Trip around Sardinia
Friday
Arrival in Porto Torres in the morning. Drive to Castelsardo, lunch. Drive through the inland, Moonscape, Tempio, Olbia. We arrive at GeoVillage in time for dinner.Saturday
Drive north: Golfo Aranci, Porto Rotundo, beach south of Porto Cervo accessible after some off-roading.Sunday
Explore Olbia, cute little centre, no-one there. Drive south to Istana. Back to Olbia, we can't find the hotel for all the highways. Dinner in Olbia, now very alive with night markets and a dance on the plazza.Monday
Arzachena: kinda cute, but nothing to eat, and too hot to visit the pre-historic site. Drive along the coast. Back to Olbia, try La lanterna, very disappointing.Tuesday
Day in: gym, beach, spa. We're very relaxed until the evening, when the music down our window drives us mad.Wednesday
Request room change, it's pretty late when we leave. We head of too Santa Teresa de Gallura, a cute town surrounded by beautiful landscapes and views of Corsica.Thursday
La Maddalena: main island disappointing, it's not at all "wild and unspoilt", quite the opposite. La Caprera looks nice until Narelle slips and hurts her knee.
Friday
Off to Cala Gonone, staying at L'oasi, nice hotel on top of the hill. Dinner at Il Pescatore.
Saturday
Drive up the hill on a small concrete road to Spiaggia Cartao (nice) and Spiaggia Osalla (rubbish). Visit of Grotte di Ispinigola, of which we only see the main room that's like a cathedral with a 38 metre colon — definitely worth the visit, even if going down the 250 steps was hard on Narelle's knee.
Sunday
Day trip through the Gulf of Orosei with Umberto and an couple from Byron Bay (small world). Probably the best day of our holiday: the coast is absolutely fantastic, the water unbelievably clear, the beaches beautiful and almost deserted, as they can only be accessed by boat: no-one to sell you clothes or Rolex here!
Monday
Laundry, lunch at Il Pescatore, off to Alghero. We find Hotel Catalunya extremely easily: it's very well located about 200m from the historic centre and has a roof bar that overlooks the city.
Dinner at the Nettuno restaurant, recommanded by the Lonely Planet guide. It's not very good.
Tuesday
Walk around Alghero, shopping. Drive north to see the beaches (none are nice), a Nuaghee village, and Cappo Caccia where the Nettuno caves are. Dinner at Il Pesce d'Oro, excellent.Wednesday
Narelle can't walk, so I go to see the Grotte di Nettuno by myself. Drive to Porto Torres, lunch at L'Ostrich (average), we get to Il Melo where we get direction to a doctor (Narelle's knee is getting worse) and to a mechanic (the car is making funny noises). On the way to the doctor, the clutch (La frizzione) gives up. Somehow we make it to the doctor who sends us to the hospital in Sassari. We decide to leave it until tomorrow and drop the car at the mechanic, a funny character named Salvatore who speaks no English, but kind of understands French. I kind of understand Italian, so we arrange to have the clutch fixed for friday night for 600€ (ouch). He gives me a ride back to the hotel. Stranded with no car, we order pizza.Thursday
Narelle's leg is better. We put yesterday on the account of limping to prevent hurting her knee that tensed the rest of her leg up and made her cramp every which way.
Marta, the receptionnist from Il Melo, arranges a car rental for us and gives us a lift into town. We have lunch at Scolgliolungo(?) which make the best pizzas we had while in Sardinia, then retrieve the car and go for a drive to La Pelosa, near Stintino. It is a very beautiful beach, the sand is quite heavy which means the water is always very clear. It is also just next to an old tower. On the other hand, it is absolutely overrun with people.
We go back to Scolgliolungo where we take pizza away home.Friday
Souvenir shopping! We can't find anything in Porto Torres so we go back to Stintino, where we can't really find anything either. We get an overpriced lunch from Skipper, then head back not really knowing where to go. On the way back we discover a strange, Disneyland-like village on top of a hill: it's a weird mix of a shopping centre (à la Harbour Town) and a hotel, as you can rent units there. We find some wine and souvenirs but really not much. Back to Porto Torres, we find a supermarket that has a decent wine ailes, so we stock up. Then it's time to get our little car back, with its shiny new clutch, and we drop the rental car off. That's when we realise there is a pedestrian street in the centre of Porto Torres that we didn't know about: that's where all the souvenir shops have been hiding all this time. We stock up on tourist food.
We get one last pizza to take away, and we eat it on the beach with a nice bottle of red. It's the end of the holiday... almost.
