Category: Sardinia

On our next to last day on Sardinia we planned a short trip down the coast from Alghero to Bosa. The drive along the coastal cliffs is touted to be one of the most spectacular on Sardinia so we were looking forward to it.

Part of the reason I had rented the car was so that we could do this trip. When I looked at the map the road looked very intimidating and I expected it to be narrow. While it was winding and hilly, it would have been very doable in François. We have found driving in Sardinia to be very easy. The roads are generally wide in the country, the towns have pretty well marked and wide thoroughfares so you can get thru them easily. There is a freeway that runs north to south that is modern and makes long distance drives quick and easy, and it is not tolled. The main roads are not that busy and Sardinians are much more laid back than the rest of Italy. I would recommend Sardinia as a good place to get your feet wet on driving in Europe.

When we arrived in Bosa it immediately struck me as looking like a very small version of Porto in Portugal. The town started at the river and immediately began climbing the steep hills on either side of the river. It is a town that you are either walking up hill or down hill. Also, like Porto, the river used to be the main port for the town as it is only a mile or so in land from the ocean, and was safer in the past than the harbor by the coast.

Ton had a little debate with herself about whether we should climb up to the old castle on top of the town. She went back and forth with herself for about 5 minutes while I stayed out of the argument. She finally decided to go when she realized that the restaurant she wanted to eat in didn’t open for another hour.

Ton had a restaurant in mind for the day, it had been threatening rain all morning and a cloud was approaching town so we headed down to the restaurant. We arrived just as they opened and were the first customers. Right after we sat the rain rolled in, but only lasted about 10 minutes. The meal was fantastic, we have not had a bad meal on Sardinia, but this one was the best. Ton had a hearty seafood soup with saffron that gave it a curry like look. I had a Sardinian Lasagna, made from local cheese and vegetables with a cream and pesto sauce. We paired it with a local white wine made from Vermintino grapes which are only grown here, Corsica and Provence in small numbers. The wine was superb, after the meal we went out and bought a couple more bottles of Vermintino from the region. Also, like Porto, Bosa has its own locally produced sweet wine. After the meal Ton tried a glass of Malvasia di Bosa, and while she is not a big sweet wine fan she liked this one quite a bit.

With lunch done we headed back to Alghero to stock up on some of favorite Italian staples in Lidl. I wanted some Red Orange juice which you can only get in Italy, and Ton wanted to add some more pasta to the pantry.

We were very interested in visiting Olbia as it is in one of the five blue zones in the world. A blue zone is a region that has a very high concentration of people who have lived to 100 years with minimal amount of health problems. We had been in another blue zone without realizing it when we lived in Okinawa. We were surprised to learn that a third one was in Loma Linda California where a friend of ours lived when we were in California.

When we pulled into Olbia, which is a pretty town we saw a large cruise ship. So despite our best efforts to find a centenarian the only old people we saw were Americans and Northern Europeans.

We enjoyed walking around Olbia, but the crowd from the cruise ship put us off a little. Fortunately we quickly learned that if we ventured just off the main shopping street we had the place pretty much to ourselves.

We stopped and had a coffee on the main street, but quickly decided that we were not going to learn why people from this area have such healthy lives and moved on.

Close to Olbia is the Coasta Smeralda which is one of the most high end vacation spots in the world. It was largely untouched until the 1950’s when Prince Aga Khan cruised by on his yacht and decided to develop it as an eco friendly resort.

The center of the coast is Porto Cervo, so we headed there to check on the rich and famous. Besides having housing for 460 permanent residents it has hotel rooms that can handle thousands including one of the most expensive hotels in the world. So we expected a bustling place with lots of rich people doing whatever rich people do on a sunny October day in Sardinia.

When we arrived instead of finding the Clooneys and Obamas and their friends lounging about as we had been lead to believe, we found a very quiet place with a few other tourists and many decidedly bored looking shop keepers tending to empty Cartier, Rolex, and Gucci stores.

When we first arrived Ton took a quick look around and said it looks like Sedona on steroids. The buildings were all very stylish but felt contrived and sterile to us.

