Sardegna

This weekend I flew to the italian island of Sardinia where my friend Gavino lives and goes to school. Ryanair offers very cheap flights ($45 round trip) so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to visit him in his hometown.  The following is the journal I kept while there (Warning, it's long.  You may just want to skip to the pictures)

Left my bike at Amsterdam Centraal.  Took a train 1.5 hours south to the dutch city Eindhoven.  It is a city home to Philips which historically has employed the majority of its population.  I explored the city and visited an interesting modern art gallery.  Beautiful building.  Reminded me of a smaller, cosier Museum of Modern Art (New York) with its atrium of shifting volumes, its modern white walls as backdrop to the art, and its style of exhibitions.  Couldn't stay long because I had to catch a bus to the airport (Ryanair doesn't fly out of Amsterdam). After arriving at the airport, security seemed lax compared to my last experiences in north america, and I experienced no customs or passport checks. 

Sunset over the Alps

The flight was beautiful.  It took ten seconds to get above the fog that blanketed the Netherlands and then it was all sunset on the 2 hr flight crossing the Alps, the Mediterranean and the french island Corsica.  Despite its bad reputation, Ryanair wasn't so bad.  The seats are the tightest I've ever seen, but the flight was only 2/3 full and most people were sitting near the entrances so in the middle of the plane I had an entire row of 6 seats to myself.  Also, there are no assigned seats.  We landed twenty minutes early in the northern Sardinian town Alghero.

Gavino picked me up from the airport in his Fiat and we did a quick tour of Algher at night before heading back to his apartment to put some groceries in the fridge (including a huge tiramisu his mom made).  Then we were back in the car and off to Sassari (which is the largest town in northern Sardinia) for italian pizza.  We met up with 5 of Gavino's friends for all-you-can-eat pizza cooked in a traditional brick oven.  These guys mostly didn't speak english, but it gave me a great opportunity to observe how true the stereotypes are of italians talking with their hands.  The hands were everywhere, always gesturing and emphasizing.  The pizza was amazing, and we ended up ordering 14 different savoury pizzas and 2 sweet ones.  A surprising type that is quite common and popular there is a pizza covered in french fries (the table behind us had several of them).  Anchovy pizza wasn't as good as I'd hoped, but there were 13 other pizzas to try so it was okay.  The dessert pizza was very interesting.  It had honey for sauce, lemon as a topping, and then the same dough and cheese as the normal pizzas.  Served hot.  At this point I wasn't feeling much like consuming more pizza but I ate a piece and it was quite good.  The whole meal, complete with Sardinian beer "Ichnusa", bottled water, and rich italian espresso cost a measly 10 euros (the average meal at a sit down restaurant in Amsterdam is 20 euro without drinks).  Did I mention the espresso was incredible?  We took our very full stomachs to a local bar/cafe where live bands played covers of American rock music.  While most of the people there don't speak english, we left around 1:30 to everyone joining in the singing of "Sweet Home Alabama".  Go figure.

Conveniently, Gavino has two single beds in his room and I slept well the first night, awakening to my alarm clock and a beautiful blue sky.  The weather forecast had called for cloudy skies, so we joked about how nice the cloudy skies were in Sardinia.  I couldn't believe it was November as I spent the whole day outside in a t-shirt quite comfortably.

After a breakfast of a croissant and italian espresso (despite still feeling full from the night before) we went to Sassari to pick up Gavino's friend Antonio and then headed north to Porto Torres to see some nice Sardinian beaches. We stopped at three beaches and a town and I waded into the Mediterranean for the first time in my life.  They claimed the water was freezing but it felt quite nice to me.  We checked out the church in Porto Torres (the oldest in Sardinia) and some Roman runes (including a bridge still used today) before having a lunch of local cheeses, sausages, and breads at a beach.  I must say, after spending the last 3 months praising Dutch cheese, it just doesn't compare with the fresh mozzarella I was eating at lunch.

While we were packing up the lunch and taking it back to the car, a police car rolled up and asked to see our identification.  Apparently it's a normal procedure here and I suspect they were looking for another car that looked like ours as they were more interested in the license plate than our identification and they barely glanced at my passport once they knew I was Canadian.  One of the police spoke some english and commended my friends for knowing english and that it was a big problem on mainland italy that few people spoke it.  Maybe it was a comment brought on by the economy of late?  I like the idea of being in a place where no one speaks english (provided I have my friends to translate :P )

View from Castelsardo over the village below

The sun was getting low in the sky and we continued eastward along the noth coast, stopping to see a church built on a cliff over the water and eventually reaching Castelsardo as the sun was setting.  The castle is built on a high rocky outcropping above a small village full of steep awkwardly angled streets and colourful sardinian houses.  Picturesque Italian village I'm telling you!  We rose up above the village, parked the car at the base of the castle and walked up to the battlements just in time for the sun to light up the few clouds on the horizon and provide a spectacular view. After many pictures, we headed back to the car and back to Alghero for a dinner prepared by Gavino.

This dinner deserves its own blog entry.  It is officially tied for the best meal I've ever had (with Colleen and Wilf's Indian dinner). Everything we ate was grown and produced within 50 km.  For drinks, we had the local Ichnusa crude beer, as well as a red and white wine.  For appetizers, we had a spicy sausage, a strong dry cheese which I thought was the best cheese I'd ever tried until the fresh Ricotta came out.  So soft and flavourful.  Put a thin slice on a piece of Sardinian flat bread (think really thin toasted tortilla) and it's heaven.  Also, rosemary breadsticks (thin and crispy).  Then the first came.  A pasta of thick shells with a tomato and meat sauce.  Fresh grated parmesan on top.  Then the second (and for me, along with the ricotta cheese this was the show stopper).  Lamb with olives and fennel.   Homemade olive oil.  I thought I was full after the pasta, but I loved both the lamb and the fresh olives (and I usually don't get excited for olives).  Finally dessert, which was in two rounds.  First, a pastry filled with cheese and lemon and sprinkled with sugar (freshly fried by Gavino).  Then, his mom's tiramisu came out of the fridge.  I think we all know how good a rich creamy tiramisu is.  This was top notch.  For the second time in two days I was completely and utterly stuffed.  Our dinner ended and we went to bed, setting the alarm early because my flight back to the netherlands was the next day at 1:30.

Walking down the stairs to Neptune's Grotto

We wasted no time in the morning, exploring Alghero's city wall along the sea, driving up the coast to see beaches and old towers, and experience breathtaking views of rocky cliffs rising from the Mediterranean.  Our destination was 'Neptune's Grotto', a series of natural caves accessible from the sea or a long flight of stairs perched precariously down a vertical cliff face.  I think the pictures speak for themselves here.  The 1000 stairs down the cliff were probably more exciting and beautiful than the cave itself, but both were a great experience.  A tour guide led us through the caves which were discovered in the 14th century by fishermen.  Some beautiful spaces where the stalagmites reflected off crystal clear pools of saltwater.  We eventually had to leave and raced back up the stairs to get to the airport in time.  I had just enough time to get through security before my flight started boarding.  Lifting off and looking down at the hot dry climate that reminded me a little of home in the Okanagan, I knew I was going to miss Sardinia, even though my trip has been so short.  Gavino was an amazing host and fit an incredible amount into a very short time.  I ended up with 550 pictures in the two days and managed to get it down to about 150 for the album.  Please enjoy the pictures, and I would be happy to show you the rest when I'm back in Canada.