Monday, May 18, 2015
Ciao, from Sardinia!
Yes, we are actually here! (As I
recall, Sardinia was what started this entire trip quite a long time ago!) So…I was in bed by 10 p.m. last night, but
3:50 a.m. did come rather quickly, I have to admit. At any rate, up and out of the hotel by about
4:10 a.m. and it was a lovely and cool quick walk to the airport; no problems
at all! The counters weren’t marked yet,
as Ryan Air checks in by location by counter – you going to London/Stansted?
Counter 15; you going to Palermo? Counter 12.
We did take the opportunity of no one at the counters to weigh all the
luggage, and for what feels like a first for our travel on Ryan Air, our
baggage was absolutely fine, as far as weight!
R was a bit worried about his roll-aboard being “street legal” but it
fit quite perfectly into their little “guideline” example, so no need to check
it.
Ryan Air’s policy is that they start check in exactly 2
hours prior to flight time. Of course,
it seemed like all of their flights were taking off within 10-20 minutes of
each other; lots of mad confusion and then I’m sure the airport gets to rest
for several hours. At any rate, we were
checked in and through security very, very quickly, and headed to the boarding
area to wait for the plane. As it turns
out, it seems like multiple Ryan Air planes must all overnight at Pisa, as
there must have been 6 or 8 planes on the tarmac, all waiting for
customers. Finally, a bus pulled up and
they announced Priority Boarding. (This
comes at a price of $10/person, and anything that gets us on the plane
faster…) So, I was, of course, the first
one through the gate, and also the first one (surprise!) onto the plane. We had reserved seats 1A and 1C, and there
was plenty of overhead bin space right above our seats that we weren’t really
expecting, so that was nice! Our plane
left right on time, but rather than taking the expected 1 hr. 20 minutes to get
to Cagliari, we were there in something like 45 minutes! Wow!
We landed, deplaned, and we had actually walked (a fairly long walk, but
certainly nothing “Heathrow-like!”) to the baggage area, and within literally
less than 2 minutes, the belt started receiving luggage! Talk about speedy! Very impressive! Our bags came in just a few minutes, and then
we were heading out of the terminal and looking for our Sixt rental-car
counter. Time approximately 8:05 a.m.
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| And waiting... |
So…Sixt…the same company where the guy on Friday refused to
take our credit card because the numbers weren’t raised! Well, first off – every other rental car
counter was personed and moving – except Sixt!
?!? There was a nice French
couple from Marsaille who were also waiting … and we waited, and we
waited…finally about 8:45 a.m. this guy comes ambling in…obviously nothing in a
hurry here! First couple finished in
about 15 minutes, and then it was our turn…and the credit card without raised
numbers. The guy was actually very
nice. He went next door to Avis, where
he said the equipment was “newer” and asked if they had seen a card like ours –
it has the chip in it, but the account number, not raised in any way, is all
written on the back of the card, along with the CCV or whatever one calls
it. It’s a Capital One Venture card, so
I know there are plenty of them around.
Anyway, for some reason, this guy was actually able to make the card
“work” and in spite of our friend in Pisa’s claim the “the company” “insisted”
on raised numbers, voila! Apparently this Sixt place didn’t need them
after all! Who knew?! The other piece of information was that the
car actually had all of 5 km on it – so two brand new, first rental cars in
Italy! How fun is that?! It does, however, have a funny kind of “key”
– a slot where you slide the key into, and then a start/stop button. A bit like a Prius, but rather advanced for
the two of us!
Finally out into the car and on the way about 9:30 a.m. We were able to follow the signage to “Pula”
which is a small town about 25 km south of Cagliari (their biggest city) and
our “Villa Primavera” apartment for the next three nights. Found it without any problem and owner, Tina,
was waiting for us. And we only have one
word for our apartment – WOW!
Turns out that the Villa has four living areas.
One is home to Tina and her father – Tina’s
late Mom was English, her Dad is Sardinian, and she was raised in England but
now lives here.
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Back yard (chickens next door!)
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Kitchen/Living/Dining room
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Our bedroom
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There is one additional
two bedroom apartment (our place) and then two other apartments that each have
one bedroom.