Ton mentioned a church in town that people said felt like it was built by Gaudi. He is an architect that built the famous modernist Cathedral in Barcelona that we both enjoyed. So we headed up the hill to find it.

It was a good climb and we were beginning to wonder if it was going to be worth it, when I spotted a short cut through the grounds of another high end hotel that saved us a lot of climbing and walking. We must have looked richer than we thought because no security descended on us when we cut through the hotel to the church.

When we reached the church I liked it. The lack of angles and the use of natural rocks as pillars were very Gaudi like and I thought it worked. As I was admiring it, Ton came by and said it looked like something Fred Flintstone would build. So I guess she was not as impressed.

At the end of the day we didn’t find any 100 year olds in Olbia, or any rich and famous people in Porto Cervo, but we did enjoy ourselves. We also had a nice lobster spaghetti dish at a roadside diner in the mountains above Porto Cervo so we were a happy couple on our drive back to François for the night.

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.

We were looking forward to our visit to Alghero. Our friends who had visited here really liked it, and the guide books raved about its mixture of Catalan and Italian culture. It is referred to as little Barcelona by some of the local inhabitants. Since we both enjoyed our visit to Barcelona immensely, and we love Italy we were thinking that we were in for a real treat.

For the very first time on this trip we were faced with the prospect of rain. So instead of debating how many windows and vents to leave open to try to keep François cool, we buttoned everything up when we left for town.

Alghero was conquered by the Catalans around 1340 and remained under their rule until 1700 when it was ceded to Spain. In the early 1800’s it was ceded to the House of Savoy in Italy and has been part of Italy since. It has retained its Catalan roots as 28% of the local population speaks a dialect of Catalan as well as Italian.

It is a pretty town, but as much as I tried I couldn’t see the Spanish/Catalan influence. Ton said I was being too harsh, but that’s not what I mean, Alghero is a beautiful Mediterranean city, but I was expecting it to feel different than the many beautiful Mediterranean cities we have visited over the last two years and it didn’t, it felt Italian to me.

Ton thought the city was really nice, and she took the lead in exploring it. She enjoyed window shopping and looking at the red coral jewelry that comes from this area. The town is very upscale with a lot of high end European brands lining the main street. It reminded me a bit of Taormina in Sicily which also had the same upscale feel to the shopping.

We walked around for a couple of hours, and while we saw a couple of Spanish restaurants, we ended up with a seafood pizza which was really good. We finished the day by walking the battlements of the fort covering the harbor. They had an interesting displays of the types of weapons that would have defended the walls from catapults to trebuchets to cannon. On a different day with a different set of expectations I think Alghero would have been a high light for me, but not today.

We headed back a little early as we had to make some decisions about our next couple of weeks. As we get closer to November, more and more of the campgrounds are closing down so the logistics of moving around is getting a little more complicated. I spent the next few hours looking at our options for camping, ferry schedules, hotels, and rent a cars to try to plan our next 8 to 10 days. So our first decision was to rent a car from the airport and base out of our very expensive campground for the next four days to explore northern Sardinia. The second is that we are going to take a ferry Friday for Corsica because of limited ferry options that I did not anticipate. It turns out the ferry I had planned to take which runs on a frequent schedule does not take motorhomes and we are limited to a single ferry that runs every three days, so our time in Italy is going to come to an end very soon. Corsica is going to be complicated also, but I will save that for later.

One of the most important cultural symbols of Sardinia are the Nuraghes. These are bullet shaped stone buildings built without mortar. There are many of them in Sardinia. Today we chose to visit one of the most prominent the Su Nuraxi di Barumini.

It was a quick hop from Vilasimius to Barumini. The roads in Sardinia are generally excellent and not crowded. We are enjoying driving here. The only way to visit the site is with a guided tour, which worked out well as we bought our tickets and had time for lunch.

The site of the Nuraghe was excavated in the 1950’s. The Nuraghe itself was visible, but the village surrounding it had been covered over time. It is believed the Nuraghe was inhabited between 1300 and 600 BC when the Carthaginians conquered Sardinia. Some Nuraghe are believed to go back as long as 1900 BC.

