After a rather long day of travel, we finally made it from Tuscany to Sardinia. We were on a packed, late flight from Pisa to Alghero, but fortunately the car rental place and the B&B we had wisely booked ahead were still expecting us and open at 11 at night.
After a wonderful night's sleep we made our way into downtown Alghero today to explore the ancient town and see what all the fuss is about. As it unexpectedly turns out, Sunday is an excellent day to explore. Enough of the shops and restaurants were open to be able to shop and munch, but there were not a lot of tourists about. Hanging out in large single-sex groups were elderly men and elderly women, sitting, drinking coffee, catching up, and watching the world go by. Oh, and EVERYONE here has a small yappy dog.
After seeing the old town and making plans for dinner, we decided to head back to our car and go explore the greater Alghero area. We made our way up to the Northeast corner of the country to explore the Grotto de Nettune, which is essentially a cave that you can either access by boat or by 656 steps down (and back!) The cave tour was moderately interesting and the cave itself was pretty cool, but the hike down was far more beautiful and stunning. The water here is incredbly blue and clear and it makes you want to just dive right in.
After making it back up all of those steps, we stopped for the best beer ever and then headed out towards the other main tourist attraction in the area, the nuraghe, which is a really, really old village (15th century BC old) that has ruins in remarkable shape. We have pictures and I promise that they will be up eventually! I found the whole thing fascinating and kept finding myself pondering both how short the people were back then and how much my parents would love to see this. Very cool stuff.
Included with the ticket to the nuraghe was a ticket to the necropolis nearby. These were a bunch of graves createdbetween 2700 and 3300 BC. They were pretty much a lot of holes in the ground that were lined with stone and were really interesting. There are still visible images on the wall. You can seriously get right down in there and explore around, though we skipped that part as we were lacking a flashlight and grave diving in a dress was not high on my list of things to do today.
We are about to head to dinner at a restaurant suggested to us by the owners of the Sardinian restaurant in San Francisco. We checked it out earlier and it looks wonderful. It's been a long day, so I'm off!
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5 comments:
If I'd blogged during my honeymoon, Lisa would have flayed me alive. Fortunately for you, geek married geek, and all is well. Sounds like y'all are having a good time.
Look out for James Bond in Sardinia, though. He drives that Lotus like a madman.
"... we stopped for the best beer ever..." What?! No further description? Beer hungry fans must know what this delicious brew was! I didn't even know the Italians could make a best beer ever.
Ok, the beer itself was some crappy bud-like substance but after 1200 steps down and up it was the nectar of the gods! :)
It turns out that the Sards drink more beer than any other part of Italy and they have several of their own local brews. We have only tried one brand so far and have been underwhelmed.
In the grand scheme of things, the beer wasn't actually that good. Simply that, after 649 stairs in the sun, it seemed like the best beer ever.
Good to know. Now we just have to figure out a way to incorporate a 649 stair climb into the fermentation process and we'll have a real winner.
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