An Unplanned Year

Having made the decision to focus on one of Corsica or Sardinia, and having chosen Sardinia, we found Corsica to be lovely. It has set a high bar for Sardinia!

On our first day we headed south from Sassari to Alghero, a port town. Our first stop was a cafe for a real Italian coffee (for Sarah). One espresso, a hot chocolate and two uniquely filled croissants later, we were ready to walk. We headed to the old town and just wandered for a bit.

We saw a guy putting red cloths on the street lights. Weird. Googled it, and learned it is preparation for Easter Week celebrations – next week. It did look cool though, the streets would look so different at night. Hopefully we see that somewhere.

After we left Alghero, we wanted to go to Neptune’s Grotto, but it was just so much hassle to book and organise we didn’t bother. (Book, but only on one specific website, (not the actual grotto website) and the grotto access costs more than ‘the tour’, be there 40 mins before the tour, but you can’t park there, have to get a shuttle that only runs on the hour.)

So instead, we stopped to look at Nuraghe Palmavera, the site of some Bronze Age ruins.

The Nuraghe were built by the Nuragic civilisation between 1800 to about 200BC. Their settlements included towers, two of which are quite intact at this site.

After a bite to eat we headed north to what was promised to be the most beautiful beach in Sardinia. Technically it did not disappoint-take a look at the water!

Yes, it is that colour!

However, if we were visiting in summer, we’d have to book 2 days in advance at 8am, and if we are in the first 1500 people to book, pay €3 per person for the privilege of visiting! If you want to book a chair and umbrella that’s another €100! No such thing as waking up on a lovely day and deciding to go for a swim! The beach, with 1500 people on it, would be packed.

As Australians, the idea of paying to use a beach, no matter how nice (and this one was not actually as nice as many we might visit in Australia) is offensive!!! It did however, come with a tower – something Australian beaches clearly lack.

The water was cold on first entry, but not too bad after that.

We ended our day back in Sassari at a laundromat catching up on some washing as I didn’t tick the washing machine box on the booking app!

Our second day in Sardinia turned into an enforced rest day. With gale force winds and weather warnings, the incentives to venture further than the bottle shop were absent. So we dozed, booked some additional days in Italy and generally vegged. A delicious veggie & meatball pasta for dinner and we were done, ready for our drive to Cagliari tomorrow.

This morning we set out for Cagliari. Our plan was to stop and visit some sights along the way. First stop was the Church of the Holy Trinity in Saccargia. It was closed, but we stopped to look at the outside which is quite unique, being black and white striped. (Volcanic rock and limestone). It’s about 900 years old!

We then crossed the road and drove up a dodgy track, down a hill, up another dodgy track and up another one to visit a Nuraghe. Turns out you can’t visit it, we could only drive past it, turn in a farmer’s driveway (with his dog barking at us) then stop out the front to get a photo. Oh well.

From there we drove an hour and stopped at Parco Archeologico Naturalistico di Santa Cristina, the site of three settlements. An ancient Nuragic settlement with a well, a Christian church and village and a Nuragic settlement.

The well was really cool. The shape of it is this from above.

What we saw is this.

In the middle is a precisely cut triangular opening with steps leading down to a well.

At the bottom, there is a well and spring.

The Christian Church and village are still used twice a year for 9 days each time for festivals for Santa Cristina in May and Santa Raphael in October.

Then in the next area of the site is a partial Nuragic tower and a couple of Roman buildings.

It was a great little site to visit.

From there we continued south towards Cagliari, with two more planned stops. The first was not visited when Google Maps delivered us to this alleged road. Our car would still be there, stuck on the pipe if we had proceeded. We didn’t.

After abandoning that planned site, we went to the next one. This one was the ruins of a castle on a hill, Castello di Acquafredda.

We climbed to the top.

We were fortunate with the weather as we could see storms either side of where we were most of the day!

So far, Sardinia has been mostly undulating farmland, not mountainous like Corsica.

Our arrival into Cagliari has been a bit disappointing. Our AirBNB was completely NOT what we booked. Can you spot the difference?

Yes we still had a roof over our heads, but we had a barely functioning kitchen and the shittiest internet possible (so we’ve inevitably wasted a huge amount of paid-for data!!!)

We headed into town and found some parking. At least we thought it was parking, but weren’t sure, so moved the car to where other people were parking and not using apps or looking for ticket machines just to be on the safe side. We started to wander and found the Roman Ampitheatre.

Then found the monument erected in honour of our grandpup Remy.

By 11am we were in need of a drink and knew Remy would come through and cheer us up with his antics.

We continued wandering around town.

We stopped for some house-made pasta at a place where you choose you preferred pasta or ravioli and your preferred sauce. It is then delivered to you in a couple of minutes. We had a spinach & ricotta ravioli and a Gorgonzola & walnut ravioli, both with sage butter sauce. Needless to say they were delicious.

When we got back to our accommodation, after waiting to be let in as the door code entry pad was broken, there was a complete failure of internet. We couldn’t even achieve quality buffering!! So we watched local TV. A cooking show, in Italian. (Spoiler: we don’t speak Italian. Or at least I don’t remember much from two years of Italian with Mr.Concas in yr 7&8) One gave us two recipes we have sent to the kids to practice whilst we’re away / so we don’t lose them.

The other gave us a logo that reminded me of Mr Hankey, Kevin didn’t get this reference so was shown the relevant South Park episode.

On our last day in Sardinia we headed north-east to Olbia. It didn’t take long and we found the scenery we had been longing for. Why is it that mountains are so beautful (if you’re not walking up them?).

It was also a day of driving through tunnels. We counted more than 30!

After an hour or so of Kevin driving, I offered to take over. Within 5km we were on mountain roads. Not what I signed up for!

The mountains however were stunning. Some were golden brown and green, others were blue and grey. At one mountain pass we stopped to take in the view and heard a herd of goats walking up the mountain, bells on their necks ringing as they walked.

They all crossed the road to get home!

Our next stop was to look at the Gorrupo Canyon. Unfortunately (according to Kevin) we were about 5 hrs too late to have been able to walk the 4km and 700m down to it and the 4km and 700m backup, which we could have done from where we saw the goats.

We arrived into Olbia and scoped out the port before heading out for some dinner. We’re catching a ferry at 10pm tonight to Civitavecchia where our Roman Holiday begins.