The main tower of the Nuraghe at Barumini was approximately 60 feet high. Nuraghe are built without mortar so a building of this height is quite an accomplishment. It is partially collapsed but still quite impressive.

After the initial tower was constructed 4 additional smaller towers were added to the site. The consensus is that the site was a fort, and the village which held approximately 1000 inhabitants was built after the fort.

The inner courtyard has entrance to all five towers and a well that still supplies water today. One of the towers appears to be for food storage, one tower is believed to be the main room for the local VIP, and the rest of the towers were for the garrison.

The site was very impressive. We took the English tour, though we were the only day to day English speakers in our group of about 20. The majority were German or Swiss German speakers, with a Dutch and Ukrainian couple.

After we finished our tour of the Nuraghe it was only 2pm. Initially we planned to stay in a nearby village which has a parking lot where you can buy electricity 6 hours at a time. But as I said earlier the roads in Sardinia are very good and uncrowded so we decided to go ahead and drive the 200 kilometers to our next destination for the trip.

Our initial plan was to use Alghero as our base to explore the north part of Sardinia. But when we checked in we choked on the price. This is the second most expensive campground we have ever stayed in in Europe. So we are rethinking our plans.

We had a very quiet night at our agritourismo in the hills above the coast. It even cooled down enough that for the first time on the trip we had to use our comforter. It is really weird but the weather is still very hot. During the days the temperatures are still getting up to the mid-80’s and there is very little wind. We haven’t had any real breeze in over a week. So by the evening the temperature in François is in the low 80’s which is just a little uncomfortable.

The debate in the morning was whether to move down to the coast, or just drive down for the day and return to the agritourismo for the evening. We were inclined to the later, because the reported costs for the ocean front campgrounds were quite a bit more than our agritourismo. The problem was that there was no good place to park François that didn’t involve hiking a couple of kilometers to the waterfront. And as I mentioned it is hot, so we ultimately decided to bite the bullet and go to a big campground near the sea.

It was a short drive down to the coast, so we were at our new home within 30 minutes. Fortunately the cost, while high was not quite as outrageous as we had feared. After checking in and getting François set up we decided to take a short hike out to a fort nearby.

We decided to walk over to an old fort. It was a fairly short walk with a couple of climbs. But by the time we got there I had worked up a good sweat and even Ton was wiping away some sweat.

We looked around for a bit, but by now it was the heat of the day, so we decided to head back to François for a rest. We both settled in for the afternoon and dodged the heat by having a nap, at least I did.

After dinner we decided to head down to the beach for sunset. Ton saw a road heading in a little different direction than we had taken this afternoon and suggested we see where it led us. It led us to a really beautiful and long beach which was perfect for watching the sunset.

Ton was in her element as the combination of the sea, the sunset, and about 40 sailboats offshore gave her a lot of directions to point her camera. While she took off snapping pictures I settled down on the rock and enjoyed people watching and watching the sailboats as they all made for the marina we had walked by this afternoon.

Ton finally settled down for a few minutes to relax and sip on her wine. But as the sun approached the horizon she was back in photography mode.

In the end the sunset was gloriously red and vibrant. All of the boats trying to get into port added to the beauty.

After sunset we headed back to François for the night. Though I am going to be tempted to head over to the bar a little later to see if the USA v Germany soccer game is on.

Today was a lot of driving. We left Ogosoro about 9:30 and drove back to Cagliari to pick up François. We double checked the three minor repairs we had done to him, and then were quickly back on the road again.

Initially we planned to head to a posh seaside campsite, but luckily when I looked at the reviews I saw on the latest review that they got the last site and the place was fully booked until October 15. I reached out to them and they did confirm that there was no room in the inn. I was now a little worried as we usually do not bother booking campsites in October. So I contacted an Agritourismo near the coast, but a little inland. They got back to me quickly and said they could accommodate us.

We arrived early and were the only camper on site. The place looked new so we had a nice relaxing afternoon. Later in the day we went out into the fields and had a look around. They had tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. They were all a little past their prime, but the tomatoes still looked eatable. We asked if we could pick some and they said of course, they are just rotting anyway.

