Thinking Allowed: Italian Islands: Part 2

Going from Sicily to Sardinia, though both are part of the same country and both large Mediterranean islands (first and second largest in the Mediterranean), felt like a big shift. Where Palermo was all bustle and chaos amid crumbling buildings and astounding old churches, Cagliari is quiet and tidy and goes to bed at night. Aside from aisles of pasta and passata in the grocery stores and the singsong Italian, we felt more like we'd arrived in France or Spain. Which makes sense! We are much closer to Corsica than Italy, and Sardinia was ruled by both the Spanish and the French at some point. Even now, the island maintains some legal autonomy from the rest of Italy. Our first day in town saw us hiking on a headland overlooking the vast Poetta beach and coastline. Jakob professed his love for the island on that headland - "I could live here." We aren't moving to Sardinia, but we are getting a very good idea of Jakob's 'type' (previous places he said this included Fethiye and Las Palmas)- quiet, coastal, semi-arid, with mountains. Curiously, a bit like where I am from...

It is cooler in Sardinia than we expected but that didn't stop us from spending time at the beach. The local beach is long and beautiful and windy, yet protected enough to make it the ideal playground for water sports. We liked to watch the windsurfers, wingsurfers, sailboaters, and long distance swimmers play. Nestled between two headlands is another sandy protected beach that was also a favorite. Cagliari is a cute town that was great fun to explore. There is an older town up on a hill, a marina, a sleepy Christmas market, a large market selling more types of parmesan and pecorino (produced locally) than we could imagine, great transportation, and old ruins when you least expect it, reminding you that Sardinia, though sleepier now, was historically a major player. The girls enjoyed getting to boulder at the outdoor climbing gym where the climbs are literally on the walls of the old city. Sophia was welcomed enthusiastically by a local gym and has been content to have a couple of weeks of training.

We daytripped to a two thousand year old pre-Roman/Roman town chock full of mosaic floors. The kids had moaned when I mentioned another ruin but all agreed that it was beautiful and amazing and wouldn't it be great to live nestled on that beautiful beach. People did, too, for 800 years before the excessive looting of pirates forced the settlers to forsake beauty for safety. We did another day trip to a small inland town called San Sperate, where a few artists in the late sixties got tired of being excluded from the fun of their generation and took their art to the streets. A smiling older man, attracted to our gaggle of girls, chatted us up at the cafe - turns out he had painted all the murals in the square we were in and was all too happy to give us a private verbal tour of the meaning of art, and murals, and the symbolism in the murals around us. We were all taken by the singing rocks in Pinuccio Sciola's rock garden and we were mesmerized by the eerie music produced by the local stone (worth looking up videos of the music!).

We are sad to leave Sardinia, its desserts (favourite: sospiri), its pastries (favourite: zeppole) and its cheeses (least-favourite: artisanal maggot-riddled worm cream cheese). But tomorrow we depart for Andalusia, Spain, and the next adventure!