abroad?

Photo credit

This may make me sound like a bad person, but reading painstakingly detailed accounts of other people’s fabulous travel adventures is just boring. It’s like listening to a play-by-play account of someone else’s dreams or sitting through a painful slideshow (set to music, no doubt) of bunch of pictures you’re not in. Yes, I am selfish and have the attention span of a goldfish. And you totally agree with me; admit it.

I do like hearing about exciting places and travel shenanigans and, especially, delicious food and drink; I just want a bulleted list of the high points — where to stay, what to eat/see/do, how to get around, what to avoid. Think inverted pyramid.

Whew. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I’m going to enthrall you with wordy, poetic, self-indulgent tales of all of my travels. Don’t worry; I won’t leave out any details, no matter how insignificant.

Seriously, though, I would like to write a series of short posts that create a snapshot of the places I’m lucky enough to visit while living in Italy. A few photos and some good recommendations (or advisories) — information that I hope might be helpful if you’re planning your own trip. I will do my best to keep the obnoxiousness to a minimum. Tell me if I don’t.

First up…

ELBA: May 28-30, 2011

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Apparently, Elba is an island in the Tuscan Archipelago, an hour ferry ride from mainland Italy. Napoleon got exiled there for a hot minute (less than a year), and now tourists go there to sunbathe and snorkel and do islandy things. I knew nothing about it until my friend Molly told me I had to go there when I moved to Italy. Good work, Molly. It was awesome.

Getting There

Brian and I drove our car from Naples up to Piombino, a city about 3 1/2 hours north of Rome. Then we took a Mobylines ferry with our car to the port city of Portoferraio on the isle of Elba. Mobylines was fantastic: efficient, organized and easy. It cost about 18 euros round-trip per person, plus 26 euros to bring the car.

Portoferraio marina

Where to Stay

We stayed at Hotel Crystal, in Portoferraio, which was very close to the port. We got a decent rate on Booking.com and it was a really cute, clean hotel with a good breakfast included. The only complaint I had was that the air conditioning either didn’t work or the management wouldn’t turn it on when we asked (the guy at the front desk told me they could only turn it on at certain times… and we never encountered those times). It was pretty toasty in our room so we left the windows open at night, and the mosquitoes were very grateful for the free buffet I provided for them. Ah well. I still liked the hotel.

Portoferraio was adorable. It wasn’t as busy or touristy as other island port cities I’ve seen, and it was a pretty place to walk around, grab a drink at an outdoor cafe and eat at a homey trattoria for dinner. I also enjoyed the other port city, Capoliveri, and the tiny, peaceful town of Marciana Marina.

What to Do

There are a few Napoleon sights/sites, but we didn’t seek them out. We only had a couple days in Elba and were more interested in driving around the island, eating and going scuba diving. I highly recommend renting a car or scooter for a day if you don’t bring a car. It’s a beautiful place, and it was fun just driving around and stopping to take pictures and poke around the little towns.

If you scuba dive, we had a great experience with Bluelba Diving. An awesome German divemaster (also fluent in both English and Italian) took us out on a boat with just one other diver and the boat captain, and we did two dives in clear, beautiful, very cold (by Hawaii standards) water. We saw some eels and an octopus and some other critters, and it was a cool way to check out a different side of the island.

Getting the authentic windblown look

We also tried to hike to this crazy castle up on a hill that our German friend told us was a 15-minute walk. We drove all over the place to try to find a trail that didn’t require rock climbing. And failed. So we gave up and drank some wine and watched the sunset on the side of the road. It was not too shabby.

Ooh, look, a castle!

Ooh, look, wine!

Where to Eat

We had an excellent dinner our first night in Portoferraio at Osteria da Libertaria. Delicious fish, cheap house wine and a quiet outdoor terrace.

Overall, Elba was a relaxing, picturesque beach getaway that is very accessible from mainland Italy.

Spirit week, 2001

It seems unbelievable that it has been 10 whole years since I moved away from Sonoma, California to join those fabulous lunatics in a little city called New Orleans, but here we are in 2011. Time flew by at warp speed and that small town girl (cue Journey song here) I was at 17 is all growns up. I’m married, I work hard for the money, I’m itchin’ to buy a house and I can throw together a mean dinner party. But to keep things in perspective, I still get carded and hate wearing shoes that aren’t Reef flip-flops, so I’m trying not to get too carried away with this adulthood thing.

Junior prom, 2000

(Note: I’ve been struggling with writing this post for the last couple weeks, and my brilliant friend Sierra inspired me with her post on how she feels about the last 10 years. Fantastic read– I recommend it.)

