As some of you may know-or not know-I went on break during Semana Santa to that the (not so) great island of Sardinia, Italy’s pride and joy. On this trip I went with travel buddy extraordinaire and recently-voted-illegal-English-teacher-of-the-year, Matt. We chose Sardinia in part because he didn’t want to go to Romania because that was too much of a “funny” trip (as his friends were already taking a “funny” trip to Moscow during Semana Santa) and the flight was relatively cheap. So with a few clicks of some buttons we purchased our tickets via Ryanair and made plans for our first few days in Alghero. Alghero is on the northwest end of the island with some amazing natural sights, one of which being Neptune’s Grotto. Unfortunately for us, Neptune’s Grotto was closed due to those winds (or what I’ve come to find out as Europeans referring to it as a “Hurricane”) that whipped through Barcelona in late January that resulted in some fatalities (and a delayed flight which cost me 65 more Euro for a train I subsequently missed). Unfortunately, Neptune’s Grotto was one of the reasons why we chose to stay in Alghero. So with that plan down the drain we were struggling for entertainment as Alghero is not a place you want to be for constant amusement. To make matters even worse, we had to pay for our hotel, called “Mamajuana,” in full the second day we were there – in cash only. I didn’t think anything of it and continued on my way until I needed to withdraw money from the ATM. Low and behold, it didn’t work (for many of my U.S. readers, you are probably asking yourself: “Why don’t you just use your credit card? I can use it everywhere here.” Well, unfortunately [or fortunately as I haven’t decided] many European restaurants, stores, etc. only accept cash). This, in turn, turned me in to Debbie Downer and Matt into something just shy of a sugar daddy.
Also feeding my disappointment in Sardinia was our previously mentioned hotel, Mamajuana. Matt chose Mamajuana with the best of intentions. Rough Guides did nothing but rant and rave about how great it is for the price and how quaint the café for breakfast is right across the street. The only negative if I can remember correctly was that the bathrooms were small, which they were. The first morning Matt and I wake up to stroll down stairs to get this delicious breakfast from the adjacent café. On our way we run into the Sardinian hotel worker (who was absolutely worthless) and a French tourist. The two are obviously having a slight misunderstanding being as the aforementioned hotel worker only speaks Sard while the poor French tourist who speaks: French, English, Portuguese and some Spanish is trying to create some common ground. Basically Frenchy, Matt and I all had one objective in common: to find breakfast. When it finally gets through the hotel worker’s thick skull that we were hungry, she points to a vending machine and starts pressing buttons. This was breakfast. It was stocked full of all of the Kinder Buenos one could ever want with a robotic coffee maker to boot. This was the cross-street café. As much as I would like to complain about this city, there were some positives. It is a quaint seaside town that has Spanish-style architecture and some great eateries. Two of which that I enjoyed the most were Lu Furat and Angedras. Le Furat is a tiny pizzeria tucked away in the side streets that is a mom and pop (and sons) kinda place. They have a wide variety of pizzas ranging from pepperonia and melone (not pepperoni and melon as Matt thought, but rather peppers and eggplant) to a salmon cream cheese and much more typical Sardinian/Italian fares. The pizzas here were also ridiculously cheap which resulted in us designating this as our food stomping ground. The other restaurant, Angedras, was situated right on the city’s seawall and was a little step up from the mom and pop pizzeria. The menus of the day came complete with a two course meal, bread and drink (Matt got his meat and melon finally followed by the swordfish while I noshed on gnocchi and squid).
After mishap after mishap (besides a little town called Bosa which was suggested by Rough Guides... I’d recommend going there, but not following their suggestions – get lost in the colorful alleyways while enjoying some gelato)
we escaped from Alghero to try our luck elsewhere on the island. We headed to the provincial capital, Sassari to test our luck there. After all, there was no where to go but up after the past days occurrences. Sassari was larger, more industrial but not as cute as Alghero. The hotel we were to stay at that night was like a five star resort after being in Mamajuana. The Vittorio Emanuele had nice décor, a REAL breakfast and comfy beds complete with a television. Also great about this hotel was the fact it was about two blocks away from where my parents wired me money. I owe them my life. After this day we head back to Alghero, with great caution I might add, to rent a car. Long story short, after a frustrating 4 hours, we finally had a car at our disposal (a Panda none the less) and I’ve never seen Matt be so happy. Our first destination avec car was to some of the islands’ Neolithic remains just north of Alghero which turned out to be neat, but not amazing. We then continued our trip up to Porto Torres (via Sassari which Matt did not like… I’m not sure why because I think driving around medieval streets during rush hour in a manual would be fun…) which we quickly abandoned since the city itself was just a giant naval yard that doubled as a maze.
