Monday 11 October 2010

Top 5 things to see and do on Sardinia


During our three-week drive around the island of Sardinia we saw so many beautiful sights and did so many wonderful things, that it is quite a challenge to single out just five of them. Anyway, here is the list:


5. Charming towns and cities
There are countless charming little towns in Sardinia worth visiting. Some of them are full of museums and tourist attractions, some host interesting music and folk festivals, others are just picture-postcard beautiful.
We liked many of them, but Alghero (you can find the best selection of coral jewellery in narrow city streets enclosed within its imposing city walls), Bosa (heavily influenced by the Spanish, today a colourful ancient city, overlooked by an imposing castle) and Cagliari (busy and always alive like every capital city) were the ones we liked best.



4. Local food and wine
Everywhere in Italy food and wine is a special treat not to be missed. Sardinia is no different. There are many local pasta dishes (e.g. ravioli-like culingiones), meats (e.g. salsiccia - local pork sausage), excellent cheeses (e.g. pecorino - sheep cheese and caprino - goat cheese), various kinds of flat bread (Pane Guttiau and Pane Carasau), fresh seafood of all kinds, local wines like Cannonau and Vermentino, delicious ice cream (almost everywhere we went it was very good, but at Gelateria Peter Pan on Piazza Vitorio Emanuelle in Nuoro it was the best) and even Ichnusa - the local brand of beer (which, compared to everything above, is really not all that special).



3. Neptune's Grotto
The mythological cave dwelling of the sea God Neptune (Grotta di Nettuno) is an impressive cave full of stalactites and stalagmites partly filled with sea water. It is accessible only by boat (excursions run from nearby towns) or by 654-step Escala del cabirol (Goat's steps) from a car park at the top of the cliff.
This can be an expensive thing (especially if one chooses to get there by boat). We took the steps and did not regret it - we enjoyed spectacular views and spent "just" the 12 Euros per person at the entrance. An excellent guided tour (in flawless English) added greatly to the experience and we are happy to recommend it.



2. Nuraghi
The nuraghe is an example of ancient megalithic architecture. Most of the stony structures were built during the Bronze Age (that is more then 3.500 years ago!) and they still stand tall and proud. Some of them are as high as 20 meters. Today nuraghe is the symbol of Sardinia and a visitor can hardly avoid visiting at least one of the 8.000 still standing today.
We visited Nuraghe Losa and were moved by the size of the structure. It really makes you wonder how they moved all those stones into place back then - some of them must weigh several tons.



1. Beautiful beaches
If you like picture postcard beaches, Sardinia is definitely a place to visit. There are literally countless beaches of all kinds around the edges of the island. Most of them are sandy, but also weirdos like us who don't like all that fine sand getting everywhere, have plenty of choice.
Some of the more memorable ones we have visited are: the Is Aruttas beach with its special sand (it is even forbidden to take it away), the picture-postcard beach of La Pelosa with its white sand and turquoise waters (but way too crowded for our taste) and the rocky peninsula of Capo Testa with its surreal stone formations.



I guess some of you might disagree with my Top 5 list, but this is just my opinion based on things we managed to see and do in those way too short three weeks of our trip.
I also plan to write about some other places we visited and things we did in the next few posts. If they didn't make it to this list, it doesn't mean you won't like them. Especially if you are putting together an itinerary for your adventure in Sardinia, I suggest you also check out my other posts under the tag "Sardinia".

Read more...

Monday 13 September 2010

Time for a roadtrip again!


I intended to post this a few weeks ago, but somehow managed not to do it. Well... here it is with a tiny little bit of delay.


Our jobs, limited yearly leave, lack of financial resources and other types of restraints are successfully keeping us from travelling as much as we would like to. At least that is true for those who had been bitten by the travel bug and I certainly fall into that category. Those of you following my blog have already noticed a lack of travel related posts lately.
Fortunately after a long wait, the time for my main yearly vacation has arrived. At the moment preparations are in full swing. The destination has been decided, some reservations made, ferry tickets purchased, car serviced and health insurance arranged. Only my bags are still waiting for someone to pack them.


There are at least three destinations M and I had hard time choosing from: Portugal, Greece and Sardinia. The idea was to drive there and do some camping in almost three full weeks.


After careful consideration, Portugal seemed a bit far away. It would take us quite a few days to get there and also petrol isn't all that cheap these days. We decided it will just have to be stuck on our waiting list for a few more years.


Greece on the other hand seemed a better option but since they recently had some problems (for instance a shortage of petrol due to some strikes) we weren't sure if it was such a good idea to go there this year. After we gave it some thought we figured that if it was there for a few thousand years, Greece probably isn't going anywhere for another couple of years.


Our last but definitely not the least attractive option was Sardinia. Since we have been to most of other islands around Italy it was an obvious choice - in the past years we have already visited Sicily, Elba, Malta and Corsica. However different they might be, we liked them all. In addition to that Sardinia is also the closest destination of the three on our short-list.


I'll try to publish some useful information for those of you intending to do a similar trip and of course spice it all up with some beautiful photos. I hope you are looking forward to this at least a bit... I know I am!

Read more...

Tuesday 13 July 2010

Football and Web Traffic go together well


As I predicted in my previous post the last football match Slovenia played in South Africa had a similar effect on web traffic as the previous two. Almost every web page and blog publishing Slovenia related content experienced a substantial increase of traffic in recent days.


On the graph screenshot from Google Trends you can see three peaks representing number of Google searches people did last month.
The first peak is on the day of the match between Slovenia and Algeria, the second Slovenia vs. USA and the third Slovenia vs. England.


Unfortunately Slovenian national team didn't make it to the next round and this meant the end of increased web exposure for Slovenia. I am pretty sure the upcoming 2010 FIBA Basketball World Championship in Turkey will hardly have a similar effect.


A couple of days ago the World Cup came to an end and it is a vuvuzela free time again. Congratulations Spain!

Read more...
Related Posts with Thumbnails

Label Cloud

Followers

Blog Archive