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Published: June 21st 2019
Christmas presents this year for our parents were flights to Sardinia. The six of us, Magdalena and her parents plus my parents and I, would have six days exploring the north of the island. We definitely wanted to go to Italy; mum and dad had never been but had always wanted to and the rest of us had been and like it a lot. But we wanted to go somewhere new for all of us. Puglia or Sicily proved impossible to find flights from both the UK and Poland that landed at the same airport on the same day whereas in Sardinia, Olbia to be precise, we could land within a few hours of each other.
The title of the blog, “holiday”, suggests some type of escape from stresses of everyday life. However, I needed a holiday afterwards. This is no fault of anyone on the trip, I just found having to be organiser and car renter and driver and entertainer to be quite a job. I don’t think anyone would have blamed me if things didn’t go to plan or if they didn’t have a good time but as we organised the trip I felt a lot
Alghero in the distance
On the lovely road up from Bosa.of responsibility. And car rental abroad is always a stress. Waiting a few hours just to get the car in the first place, blocking over 1000 Euro off my credit card as a deposit, constantly having at the back of my mind all the bad reviews the car rental companies (all of them) get online, and thus being paranoid every time a leaf or moth grazes the bonnet thinking that’s an excuse not to get the deposit back. Actually driving on the wrong side of the road is the easy bit!
Now the good parts. Sardinia is lovely. It reminded me a lot of the wilder parts of Majorca. It was much greener and rugged than I expected and hardly built up at all. There are colourful little towns with castles rising up behind them, high limestone mountains and cliffs full of dramatic caves, and white sand beaches with flat calm gin clear water. Then there’s the people the food and the wine which of course are fantastic as always in Italy.
Sardinia has an interesting history too. The towns have a different appearance to much of Italy. Probably because the island was Spanish
for a few hundred years, which is when the round defensive towers were built that line the coast. Going back much earlier, but with similar architectural ideas, were the Nuraghes, who built similarly round fortresses around 1500 BC. We passed a lot of these while driving on the inland roads, some of which are just piles of rocks while others are either remarkably well preserved or have been rebuilt.
We lost a bit of time to rain but never a whole day. Though our plan of constantly moving, spending maximum two nights in a place, meant we couldn’t wait for the weather to clear. Thus, hikes along the coast at Cala Gonone had to be cut short (it went from sunshine to hail in a matter of minutes) while Gorropu Gorge and Stintino had to be skipped altogether. Though the weather didn’t stop us from exploring the political murals in the mountain town of Orgosolo; me like a proper British tourist in shorts and thin sweater despite the 12C temperature and pouring rain!
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