Senior ball, 2001 (semi-formal attire was too boring)

Spirit week, 2001

Anyway, the official Sonoma Valley High reunion was a lovely affair at B.R. Cohn Winery because we like to keep it classy here in the wine country. There was good wine, good food and a good crowd of people I hadn’t seen in a long time. It was nothing like “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion,” which is good because there were no mean girls desperately trying to uphold the high school hierarchy but bad because there was no choreographed dance sequence to “Time After Time.” You can’t have everything, I suppose.

Classy times at the reunion

The reunion was a lot of fun, but the real event for me was a champagne brunch I hosted earlier that day with some of my close high school girlfriends. Back in the day, during our last week of senior year, we put together a time capsule to open at our 10-year reunion– a cardboard box we filled with photos, newspaper clippings, videotapes, inside joke lists, surveys and letters we wrote to ourselves. The box has been sitting in my childhood bedroom for 10 years, and it was finally time to crack it open.

Putting together the time capsule, 2001

The great unveiling

Wow. I can’t describe how incredible it was to sit with 10 ladies who have played such an important part in my life and open the magical box. If you think a group of teenage girls is loud and silly and giggly and squealy, you should get a group of 20-something women together and give them a dozen bottles of champagne (ahem, André sparkling wine). It is impressive and terrifying. I laughed until my stomach hurt.

Ridiculousness ensued

Pretty ladies

Highlights:

• Watching the hilarious compilation of video performances dating all the way back to junior high (if you’ve never had the chance to watch “Spice Deception,” you’re really missing out)

• Reading our survey responses out loud. Sophie’s response to “If you could date anyone in your class, who would it be?”: “[Redacted]. He makes me weak in the knees.” My response to “Out of your girlfriends, who would you date if you were a guy?”: “Jules, because she is so pretty, funny, laidback and fun to be around.” (Still true!)

• Breaking out the 2001 yearbook and admiring the ridiculous photo collage we spent way too many class hours putting together

• Trying to remember the dozens of inside jokes we thought were important enough to write down

• Going through piles and piles of photos from every high school event imaginable

• Reading the letters we wrote to ourselves

Watching video works of art

My letter was a five-page manuscript that jumped manically back and forth between being ecstatic to make a fresh start far away from home and being terrified to leave everything familiar behind. OMG, will I make friends as awesome as my Sonoma people? Will I find a job I love? Will I get married and have kids? Will I fail at life and die alone? At 27, I can be overanalytical and obsessive from time to time, but 17-year-old me needed to take it down a notch.

Teenage girlness aside, it is fascinating to read about my fears and dreams and goals and see which ones stayed constant and which changed over the years. Here are a few excerpts:

Am I still in touch with my high school friends? Actually, by this time, my college friends too? I really hope so. I know I will lose contact with people over the years, but I hope not the important ones. If I’m reading this right now, I assume that we’re at least all together again for our 10-year reunion. Who has changed the most? The least? Is Heather famous? Or Katie? Do we look a lot different or older? I hope we aren’t above having dance parties.

You’re so wise, Mini Me. I’m happy to say that I do keep in touch with the wonderful friends I’ve made over the years, and those relationships are incredibly important to me. Really, what could be more important? And we’re never above dance parties.

So grown up, so fabulous

[On my ideal man] Let’s see: hilarious, intelligent, sarcastic, easygoing, romantic, considerate, good with kids, adventurous, beach-loving, handsome, a musician and a dancer. Hmm… is that too much to ask? It’s crazy to think that in 10 years, I could actually be married, with kids even. Do I have kids? I hope they look a little Asian– hapa kids are so cute.

I have to say, I’m pretty good. The musician/dancer piece is the only part that might be a little off, but Brian does play the trumpet, have mad karaoke skills and know how to cut a rug on the dance floor. And though we don’t have any, hapa kids really are so cute.

Where am I living now? Did I travel like I wanted to? I hope I can live on the East Coast for at least a year, and I plan on spending time abroad. My junior year, I want to spend the year or the semester in Paris. I hope I can get my French up to standard. Did I ever get the guts to do the Peace Corps? I love the idea of living in some country completely different from the US, teaching and learning, but it’s two whole years… When it comes to marrying and having kids, I think I’d like to live in Northern California. I really love it… But I think I need to live in Hawaii at least once in my life.

Well, I never made it to live on the East Coast or join the Peace Corps, but I did spend a semester in Paris, teach abroad and live in Hawaii. As for settling in Northern California, plans change. New Orleans won my heart, but I still stay true to my NorCal roots. It’s been a crazy 10 years, and I feel like I should write myself another letter to open in 2021.