Ton had been reading up on mirto today while I was driving. We had tasted some mirto liquore on our first stop and liked it. It is an aromatic plant that the Sardinians use for seasoning, tea, and of course to produce liquore. Ton often reads me articles about interesting facets of a regions culture or cuisine when I am driving. So we were both thrilled to find the plant in the fields next to our stop tonight.

When we went down to breakfast Peppina the host at our B&B asked what our plans were for the day, we both looked at each other, then looked at her and shrugged. She liked that, she said she liked guests who knew how to relax.

We went back up to the room and decided to take another drive thru the countryside to a beach town called Cala Gonone. It was about 10 kilometers past yesterdays destination of Dorgali and about 40 kilometers from Orgosolo. We largely retraced our drive from yesterday, but we enjoyed the drive yesterday, and we enjoyed it again today. We stopped to take a look at the entrance to the Gola Su Grouppu which is a 1300 foot deep gorge and is quite beautiful.

As we were going around Dorgali we came to a hilltop view point that had great views back to the valley we had just driven thru. Ton asked me to stop because she wanted to get some pictures. It was a spectacular view, in a place with spectacular views.

The drop from Dorgali to the coast at Cala Gonone was steep and curvy, and much more fun in the Panda, though we passed several motorhomes coming up the hill from the town. There are two campgrounds in town and they both looked pretty busy.

We walked along the beachfront of Cala Gonone for an hour or so taking in the sites. It is a picturesque coast line, but it would have required signing up for a day cruise to really see it, and neither of us were interested in spending several hours on a boat. Ultimately we decided to head back to Orgosolo for lunch and a siesta.

We are starting to adapt to the Italian meal schedule, which is a lightish breakfast, a huge lunch, and a late/light dinner. After siesta we decided to walk to the grocery near the B&B to get some salami to go with the cheese we had bought a couple of days ago for our dinner.

For a small town the amount of traffic passing thru town at 7 pm is really impressive. The rest of the day traffic is pretty light, but at 7pm rush hour kicks in. Since pedestrians and cars share the road the volume of traffic affects the speed you walk at. We have been trying to figure out where all of the cars are coming from and where they are going as we are basically on a mountain top 20 kilometers from the next town. The population of the town is only around 4000, but at 7 pm a large number of them are driving around.

At the grocery Ton decided to stock up on salami from this area as it is quite delicious. We picked out 2 that looked good to us and ordered 100 grams of each one. Ton wanted one more so I asked the girl slicing the salami to recommend one more, she pointed to the one she had just finished cutting for us and said this is the best so we ordered 100 more grams of that one.

Walking back Ton found several more murals she really liked and kept stopping to take more pictures when she wasn’t dodging rush hour traffic. We have enjoyed our stay in Orgosolo.

Today we explored the mountain valley around Ogosoro. We didn’t have a set plan except to visit the local costume museum in the regional capitol of Nuoro.

We arrived at the museum and the ticket seller asked if I was over 65 I said yes and she nodded, she then pointed at Ton and asked if she was over 65, I said yes, and in a skeptical tone, she asked again over 65?, I said yes again, she then asked a third time and I said yes and told her Tons age. She then gave us both the senior rate. I don’t know if I should be insulted, but Ton was also annoyed instead of flattered not because the lady did not believe she was a senior, but because I told the ticket taker her age.

The museum had a nice explanation of the local history here in the most sparsely settled part of Sardinia. While Sardinia has had many rulers over its history, many of the rulers didn’t make much of an effort to assert much control over this region due to its inaccessibility and small population. So the people of this region are known for their strong sense of independence to this day.

The museum was very well done, and the exhibits were fun, but it was small and we were thru it pretty quickly. We had driven thru a lot of the city to get here, and while Nuoro was the center of government for the area and the largest city we did not see anything else that we were particularly interested in, so we decided to move on.

We headed to Dorgali because it is the one of the centers for Cannonau wine which is the dominant grape on Sardinia. There is some debate about whether the grape is native to Sardinia or was brought here when the Aragonese from Spain controlled the island, it is very similar to the Grenache in Aragon. Prior to our wine search we had another very good lunch in Dorgali which maintains Sardinias 100% record for good meals.

