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Published: November 30th -0001
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Looking at this year calendar, the date of going home is drawing closer and closer. If i didnt take any action now, i will end up doing nothing and achieving nothing. When i say achieving nothing, i mean not travelling to anywhere.Though at least i think i shall still be able to get my Msc done. So, to make things happen...i frenzyly look through all low cost airlines websites.. damn, the price has gone up. I should really book the flight that i saw before the last May bank holiday. It was a deal flying to Marrakesh for less than 50 pounds. Now the price has rocketing up..( i then found out i need Visa for Marrakesh, it must be a blessing in disguise, as i didnt got the ticket booked) Just when i was about to give up looking, there is this browser popping out, advertising hard about 20pounds flight tickets including tax to many cities in europe. How could i resist such a bargain! This was very much of an impromtu decision, i emailed sy,who is also very keen on travelling, to agree on date and time, and Sardinia here we come!
Travelling is supposed to be stress
free, however, since the new rules of bringing liquid in hand luggage come into force, it has put some stress on me even before the holiday. Having read through the check in regulation a few times still didnt help, my contact lense solution and hair conditioner were confiscated. They argued the transparent bag i used was too big! i suppose i could have checked in my luggage, but it seemed ridiculous to me to be charged at 10 pounds just for checking in my luggage. This would defeat the purpose of flying out in 20 pounds flight ticket. And I could have bought many more toiletries that i needed using the 10 pounds i saved. Yes, i am very carefull with my money.
Ohhh, did i mention that this 20 pounds ticket also involved a little sacrifice- losing a night sleep, something i dreaded about. Arriving in London Stansted airport from newcastle around 9pm and my flight to sardinia was early next morning 6pm. I told Sy i will just spend the night in the airport, taking the hassle out of travelling to her place, which takes and hour, and getting up early at 3 am to come back
to the airport. I wondered around in the airport, to find a place which is safe for me to spend a night. Surprisingly, there were many people- old, young and family with kids, with the same situation like me. I saw this very loving old couple,also spending the night in the airport, i am sure they are in their 60s. The wife was knitting something and the husband was making coffee from the coffee flask that they brought. I couldn't imagine myself doing this at their age. I then found a two seaters with no arm rest in between, this means i could at least lie down and stretch my leg.
Travellling from Alghero Fertilia airport to the town centre was quite straight forward. The bus ticket costs 70cents and the journey takes about half an hour. We saw lots of camping site along the way.
The bus dropped us off at the front of Piazza Mercede. We found the first hour or two flew by in blurness.We thought it would be a good idea to visit the tourist office on our way to the hotel, not only we couldnt find the office, but we ended up touring
the town with a few side shopping trips. When we finally got our bearing, we realised the tourist office is just opposite the bus top where we got off. The hostel is about 15 minutes walk from the town, but with the shopping detour, we ended up in the hotel 3 hours later. No one was in the hotel to let us in, we knocked on the door, we spoke to the neighbour but to no avail. The owner showed up after we made a phone call to remind him of our arrival. Due to the over booking of his hostel, Claudia had pre-arranged our stay in one of his friend's hostel. He invited us for a cup of coffee in his hostel while waiting for his friend to pick us up.
The hostel was kept in a spick and span condition, not knowing how his friend's place would look like, we were feeling quite reluctant at the thounght of moving to his friend's hostel.However, five minutes later, there is this well toned, alive skin, good looking Italian men walked into the room and changed our thought completely :P.We couldnt keep our face straight and cant help giggling when
we saw Fabio. We commented on how good looking our new host was, of course in our language which they couldnt pick up. Fabio took us to our new hostel, it was located two street away from Claudia's, so it wasnt too far away from the town. It is a 3 room apartment that Fabio made into a Bed and Breakfast. It is actually his home as he stayed in one of the room and the rest was rented out to guest. The condition of the apartment is as good as Claudia, so we werent missing out anything.
After a quick shower, we headed back to the town to continue our shopping activities. We stopped by in a local pub for lunch. It was quite an interesting one. The pub qas quite busy with lots of old Italian men, who looked at us as if we were aliens. As we spoke no word of Italian, we struggled with what we want to order as there was no menu board in the pub. We resolved to pointing at what people ordered and with my very little spanish, we got ourself a bean, tuna with zucchini sort of tapas to share
with, throw in a few bottle of sardinian beer
, we managed to get a ourself fed. The Italian men in the pub then got friendly with us, offering lift to take us around and buying us more beer. We had this going in a circle conversation as neither of us couldnt quite understand what each other are saying.
As heaven forbade, the whole town went into siesta and all the shops were closed. It was probably a good thing not being able to shop, as i was on a tight budget. We strolled along the city wall that surrounded the centro historico. Each side of the wall
is given a a name, Bastione la Maddalena facing the north, Bastioni Marco Polo facing the west and Bastioni cristoforo Colombo facing the south west.
. There are three or more defensive towers in between the wall, which provides good views to Capo Caccia.
The town came back alive after the siesta, there were many restaurant in the old town quarter, but we found it hard to find any authentic restaurant serving sardinian traditional food. At the end we settled for a set menu which serve gnocchi as starter, meat
medallion as main and sardinian cheese and honey as sweet . Sy had seafood paella as starter, some sort of fish as main and the same dessert as mine. As with no surprise, the food quality of set menu is mediocre,tasty but nothing to shout about. We should have learned the lesson by now.
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