Sardinian Roadtrip

It’s been awhile, but finally an update on Sardinia!  We arrived on the island from Milan on New Year’s Day, and headed straight to the car rental terminal…somehow they agreed to let us on the road and shortly after we were winding from Olbia to Sassari, along the rural highways of bella Sardegna, which was strikingly green, with flocks of sheep around every bend (source of the ever-present and delicious local pecorino cheese).  We stopped in Sassari, a fairly large (by Sardinian standards) university town, but only stayed long enough to wander around the centro storico for a few minutes.  It began raining as soon as we arrived, and literally everything was closed for the new year…not that it’s unusual for everything to be closed in Italy–if it’s not a holiday, it’s the siesta, or the locals have left on vacation…

Alghero

port area of Alghero

After Sassari, it was only a short jaunt over to Alghero, a small and charming town on the west of the island where we spent the first night.  The city is perched above the coast, where wintry winds had whipped the waves into a salty foam.  In the quaint downtown area, Christmas lights and decorations were strung across the cobblestone alleys, and crowds of people emerged around sunset for an evening stroll and window shopping.  We stayed in this neighborhood in an old monastery, which is attached to the still operational church, but has now been fixed up into a hotel.  The cloister, and the former solitary confinement room are now a pleasant breakfast area, where we took our first morning caffe the next day.

cloister breakfast area

cloister in Hotel San Francesco

This entry was posted in Alghero, Italy, Think and tagged , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Comments are closed.