After lunch we set out for a winery Ton had found on line. When we arrived at the winery after a lovely drive through the Sardinian countryside we missed the turn into the tasting area, and came across a worker cleaning winery equipment. He flagged us down pointed us in the right direction, and then met us at the door to pour us wine.

The wine was excellent, and thanks to google translate we were able to enjoy conversing with the owner. We have been using a lot of google translate on this trip, particularly in Sardinia. The hostess of the bed and breakfast doesn’t speak English or German, so this morning at breakfast some German guests and us enjoyed speaking to her, but it was done using Google.

By the time we finished our tasting it was time to head back to Ogosoro. Today I really enjoyed driving around in the mountain valleys in our little Panda. The traffic was very light, the countryside with the wide valley framed by high mountains was beautiful, and the roads were very good.

We returned for another roof top dining experience. I went down to the local market, and managed to order 100 grams of salami in Italian, though my bluff was called when the lady behind the counter hit me with a blast of Italian which required googles intervention to sort out. It turns out she was asking if I wanted a bag to put the meat in.

Tonight we are staying in a bed and breakfast in Orgosolo. We picked Orgosolo because our friends Ovi and Cory recommended it for visiting central Sardinia.

The drive over was much quicker than I expected as all but the last 20 kilometers was on a good freeway. The last 20 kilometers were on narrow mountain roads where I appreciated being in our little Fiat car, instead of our big Fiat camper. The roads in the town were really narrow, but I was able to zip around relatively easily in the Panda, which is the basic economy car of Italy.

Orgosoro is high in the mountains of Sardinia and is historically famous for being an area that is difficult to rule. There are many tales of rebellions, vendettas, feud’s, and just plain old thievery. One of the recent tales of a Robin Hood character was a guy from the 1930’s who stole from the rich and took care of the poor sometime. He was eventually caught and sentenced to prison for murder. After his release he returned to Orgosolo and retired from stealing and began to work as a tour guide. They even made a movie about his life.

The other thing that Orgosolo is famous for is murals. In the 1970’s an art teacher moved here from Northern Italy. He got the idea of having his students paint murals on the buildings in the center of the town to help re-vitalize the city.

He started them off by painting a mural in support of the local shepherds who were trying to prevent the Italian army from opening a military training area in the mountains around town. He taught that all murals must include art and words. So most of the murals have political or social themes integrated into them.

There are hundreds of murals throughout the town, done in different styles from primitive, to cubist, to highly realistic. It was fun to walk up and down the streets taking in all of the different murals.

This region has long been a stronghold of communism, the founder of the Italian Communist party was born here, and the teacher who began the mural project was a communist. So a lot of the murals reflect that history.

Tons favorite murals were a series of paintings of more portly ladies on a side street. In this case there were no words to go with the pictures, just the ladies.

After walking for a while we were ready for a lunch and saw an interesting restaurant. We walked into the courtyard and there was a bell hanging there that said in Italian and English to ring the bell for service. We rang the bell and a young man stuck his head out of a third floor window and asked how many. I told him two and he said come on up. The restaurant was beautiful and the food was really excellent and interesting. So far Sardinia is 100% on good meals.

We settled into the bed and breakfast for the evening. We decided to eat in tonight so we went to the local grocery store and picked up some ham, cheese and cheap wine and ate it from the roof of the B&B with a French couple from Brittany.

Tonight we are set up in the parking area of the RV dealer in Cagliari. We had a couple of minor issues that have cropped up on François and the on line reviews of Dott Camper were very good, and they offered both rental cars and storage so it was the perfect fit for our plans.

The spine of Sardinia is very mountainous, so we made the decision to rent a car for a few days while we explored the mountains as it will be a lot easier in a small car, than in François. We are going to use a B&B in the mountains on our trip as a base and to get our mid- trip hotel break in. So being able to rent the car where we will store François killed 2 birds with one stone.

We have two minor issues with François, one was an annoyance rather than a problem, and the other one could become a problem if not fixed pretty quickly. When I showed the technician the problem he looked at it for a few minutes and then went to get the manager (who turned out to be the technicians father), they had a discussion in Italian for a couple of minutes, before the father looked at me and said in English we can fix it, and then took the offending part off and to the shop. About 20 minutes later the technician came back out and showed me their solution. It was simple and ingenious and solved the problem. The annoyance which is part of the bed frame they said also was no problem, but since we were leaving François with them they would wait until we were gone to work on it.