SVHS girls, I love you all and hope we can get together again soon, on one continent or another. What should we put in our 20-year reunion time capsule?

All you other beautiful people, did you go to your high school reunion or are you planning on it? Thoughts? Comments? Judgments?

Sure, unplugging for a weekend away or a long vacation is a fabulous idea and I’m happy to indulge when I can, but the day-to-day reality is that I need to be online. I can’t do most of my work without Internet access, plus how else will I be able to find answers to my very important questions, such as “where can you buy hops in Naples?” and “why did Scarlett Johansson trade in Ryan Reynolds for Sean Penn?”

Telecom Italia either doesn’t understand this about me, or it just doesn’t care. I suspect it’s the latter. Our Internet is a fickle wench that will work like a dream for a week straight and then, without warning, simply stop and give me the silent treatment for hours or days or weeks. I beg, I plead, I apologize, I promise to fix whatever it is that I did wrong to make her so mad (to which she replies, “Well, if you don’t know already…”).

It is infuriating. I hate her, yet I need her. For example, this was my Friday morning last week.

8:45 I’m about to upload some client work and send some emails. The wireless goes out. This is not the first time this has happened, but occasionally the wifi will stop working and the Ethernet will still function. Not this time.

8:46-8:59 Cursing. Tinkering. Cursing.

9:00-9:01 I leave the first of what’s sure to be many irritated messages on the Telecom Italia bilingual helpline (I so wish my Italian were proficient enough to communicate my disdain and rage, but somehow “I am not content” and “I do not like this not function, fix now” doesn’t really cut it).

9:02-9:05 I try 10 more ways to make the Internet work. Willing it to work is one of them.

9:06-9:08 More cursing. I make sure to include some Italian words.

9:09-9:30 I run out of bad words I know in other languages, so I look for something to do offline. I read a few magazine articles and a chapter of a book I’m almost finished with. I check the modem and router every few minutes to see if the lights are on. No dice.

9:31-10:59 I’m booooored.

11:00-11:02 Telecom Italia actually calls me back, which is highly unusual. The nice lady tells me Monday is an Italian holiday and the soonest they can send a technician out is Tuesday morning. FINE.

11:03-1:00 I pay too much for a day of terrible Internet access, via my USB Internet key from Vodafone. I barely get everything done that I need to before it gets tired and stops loading pages.

Update: Our wonderful neighbor kindly gave us the password to his wifi so I could use it as a back-up when ours misbehaves.

Our Internet started working again on Friday evening and continued to do so throughout the weekend. Tuesday morning, around the time the technician was supposed to stop by, a rep from Telecom Italia called and said, “It appears that your Internet is working again. Is this correct?” I said, “Yes, it is working for the moment…” and she said she was canceling my appointment and hung up.

An hour later, the Internet shut down again. You’re dead to me, Telecom Italia.

Photo credit

In short, I like living here. A lot. When I tell other Americans that, some look at me the way you might look at a sweet but naïve five year old who can’t wait to go back for her second day of school.

“Oh, honey, just wait,” they say. “You’ll see in about a year.” Then they usually launch into all the reasons this place will drive you crazy and why they can’t wait to move back to a civilized place like Norfolk.

I get it. This place can drive you crazy if you let it; I can see that already. The trash problem is completely out of control and probably always will be. The streets are dirty, the government is corrupt, it takes forever to get anything done and you have to lock your house up like a fortress to attempt to keep your stuff from getting stolen.

These are all valid complaints. They are also complaints I have heard about New Orleans over the last 10 years. It took time for me to get used to that crazy city and its quirks, but I grew to love it fiercely, even defensively, and I have a feeling Naples will be a similar kind of relationship. It’s that old rule: I can complain about my crazy family, but if anyone else does, them’s fightin’ words.

I have had days (and will probably have many more) where I am frustrated and not enamored with bella Napoli — after the fifth insane driver cuts me off at 100 miles an hour (or whatever that is in kilometers, I still don’t know) or the Telecom Italia technician fails to come by to fix our wireless Internet for the second week in a row. I call these my “I don’t love Italy days.”

But then the next day, I will eat the best pizza I’ve ever had in my entire life. Or I will have a life-changing experience with a cappuccino. Or the little old lady at the butcher shop will call me “una bella ragazza” and compliment me on my toddler Italian. Or we will take a day trip down the Amalfi Coast and visit impossibly beautiful towns. These are my “I love Italy days,” and they are definitely winning.

Ring any bells?

Spoiler alert: turns out, Brian and I also got married somewhere in between the eating and the drinking and the dancing. Fantastic idea.

Then we moved to one side of the world…

… and then to the other.

Yep, it’s been a good two years. Sign me up for a few more.