Hello once again, friends and family!
What's a trip to Europe if it doesn't include at least a brief stop in the beautiful country of Italy?
The weekend of April 27-May 1st, we also had a long weekend from school, so my friends and I found a cheap flight out of Madrid via RyanAir to Sardinia (Cerdeña, or Sardegna - I'm still not sure which spelling is English, Spanish, or Italian). It's the second largest island in the Mediterranean sea behind Sicily, and it belongs to Italy. It's situated north of Sicily and south of Corsica, a French island in the Mediterranean.
After getting up insanely early Friday morning, April 27th, we caught a bus to Madrid's airport, and caught our flight to Italy. We arrived Friday afternoon into the city of Cagliari, and took a taxi to our hostel, which, ended up being in a small neighborhood outside of Cagliari called Quartu Sant Elena. Meaning, we were basically staying in the middle of nowhere, Italy. (Oh just wait, it gets better!) We got to our hostel, and it was inside of an apartment building. Well, there was no one there to let us in, so we buzzed and buzzed, and finally a random stranger let us into the apartment building. We went up to the hostel door, and rand several times, getting no answer.
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| The view from our first hostel's window! |
After sitting for about 30 minutes, we found a nice older man in the hallway, and in broken Spanish/what we knew of Italian (which consisted of "scuzzi", "pizza", "pasta", "gelato", and "prego") he called the hostel owner. We soon discovered, everybody knew everybody else in the town. But we couldn't have asked for a better Italian experience! Margherita, the owner's sister, came over from the grocery store with her friend, Patricia to check us in. Needless to say, they didn't have us down as having a reservation, so Sarah and I went to her friend's apartment across the way and printed out our reservation using her computer, internet, and printer. This starts our weekend of running into some of the nicest people on the earth. Sardinians are so wonderful! Anyway, after running around and finally getting the hostel stuff situated, we ended up with two rooms with balconies facing the Mediterranean sea! (Though we were pretty far away!). That evening, after heading to the store to get some food for Saturday and Sunday, we stayed in our hostel and enjoyed some wine on the balcony, while making pesto and mozzarella cheese sandwiches! :)
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| Poetto Beach - 8km of wonderful sand! |
Saturday, we had nice weather, and we literally spent all day on the beach. We didn't have too many exciting stories from that day, other than finding wild flamingos, swimming in the Mediterranean, and indulging in Italian pizza that night for supper.
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| Italian Pizza! (Margherita style) |
Sunday is where the fun really starts! Since we had a long weekend, and could only find flights into Cagliari and out of Alghero (both on the same island), we planned on staying 2 nights in Cagliari and 2 nights in Alghero. We had looked up ways to get to Alghero from Cagliari and decided trains would probably be our best bet. The schedule said a train would leave Cagliari at noon, and get to our transfer city of Sassari at 4pm, and from there, we had another hour ride into Alghero. It sounded pretty easy, right?
Well, we got to the train station in Cagliari at 11:30am, only to find out that our train was leaving at 11:40am. (Mind you, this is all in broken Spanish/English - I learned it was very hard to communicate without knowing the language!) After figuring out we had to get on the train we bought our tickets quickly, and got on the train. Sarah, Will, and I sat near this really nice older man. He, along with one of the train attendants helped us figure out where to go to get off to switch trains. We had to get off at Chilivari, and then take a train to Sassari, and then take a different train to Alghero. Ufff.
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| The view from the train window |
During the train ride to Chilivari, we talked with this older man, and he taught us some Italian words. We found out later, after some observations, that the whole car was laughing at us, from our poor pronunciation, to our sandwiches we made and packed to eat on the journey! They were all really nice, wonderful people, and were super helpful, but they thought we were hilarious! I can remember sitting on the train, eating my tuna and tomato sandwich, and making eye contact with an Italian woman. She just laughed, and I laughed, all while the older gentleman was teaching us Italian words for cow, sheep, and pig.
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| Another view from the train |
We got off at Chilivari, made our train switch, and headed to Sassari. We got off at Sassari, and looked to get our last ticket to Alghero, but the office was closed. They office opened about 10 minutes before the train got in, we all got our tickets and boarded the smallest train I have ever been on. It was comprised of three cars. Three. That's it! It was the smallest, most interesting train ride of my life. But at least we had the beautiful scenery to keep us distracted - Italy was a ocean of rolling green hills, with rock walls, with sheep running freely throughout the fields. I thought I had somehow I had gotten transported to the middle of Ireland.
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| The hostel above the pizza place. |
We got off at Alghero, and after waiting, and waiting, and walking, and waiting some more (we were getting skeptical that the bus was even coming) we got on a bus that would take us to the even smaller town our hostel was in. (Apparently we really wanted to stay in the middle of nowhere!!!) We traveled to Fertilia by bus and asked some locals where we could find our hostel. There was literally one hostel in the whole town, and it was made up of 3 different roads. Our hostel was the upstairs apartment of a family owned pizza restaurant, so by the time we got there, the pizza place was closing, but they stayed open long enough to make us some pizza! So, yet again, we all indulged in
more Italian pizza! Trust me when I say you can't get enough!
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| Look at this wonderful kitchen! |
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| The bikes we rode along the coast. |
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| The Italian Coast |
The following Monday, we went grocery shopping, got food to cook in our lovely hostel (with a beautiful kitchen). It rained/stormed all day - we were planning on going to Neptune's Grotto, which is a series of sea caves, but they don't do tours when it's storming out, so we couldn't do that. Instead, we discovered that the family that owned our hostel had bikes we could use for free!
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| Me and my basket bike |
So, we biked around the area, explored the coast, and even biked through a pretty decent rainstorm! Oops! I can't forget the gelato we got that afternoon! Even though we didn't go to Neptune's Grotto, It was a ton of fun, and one of my favorite days. It's definitely something I will never forget having experienced!
That day for lunch and for dinner we cooked a 3 course meal for all 5 of us, which included salad, pasta with sauteed vegetables, and strawberries for dessert. We were stuffed to the brim full of wonderful food. Somehow, the five of us made a great travel family. Even when cooking together. :)
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| Working hard? or Hardly working? "Who wants mushrooms?" |
Tuesday, we got up, gave our keys back to our friends in the pizza place below our apartment/hostel and headed to the airport in Alghero via bus. We left the island of Sardinia having eating Italian pizza, pasta, and gelato; having biked along the Italian coastline; and having swam in the Mediterranean.
For me, this was one of my favorite trips I had this semester. The five of us who went (Will, Joe, Sarah, Katie, and I) made such a wonderful travel group, and we all had a really wonderful weekend. I absolutely fell in love with the Italian countryside, and I wasn't even on mainland Italy! The people I traveled with I would travel with again in a heartbeat, we all balanced each other out, and we had such a wonderful time together! Italy, I will be back some day! :)
As always,
besos y abrazos,
Erin
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