While the technician was working on François I went inside to have the office manager (the managers mother) fill out the rental car contract. She was a charming lady with limited English but was curious about our travels in Europe. When we went out to look at the car it had a couple of minor paint chips that I pointed out. She told me to take a video of them and send them to her. I couldn’t get a good internet connection so after several attempts to send her the video she looked at me and said I saw it, you saw it we are ok. I agreed and we moved on. Later the technicians grandfather came by and did a quality check of the grandsons work on the window frame. It is a real family business. Ton was so impressed that she kept asking me is there anything else we need to get fixed? But I couldn’t come up with anything.

Once we had the rental car we headed into town to take a look around. We ended up parking in a lot right next to the ferry dock we landed at last night. The climb up to the cathedral was quite steep, but when we got to the top we were rewarded with some nice views.

The cathedral was integrated into the old castle for the town. We visited a very spacious redoubt that had a good field of fire back towards the port area. (Sorry, the old infantryman comes out sometime.) In the past I imagine there would have been many cannons on the platform, but today it was full of tourists.

We didn’t spend too much time at the cathedral, but the architecture was very different than Sicily. It was less ornate, I mentioned earlier that the Rococo style didn’t appeal to me as it seemed too busy. So when faced with older more traditional architecture I was thinking where are all of the waves and intricate stone work. So maybe experiencing Rococo in person in Sicily gave me a better appreciation for it.

The building was still impressive, and Ton really liked the artwork above the three entrance doors to the Cathedral. We didn’t enter because there was a big tour group at the entrance.

We hadn’t had a proper meal in a couple of days so we had our first Sardinian meal. We had a charcuterie plate as an appetizer that came with three meats and three cheeses and would have made a meal in itself. For our main course we had two types of stew typical of Sardinia. The food here appears to be heartier than in Sicily. This is sheep country as Ton informed me that there are two sheep on the island for every person. It’s not quite up to New Zealand for sheep to people ratio, but it is still pretty good.

At the end of the meal the waiter asked if we wanted some limoncello or mirto on the house. Ton perked up and said mirto please. It is a flower based liqueur unique to Sardinia and Corsica. The drink is made from the berries of the myrtle plant. It was very interesting and different than anything I have had before because it berry based instead of fruit based. It was a nice introduction to Sardinia.

We have changed islands and are now in Sardinia. We had an early ferry departure and for the first time on this trip set an alarm. But because we live an alarm free life, we both tossed and turned all night afraid we would miss it. I ended up waking up at 5:30 and Ton a few minutes later so we went ahead and packed up François and headed out for the Ferry terminal.

Driving in an Italian city at 6:30 am on a Sunday is a little surreal. The usually full and chaotic streets are empty. This came in handy as Greta was having a particularly bad day. The map set for the center of Palermo is in need of an update, because she kept trying to send us down dead end streets, and twice when I turned on main 2 way traffic avenues, instead of following her down an ally, she shouted at me that I was going the wrong way on a one way street. Fortunately having the streets to ourselves I was able to stop and sort it out. Just as I was about to fire her and break out google maps Ton saw a sign for the port and we just followed the signs the old fashioned way to the ferry.

The Italians board ferries in a very boring manner. You are funneled into an entrance way where someone looks at your ticket and directs you into a line of vehicles where you wait until someone from the crew tells you to drive on board. Not nearly as entertaining as the Greeks, but much more efficient.

Our ferry departed pretty much on time at 9 am and arrived pretty much on time at 9 pm. The only issue was for some reason one of the crew knocked on the door at 7 pm and told us we had 10 minutes to leave the room. We hastily packed thinking we were arriving early, but no, we just sat in the lounge with the rest of the guests and watched the local soccer team Cagliari lose to Rome.

Tonight is our first wild camping night of the trip, as we are parked up in a dirt lot across from a RV dealer/Sosta where we are going to have some minor repairs done to François and use as our base for exploring central Sardinia.