A quick hop to Sardinia
May 26th, 2007 by Oana
The only things I knew about Sardinia before visiting were:
- that it had something to do with the expression “sardonic grin”,
- that it was an Italian island somewhere between Corsica and Sicily in the Mediterranean (and was therefore bound to have beaches), and
- that flights from Barcelona to Alghero were ridiculously cheap.
So when we were planning the rest of our time with Jeff, Sardinia seemed like a somewhat unusual but bound-to-be-interesting option.
Things I/we learned:
There is a large Catalan population in Alghero, dating from a 14th century invasion. Street signs are usually in both languages (Catalan and Italian).
Melba toast does not a breakfast make. We had much higher expectations when we checked into our B&B in Alghero, since the owner boasts of having been a chef for many, many years. Clearly he got tired of it, and we chewed on the same dry tiny pieces of melba toast for two mornings in a row. Unfortunately the Italians eat later than we are used to, as we had a hard time finding restaurants that opened for lunch before 1 pm or dinner before 7 pm.
There are wild albino donkeys – we didn’t see any, but wondered whether they were on the menu at the restaurants. See “fettin” below.
You will fit right in with the locals if you drive a ridiculously small car. We rented a Fiat Seicento, affectionately called “the mousetrap”.
They’re not joking when they say it seats 3 – there is no way I would have been able to drive the thing if I had to move my chair forward from where it rested right back against the back seat bench. Furthermore, the unbalanced weight (Ian and Jeff on the right, me on the left) lead to a deflated right front tire which caused me to freak out. Just a little. Everything turned out ok in the end – we just put some more air into the tire and drove on.
It drove fine overall, although Ian had to rescue me when I wedged the front bumper under that of a Renault while parking on an incredibly steep hill – turns out I don’t know how to use the e-brake to back up that same steep hill. Can’t really tell in this photo, but that hill was STEEP!
It was worth the adventure so we could walk around Castelsardo (literally, Sardinian Castle) – a town surrounding a castle perched on top of a rock.
The Sardinians also worship the karate kid. Ok, not really, but their flag is kinda funny (this photo isn’t of the real flag, just a political party’s modified version – on the real flag, the 4 Moors wear headbands, not blindfolds, and face to the right).
A version of the flag also features on the cans of the local beer Ichnusa, which I hear was delicious – I wouldn’t know as I had to drive!
You can surf in Sardinia – but you must first fulfill the requirement of having a death wish! The water is very rough and these 3 brave surfers had to dodge huge rocks.
Continuing the rock theme, most of the tourist attractions consist of piles of rocks. You can look over the fence at some prehistoric piles of rocks (don’t fall for the scam like we did, and pay the 5 euro entrance fee) …
… you can pose with supposedly bear-shaped piles of rocks …
… and you can fall for more scams to look under piles of rocks. This one is Neptune’s Grotto and we decided to take a boat trip instead of driving to Capo Caccia and climbing down (and back up) 634 steps.
The 13 euro price seemed quite reasonable for the boat trip, but of course it turned out that it didn’t include the 10 euro (!!) admission price to the actual Grotto, a fact we did not find out until we had gotten off the boat by braving the wildly swinging gangway.
The Sardinians are terrible at driving boats in high winds (we got soaked!) but great at parking it in the most ridiculous spots – such as the entrance to the Grotto.
There are indeed beaches. And OH MY what beaches. This is Spiaggia La Pelosa, just north of Stintino, about 30 km north of Alghero.
The pillowy soft sand is great for a nap … except that it was quite windy and for days afterwards and despite multiple showers, Jeff was finding grains of sand behind his ears and between his toes!
The food was consistenly good and a couple of times amazing. Ian’s instinct to order the house specialty was bang on in Santa Teresa di Gallura (at a hotel restaurant of all places – Assassin at the Bacchus Hotel), where we split a huge seafood spaghetti dish – the best spaghetti I’ve ever had!
The house wine was consistently drinkable at all the restaurants we ate at, whether we got the local Cannonau red grape or the foamy vino sfuso. We also had great dessert experiences, with these beautiful concoctions costing a grand 4 euros each.
Overall, it was a fun visit to Sardinia. If you go, I would stick to the northwest end of the island and/or the south, which I hear is also nice. Definitely rent a car, and it’s worth the extra money to upgrade from the cheapest category, unless you are a family of midgets.