I picked this one because (1)
it was on the second story, and (2) it’s always nice to have room to spread
out.
And this place is really
lovely!
You walk up the stairs to our
door, and enter into a spacious kitchen/dining/living room area.
Cable TV, nice fridge and beautiful table set
with tablecloth.
There is one smaller bedroom
with twin beds (which we’re using as a dressing room, as I got SO tired of not
being able to unpack our suitcases in Lucca, which barely had any flat surfaces
on which to put things!)
Then there is a
large bathroom with shower and finally the master bedroom, with lovely queen
size bed – and lots of closets and windows everywhere!
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Second bedroom
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View of front of the house from our window
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View out our living room window!
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Even though it is really hot out, we have
windows on three sides of the apartment (which actually are fitted with SCREENS
to keep out mosquitoes!!) and there is a lovely breeze!
The place is air conditioned, but honestly,
we don’t think we need it at all at the moment.
So…we took a few minutes to “settle in” – unpacked cases,
put things away, and then headed out and towards our first site of the day, a
few miles south of us, at Nora. Found
the place with no problem. Parked the
car (and there was a parking attendant to help!) and headed to the zona
archeologico. As it turns out, the site
of Nora occupies the point of a small
peninsula, with truly amazing beaches all around – and even people in the water
(which I think would be really cold, but will have to stick a toe in
somewhere!) The site itself was first
founded by the Phoenicians around about the 9th century B.C. It was taken over by Carthage from the 6th
century B.C. and then taken by the Romans in 238 BC. The really unfortunate thing is that the
Romans tended to build over everything that got in their way, so there isn’t
too much remaining of the Phoenician days.
Right now, there are four different Italian universities all working on
excavating various parts of the site – students and faculty from Padua, Venice,
Cagliari and Pisa, and one of the groups has actually decided to go under some
of the Roman structures, and is finding some interesting things.
We arrived at 11:55 a.m. and as it turns out, were able to
join the 12 o’clock tour, which was given in English by a real sweetie named
Claudia – who speaks Italian, Sardinian and English at least! (Unfortunately, there is no “wandering”
around the site unattended, but that was fine, as the group was small, and
Claudia was very interesting.) We saw
some lovely Roman mosaics, as well as the remains of a small theatre, several
large public baths, and a very impressive Roman house. The Roman roads were, of course, flat as a
pancake in all directions. All in all, a
really lovely first site on Sardinia!
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Beautiful Nora Bay
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Spanish Watch Tower over the bay
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Site of Nora
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R and I are really blown away with how beautiful at least
the southern part of Sardinia is. In the
area we’re staying, people have the most beautiful houses, and, unlike in many
Italian cities, the upkeep is wonderful; fresh paint, clean windows, etc. We like Sardinia very, very much.
As it was now moving past lunch time, we decided to find the
local supermarket so that we could stock up on things like water, juice, cheese
and meats to take care of breakfast – and even today’s lunch!
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More mosaics
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Excavation below Roman street to Phoenician times!
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Baby seagull waiting to take off!
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| Part of the largest public bath complex |
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Ever more mosaics!
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| Lovely theatre |
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| One can never have enough poppies... |
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Beautiful mosaic floor (Roman)
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We found a very nice Conad store which met
all of our needs, so headed back the 2 km or so to Villa San Pietro (the name
of our small town) to put things away and have lunch.
So…four types of cheese and three different
cold cuts later, we had finished lunch and put things away.
And, we’ve decided that since our day did begin at 3:50 a.m.
this morning, that we would indulge ourselves and take naps! Up now, and I’m blogging so that I can post
earlier than yesterday! We’re headed out
again soon to Chia, which is a beach which apparently is on somebody’s top 10
beaches of the world list (although it’s not on Tripadvisor). Just thought it would be fun to see – so,
more later!
Much love,
m
xxx
Boy, we are really keeping late nights, aren’t we? We took a really beautiful drive this
evening, and I’ve got lots of pictures, including our wonderful dinner in
Pula. But, in view of the time, I will
post all that tomorrow! More then!
m
xxx
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