We have a pretty set morning routine, I get up first and make the coffee for the day. We have two travel mugs that I fill with coffee, in addition I make Ton a cafe aulait to help her get up and going. When I am done with the coffee I get dressed and go on a walk with my coffee. Ton uses the time I am gone to prepare for the day. As the days are getting shorter, my walk is beginning to be around sun up. This morning when I got up the sunrise was spectacular. So much so, that I told Ton she had to stick her head out of François and take a look. She was skeptical but with some encouragement came to the door, I got this one right as she immediately grabbed a jacket and came out to get some pictures.
As we have gotten older we have begun to look for how to make things easy. In the spring on Crete for the first time we rented a car, rather than pack François up every day and set out for the day on mountain roads. Now we have a budget that we have set in both price and accessibility that makes sense for us, and when we get to a place we look at the options for renting. In this case we are located 15 minutes by city bus from the main airport, and because it is off season we could rent a car for less than €20 per day. By renting a car we can cover a wide area radiating from our campground, as the rental car is both faster, and more importantly much more agile than François. We can head without fear into the center of cities which cuts down our walking considerably and allows us to cover more ground per day. So over the next three days we will be covering northern Sardinia in our Lancia Ypsilon.
Our first stop today was Castelsardo about 70 kilometers from where we are staying. It is a small town, but has been voted as one of the most beautiful in Italy. The name of the town is literally Sardinian Castle, as the town spread out from an old castle that occupied a major bluff jutting into the Mediterranean. It is a beautiful site for a town.
The climb from the parking area near the port to the castle overlooking the city was only about 650 meters. The problem was it is also about a 500 foot gain in altitude. The old town has long stretches of steps you follow to get to the top. So we got a good workout in climbing up.
But when we got to the top it was worth the effort. The old town is small but we both felt like we stepped back in time. There were not too many people running about so we could stop and explore the churches and alleys without anyone at all crowding us. We often felt we had the place to ourselves.
The local people we encountered were clearly trying to drum up some business for their shops/restaurants, but they did it in a charming way without any pressure. Even after we told them we had eaten or were not looking to buy anything they continued to chat with us about the significance of the town, and how their business reflected the culture of the local area. They seemed happy to help us understand the local history and not just looking at us as a source of revenue. At the end of our visit Ton paid Castelsardo the ultimate complement of saying it was as pretty as any of the cities in the Cinque Terre which is her favorite spot in Italy.
We also wanted to visit Sassari which is the second biggest town in Sardinia. We arrived during the afternoon break, so even though it is a big town we had the streets pretty much to ourselves. It was almost spooky walking down a major commercial street near the city center with all of the businesses closed up and very few people in sight.
We spent about an hour walking around the center of Sassari, but it was pretty quiet. I think Sassari is a town that will grow on you if you stay there for a few days, but it didn’t make much of an impression on us at first glance.
