The island of Sardinia is located to the west of the peninsula of Italy. It is a surprisingly large island and a week is not enough time to fully sightsee the whole of it. In the space of a week, it was only possible for us to visit a little of the southern half of the island and that was with quite a busy itinerary.

We visited in mid-October and as you will see from the photos, the weather was gloriously sunny and a perfect 25C during the day. It was warm enough for swimming but not too annoyingly warm for a day of sightseeing. This is considered shoulder season. Therefore, there were other perks such as cheaper accommodation, inexpensive car rental and less crowds at the attractions.

Things to Do and See

If you have never considered visiting Sardinia, you might be unaware of its attractions.

• Sardinia has gorgeous beaches. (Some might even rival Australian beaches!)
• Sardinia has thousands of pre-historic Nuraghe which are stone structures built in the Nuragic Age, (1900 to 730BC). These are fascinating despite the fact that no one is entirely sure what they were built for.
• Sardinia also has more recent history which includes the Phoenicians and the Romans. There are therefore some fascinating historical sites to visit.
• Sardinia is very mountainous and rugged so there is some good hiking. (In fact you can be walking in snow and swimming at the beach in the same day!)
• The closeness of the mountains to the sea means there are a lot of stunning drives with spectacular mountain and coastal views. There are many avid motorcyclists riding some of these renowned routes due to the combination of good, albeit windy, roads and magnificent scenery.
• The Italian cuisine is an attraction in itself. It’s always lovely to eat top notch pizza and gelato! Not to mention relaxing alfresco with an aperitivo of Aperol Spritz.
• You can practice your Italian as everyone we had dealings with were warm and friendly.

Itinerary

Our 7 day itinerary for Southern Sardinia is as follows

• Day 1 – Explore Cagliari city
• Day 2 – Drive to Villasimius, enjoy the beaches at Villasimius (1hr driving, 65km)
• Day 3 – Drive to Nuoro via SS125, the famous and spectacular road, the Orientale Sarda, then sightsee Nuoro (3.5hrs driving, 200km)
• Day 4 – Drive to and explore Bosa, visit Parco Archeologico Naturalistico di Santa Cristina, drive to and explore Oristano. (2.5hrs driving, 172km)
• Day 5 – Explore Area archeologica di Tharros, drive south to Portoscuso via Buggeru and Porto Flavia. (3.75hrs driving, 173km)
• Day 6 – Explore Sant Antioco and Area Archeologica di Nora, Pula, drive along the beautiful southern coast between Porto di Teulada to Nora. (3 hrs driving, 147km)
• Day 7 – Fly home

The times and distances included are from Google Maps. When planning, note that in practice, it always took longer than Google Maps predicted to drive the route.

Accomodation

We chose a mix of different types of accommodations but in general, we found the pricing to be quite reasonable and the quality, decent enough for the price. Note that there is usually an Italian hotel tax of a few Euros per night. By law, accommodations are required to have sighted and record details of their guests’ ID. You will therefore have to present your passport, drivers licence or other ID at some point.

Cagliari
– fully self contained apartment with Only Rooms III
– extremely central location
– $71 AUD / £37GPB / €44 (price per couple per night)

Villasimius
– share of a fully self contained Airbnb for 6
– walking distance to the beach
– $81 AUD / £42GPB / €50 (price per couple per night)

Nuoro
– fully self contained apartment from Booking.com (Da Apollonio)
– beautifully and newly refurbished, very spacious
– $107 AUD / £55 GPB / €66 (price per couple per night)

Oristano
– Hotel Mistral 2 (Expedia)
– room with bathroom and free breakfast
– $101 AUD / £52 GPB / €63 (price per couple per night)

Portoscuso
– room with microwave and bathroom from Booking.com (Villa Red Melons)
– walking distance to the beach, relaxed host
– $106 AUD / £55 GPB / €66 (price per couple per night)

Elma
– room with shared bathroom from Booking.com
– 6 minutes drive from Cagliari airport
– $89 AUD / £46 GPB / €55 (price per couple per night)

Car Rental and Driving

There is a convenient and cheap train to and from Cagliari airport to the centre of Cagliari. It is possible to explore Cagliari on foot but to head further afield, a car is required. There are plenty of car rental companies that operate out of Cagliari airport.

When planning, it’s best not to plan too many hours of driving. It’s a big island and the island is rugged and mountainous. The driving therefore involves a lot of windy roads and switchbacks. Driving in this kind of terrain requires a lot of concentration. There were also plenty of vehicles and motorcyclists who are far too relaxed with the road rules for safety. When driving up the side of a mountain, it is terrifying to see another vehicle coming fast from around the corner and not staying within their lane. Sardinians seem to be OK with going quite a bit over the speed limit, and posted speed limits sometimes don’t seem well chosen for the road conditions. Some great roads have low limits and windy roads have high limits.

As with many other European cities, city driving usually involves cobblestones and very narrow laneways, with many of the local vehicles parked there showing scratches and dents where things got a little too close.

A small car will suffice in Sardinia and is much easier to manage in the conditions.

The price for renting cars varies wildly with the time of the year. In mid-october, shoulder season for tourists, the prices to hire a car is incredibly cheap. For 5 full days of car rental, it cost $121 AUD / £62 GBP / €75 in total. This was great value.

Be fully alert when renting a car in Sardinia. Reviews are filled with horror stories of car rental companies employing all manner of underhanded tactics to squeeze more money out of tourists. Unfortunately, this is becoming more common practice in many places around the world.

