A one-week roadtrip through Sardinia
We always keep our eyes open for a good travel deal, since we are mostly on a tight budget. But our latest holiday to Sardinia in Italy exceeded all low-budget holiday dreams. We found a flight from Karlsruhe to Cagliari and a rental car for a week for 40€ total per person. Up until the last minute of our vacation I was basically just waiting for something to come up, like an extra charge for the car because we missed a contract clause or whatever. However, since we are back in Germany now, and everything went smoother than smooth, I can now happily say that Sardinia was one of the most lucky finds regarding travel I have ever had. We wanted to keep the whole trip as spontaneous as possible and therefore only booked our first night in Cagliari in advance. Besides a guidebook, gifted by my mom, we also didn’t really inform ourselves regarding for example distances, which led to the naïve assumption that it would be possible for us to see most of the island. What we didn’t know then, was that it would take us many hours for a little amount of kilometers, because Sardinia truly is such a beauty that we literally had to stop the car at least every 15 minutes. Following now is our travel journal with all of the favorite places, restaurants and hotels we were lucky to discover. So feel free to read on if you want to hear the story behind the pictures, or even better if you are looking for some inspiration for your holiday in Sardinia.
As I already mentioned, we started off in Cagliari and spent our first night in a beautiful hotel called “Residenza Kastrum”. It has an outstanding rooftop terrace where we had the most amazing view over the city and harbor any time of day. We spent the day wandering through the streets of Cagliari and watched the sunset, eating ice cream at the Marina. The next morning, after a tasty breakfast with lots of freshly pressed orange juice on the rooftop terrace, we started our roadtrip. We didn’t really have a destination planned, since we did not book any accommodation for the night. We read though, that the street right on the coast from Cagliari to Villasimius is known for beautiful bays, so we decided to start the trip there. And let me just say, we were not disappointed but rather had to stop a gazillion times because the street came with uncountable beautiful beaches, viewpoints, amazing cactuses and flower fields. We were lucky to find a cheap supermarket on the way, “MD”, which is a discount-supermarket chain, where we bought ourselves a little picnic for our lunch break on the beach. The day came to an end with us watching the sun go down from a mountain and later eating the best ravioli of my whole life in Il Mondo in Villaputzu. After our first day on the road, we quickly came to the conclusion that we would need much more time to explore the whole island and that the local style of driving equals the allowed top speed +40 km/h.
The next day would turn out to be the most adventure- and power-packed day of the whole trip, but let’s start at the beginning: another beautiful morning with lots and lots of fresh pressed orange juice. Inspired by our breakfast, we decided we wanted to visit an orange tree plantation. We found an Agriturismo (that is mostly a farm with holiday apartments / spare rooms) near our planned stop Arbatax. It is called Agriturismo Su Canonigu and located in the middle of its own citrus fruit plantation. Even though the home was closed due to it being off-season, the gardener opened the gate for us and allowed us to wander around the enormous “garden”. With the scent of lemons and oranges in our noses, we went on to visit the famous red rock in Arbatax (that was basically the only thing interesting for us recommended on Tripadvisor). We were a little let down, because it honestly just is this beautiful rock captured in my photograph and nothing really interesting around. The beach was also a construction site, because they are concreting it at the moment with lots of seating options for tourists in the summer, I guess. Still, it really is a beautiful rock and it was directly on our way to our next stop, so in the end we were glad we went and visited Arbatax. The third stop on this day was Santa Maria Navarrese, which still sticks to us as our favorite location of the whole trip! We had our lunch picnic on the beach and enjoyed the Caribbean-like water and sunshine. After a relaxing few hours we went to visit a thousand-year-old olive tree, which was enormous and a dream come true for plant enthusiasts
:-)! We were stunned by the history and events this piece of nature survived and we philosophized about who, in all those years, met up and kissed under the leaves. We continued our trip and drove through the Supramonte mountain range, where we (again) had to stop several times to hike up viewpoints, smell lavender, watch wild horses and buy fresh goat cheese at a farm. After a long and adventurous ride, we took our final stroll around at the beach in Orosei, and then (exhausted but happy as hell) checked in to our hotel in Galtelli.
