Costa Smeralda

May 28th

View from our Hotel in Palau

This morning we planned on visiting the famous Costa Smeraldo, we just didn’t know how we were going to see it. So we started out driving to Porto Cervo, which was a very rich town (like Beverly hills), with immaculately kept streets and much newer buildings than the rest of Italy, and a beautiful harbor filled with massive yachts and an exclusive yacht club. We quickly determined we were in an area we could not afford, snapped some pictures and moved on.

We ended up in Capriciolli near the Cala di Volpe. We were driving down the main road into Capriciolli and saw a small sign that said boat rental pointing down a small dirt road in some bushes, so we chanced it and turned down. Where we discovered a beautiful shallow cove filled with small boats and a tent advertising rentals. We ended up renting a small inflatable boat for half a day for 100euro, it was very reasonable since it was low season. So we loaded up, and spent the next four hours exploring the Costa Smeralda by boat. The beauty of the water and coast and beaches is unexplainable, you just have to look at the pictures.

After the boat ride is where the day’s adventure really began. We ate snacks (pistachios, quadratini, and dried bread and jam) on the boat, so we were not immediately hungry for lunch, so we kept driving (big mistake). The only time Richard and I fight are when we are hungary, hot, or giving directions, or any combination of the aforementioned scenarios. So finally we decided to stop for Pizza, but you can’t get pizza in Sardenga on a Thursday (both pizzerias that we stopped at in some tiny town were closed), so we kept driving. We ended up taking several detours through tiny towns looking for food, getting in a huge fight, and finally eating a subpar pannini, chips, and cardboard icecream at a bar in Berchidda (still better than yesterday’s lunch).

Finally, with full bellies but still recovering from the fight, we tried to leave Berchidda and a Police officer refused our entry to the highway… Now what? Crystal decided that it would be best to get on the road anyway, so we illegally headed up an onramp. Once driving the cars on the other side of the road started flashing their headlights at us, we weren’t sure what was going on, and proceeded with caution until finding Sardegna’s largest traffic jam. So we turned around and headed for the detour (the same place we were 20 minutes earlier), and headed for Sassari (Sardegna’s second largest city), which we bypassed and headed to Argentiera, where we planned on staying the night.
Richard in front of Argentiera's mine

I had read about Argentiera being an old mining town, and it having this old mine right on the beach, yadda yadda very picturesque….Would have been great for a day at the beach, unfortunately as a place to stay the night for a tourist in the off season it was a GHOST Town. So we were getting hungry and didn’t want a repeat of this afternoon, so we decided to head back to Stintino where we knew a hotel and had already scoped out all the restaurants. So we basically ended up where we began, with lots of adventures and driving in between. We ended our day with a great meal at a marina front restaurant. We sampled some local cheeses, I had Zuppetta di Cozze (mussel soup), and Rich enjoyed the linguine con vongole, followed by veal Milanese and salad, and another trip to the Gellateria.

Our Sardegna Cheeses