Whilst in Sardinia, we witnessed our car rental company be completely inflexible when a German tourist’s credit card would not scan. In the end, his options were to pay a whole lot more or cancel his rental contract and find a new car rental company and pay a whole lot more!

To protect yourself, read all the small print in detail, ensure you have all required documentation e.g. International Driver’s Permit, and check the car carefully before and after for damage. Take detail photos and videos of everything! Another option is to look into rental car excess coverage – sometimes available via your credit card, your home car insurance policy or can be purchased separately.

We also found the queue on a Saturday, 9am, at the car rental counter to be extremely long and moving desperately slowly. We had to wait in the queue for 2 hours before being given the car keys. Ensure there is some flexibility in your schedule in case this happens!

Eating out, Sardinian Cuisine and the Blue Zone

Italian is one of the world’s most popular and beloved cuisines. In addition to this, Sardinia is known for being a blue zone. It therefore has a population that live to a lot older than average. It is, for these reasons, that I was really looking forwards to some yummy pizza, pasta and gelato as well as to understand more about Sardinian cuisine and how it contributes to a longer lifespan.

Considering its blue zone status, I had hoped to see a lot of active older people, evidence of community, local agriculture or kitchen gardens, free grazing animals and a food culture that included a lot of oily fish, whole grains and olive oil.

Unfortunately, what I saw did not align exactly with my expectations. I didn’t see too many older people or anything significant in terms of community. To be honest, the place looked a bit rundown, poor and underpopulated. I suspect this is because the young people have moved to bigger cities for work, and also because Italy has a famously shrinking population. The population in Sardinia seemed generally poor and there is a lot of empty housing, which is sometimes in a state of disrepair. Perhaps it is not as bad as it looks. In some cultures, the priority for any housing expenditure is on the inside of the house vs the outside.

The Sardinian countryside is very rugged, dry and rocky, although it varies a lot depending on where you are on the island. Most of what we saw, did not look fertile. In rural areas there were some olive trees grown and some sheep in the field but generally, Sardinia is not extensively cultivated, and certainly not at great scale. I didn’t see any backyards with kitchen gardens.

In most restaurants, the table did come with olive oil to eat with the bread provided. The fish on the menu however was not necessarily oily fish and frequently served deep fried. There was a dominance of pizza restaurants. Perhaps 85% of restaurants are pizzerias which, while delicious, is not particularly healthy. Sardinian specialties in restaurants did not feature whole grains.

Shortly after returning from Sardinia, I read an article from the Guardian which basically said that living a long time comes down more to genes than any kind of healthy living. They also cast suspicion on the blue zone areas, pointing out that they were often in very poor areas. Many of these “living” centenarians had not been seen for a while. Basically, poor people might be motivated to hide the death of an older relative and continue collecting their pensions, thereby skewing the statistics.

There are a few features specific to restaurant eating in Italy. Firstly, there is a per person coperto charge. This can vary depending on the region in Italy. In Sardinia, we were mostly charged $2 – $2.50 euros per person. This charge is mandatory and covers the cutlery, napkins, tablecloth, glasses and bread basket. Tap water is not free. They would like you to purchase drinks but this was not enforced when we visited. Tipping is not expected. the quality of the free bread is not great, it’s usually a bit past it’s prime and doesn’t have the great taste and texture of a good French bread, for example.

The menu will follow the Italian meal structure. To start, a drink with nibbles called an aperitivo. This is followed by antipasto, a heavier starter such as cold cuts, cheese and marinated vegetables. Then primo which is the first course which is usually pasta, risotto or soup. Then secondo, which is the is the meat (or seafood) course. Sides or salad can be ordered to accompany. Then dessert, coffee and an alcoholic digestivo.

This is all very lovely if you have loads of time and lots of money but if you just want some dinner, you will find that if you order a plate of pasta, it will be quite a small portion. The expectation is that the dish is to be eaten within this multi-course meal structure. Primo and secondo dishes would cost about €10 upwards per dish at a reasonably priced, casual type restaurant. An aperol spritz costs €7 in most places.

More informal places like pizzerias do not follow this meal structure and a pizza per person will be plenty to fill you up! Pizzas in informal restaurants cost €10-15.

To save money eating out, “Too Good To Go” and “The Fork” can be used in Sardinia.

Who Should Visit Southern Sardinia

Sardinia is great place to visit to get some relaxing beach time and glorious sun. The pizza and gelato are delicious. The people are warm, friendly and laid-back. Plenty enough English is spoken for the average English speaking tourist to manage. The range of landscapes from rugged, rocky mountains to white sand, clear water beaches are truly stunning. There is some interesting history to discover and you can get away from the busyness of the rest of Europe’s tourist spots. Most of the beaches in the rest of Italy are privately operated in a corrupt fashion, so being able to walk on to an uncrowded public beach in Sardinia is a draw-card. Hikers will probably also love walking in the island’s rugged mountains.If you like these things, then absolutely, Sardinia is for you!

But…….Sardinia is not for me. It feels like the place is a little backward. There is accomodation without wifi, most restaurants don’t have their menus online and many of the towns need a bit of a facelift. There are other destinations with better sites, better food and is easier to get around. Mostly, I feel that Sardinia doesn’t live up to its potential as a tourist destination. For some, this makes Sardinia charming and old fashioned, for me, I feel sad. I really hate to see potential go to waste. (See my other blog post about Cuba!)

So when you look at my pretty photos of sun-drenched Sardinia, do consider what is outside the frame.