We woke up still a little worn out from the day before, so we decided to take it easy and spend the day relaxing at a beach. We drove to Cala Gonone and from there to a beach called Cala Fuili. I’m pretty sure that this beach is normally crowded (in high season), because it was so easily accessible and incredibly beautiful. But thanks to the perks of off-season we had the bay all to ourselves. The only ones disturbing us were some hawks, which tried to catch our drone :-D ! After a little climb around the cliffs, we visited another beach (Cala Osalla) recommended by a local fisherman.
Feeling fresh and relaxed the next day, we felt the need to be a little more adventurous again. Therefore, our first stop was Su Gologone, the biggest karstic spring in Sardinia. Again, we had it all to ourselves, which was amazing! The next stop was Orgosolo, a village we heard of in the horror stories told by our hotelier, calling it a village full of bandits. Of course, that was excessively overstated, however we read of many mysterious murders. We really appreciated the artwork on the facades and the mysterious and rebellious vibes, but maybe still a little bit influenced by our hotelier’s stories, went on to Nuoro after an hour or so. We wanted to visit the MAN Museum in, but had to take a lunch stop first. We trusted Tripadvisor with this one and tried the Sandwiches at Pont’e Ferru and the reviews did not disappoint… Leon still daydreams about the fries and his Sandwich with Sardinian sausage. After a little bit of art-input at the museum we drove to the Dune Piscinas where we watched the sunset. I was honestly amazed how versatile Sardinian’s nature is. A few days and a couple kilometers ago we were relaxing at a crystal-clear bay surrounded by cliffs, while now we were sitting in the middle of a huge dune surrounded by a completely different kind of nature. It was a dreamy evening; only the serpentine road to our apartment in Arbus was quite a torture haha! We slept at a police officers’ home (you can find it on booking: “Monocale”) and he and his wife were the most charming hosts ever and gave us lots of inside tips for the next day.
After their recommendation we started the next day with a beach trip to Scivu. Yet again a very different kind of beach, surrounded by big and beautiful red rocks. Not surprisingly, we were all alone again. After a few hours soaking up the sun, we took a roadtrip to Iglesias. Because we had an accommodation booked in Sant’Antioco, we sadly weren’t able to stay that long, even though we loved the rusty colored streets. It would have been even more beautiful if the Italians would not have taken their siesta that seriously, but nobody in the whole town wanted to serve me some Pizza. So, driven by my hunger, we continued the trip en route to Sant’Antioco where we wandered around the port and old town. Sant’Antioco is a peninsula in the south of Sardinia and we also went there after the recommendation of our host from Arbus. He told us that the people living in Sant’Antioco think of their home as a unique island, so even though they are a part of Sardinia, they would say something like “Let’s visit Sardinia today” if they are planning on taking a trip to main land Sardinia.
After the night in Sant’Antioco, we only had one day left of our vacation and I was actually able to convince my boyfriend to go horseback riding, something he has never done before. So we ended up at the Carolina Ranch and rode out to the beach, which was my favorite activity of the trip. When I later texted my girlfriends some pictures, they said it looked like a date on The Bachelor, which I now always bear in mind when looking at the shots :-D! We drove back to Cagliari afterwards and checked in to Antioco Corso Charme, a great hotel directly in the middle of the old town. We wanted to treat ourselves with lots of Italian food for our last night and clink glasses to our smooth and beautiful vacation. We dined at Da Tonio, whose cheese platter and pizza I can only recommend, and ended up in bed pretty early with a food and wine coma.
If you continued to read up until now, I hope I was able to reach you with a little bit of wanderlust and maybe you are now even curious to visit the beautiful island of Sardinia yourself? We really went with no expectations and maybe that’s also a reason why we had the best time! I had so much fun reliving our one-week roadtrip through this blog article and I hope you had a little fun reading it as well. Talk to you soon!