Upon leaving Porto Torres, we headed to where we made reservations for that night: the Pinna Pensione at Castlesardo. Unfortunately we got there a little too late to enjoy the view right away, but in the morning we really got to see how lucky we were. This place was absolutely great! The most adorable old, Italian woman works there and not to mention our room looked out onto the Mediterranean and also the hill that the castle sits on overlooking the city. That day we got lost in the old city and I found a new friend (this cute little puppy!). After one night and a half-day in Castlesardo we moved on to Santa Teresa on the furthest north of the island. Before arriving to downtown Santa Teresa, we got lost on a tiny peninsula with some absolutely stunning rock formations. Personally I thought it looked like Gaudi’s playground.
A little scary, but we did not choose to make reservations at a hotel until our arrival in Santa Teresa, but it worked out for the best. We stayed at a hotel overlooking the bay and when it was clear Corsica was visible. In this city we did a decent amount of walking, some driving and a lot of drooling over traditional Sardinian cuisine. Matt and I managed to find this tiny bakery next to St. Teresa’s main church with seadas (a baked or fried pastry with ricotta cheese filling covered in honey or sugar) and smaller cookies. The rest of our time in the island really left a positive touch on this entire trip. On our way back to Alghero to drop off the car and catch our plane, we chose to drive a little more along the eastern coast and then drive through inland Sardinia (both of which were stunning) while stopping at a lake tucked between the rolling hills and eroding mountains to eat our picnic that we threw together at the supermarket.
My most recent Mediterranean vacation however consisted of spending time on the tiny archipelago of Malta. We chose to go here because I made it a point to go either there or Tunisia while I was here, it just so happened that Ryanair had 10Euro flights to Malta from Barcelona-Gerona and the cheapest flight I’ve seen to Tunisia has been in the mid to upper 200’s. Malta is a tiny set of three islands (only 316 square miles when all the land area is put together) but it has BIG personality. These islands, which have been at the center of a tug of war since prehistory, are a mix of almost every culture you can think of. Once a Phoenician settlement, then Roman, then Arabic, then Italian, then British, it is now an independent country (as of 1964) that houses people and buildings are not-quite-European, sort-of-Arabic but definitely-not-British. This island is home to a lot of interesting historical mysteries and “modern marvels”. The worlds oldest free standing building is on Gozo (~5000 BC) while the same island houses the third largest church in all of Europe (which was completely visible from the entire island of Gozo and easily 20 minutes inland on Malta). Gozo is also thought to be the island where Calypso, from Homer’s Odyssey, lived. Malta’s main island, Malta is not to be outdone by its sister island, though. The island and its cities (or rather every city was just a suburb of it’s capital, Valletta) all house beautiful and colossal churches and a sea of ochre buildings. The island also houses a number of Neolithic ruins like one we went to see called the Hal Saflieni Hypogeum. This ruin was a lot different than what I expected. It is completely underground and carved out of rock. I wish I could insert pictures but cameras were forbidden as to not chance a quickening of the decay of the ruins. Tickets fill up about 2 weeks in advance, which we did not know until our arrival… so Matt, being the champion of traveling and history that he his got up on his OWN at 6:30 to go sit in line for the tickets for the following day at the noon “last minute tour” that has a price of about 20 euro instead of the normal 4.50 euro for students. It was definitely worth the 20 Euro though, I’ve never seen anything like it – and it is a world heritage site. After we left Hal Saflieni, we headed to the outdoor ruins of Tarxien. Note to any reader who is considering doing these two temples in a day: Do Tarxien Temples BEFORE hal Saflieni… it was quite a let down, but neat none the less.
-Another great thing I found out first hand is just how cheap this country really is. Their food is great; a mix of so many cultures, but definitely has its own Maltese flair. Pastries of ricotta cheese or peas called pastizzi or the sweet called imqaret (a nepolitana-type pastry that was a filling of dates, cinnamon and lemon) were around 0.25Euro to about 0.50Euro depending on the location. Not to mention most of the attractions comparable to those that would burn holes in my wallet back in Spain and mainland Europe accepted my ISIC card (which is rare anywhere I’ve been so far) which sometimes knocked down the prices of tickets about 50%. Another cheap “find” in Malta are its buses. This fleet of buses is a hodgepodge of buses ranging anywhere from 1960’s buses to ones built in the past 5 years. Cost for the majority of the bus routes which traveled to every corner of the island: 0.47-0.58Euro.
The first day we arrived at the airport early, about 9:30 in the morning from Gerona airport and were excited to start our day. We managed to do a lot, mainly thanks to our militant schedule and underlined/checked/circled guidebooks which included seeing all of Valletta (practically), taking a bus over to Rabat and Mdina to see the older settlements that could look out over the entire island as they were on a hill. Mdina and Rabat are practically sister cities – or rather Mdina is the old fortified part while Rabat is the more “modern” extension outside of the old city walls. There, we saw St. Paul’s catacombs, ate some great traditional pastries and walked into a pretty impressive church in Mdina. When we got back we kinda lazed for a while to make up for the fact that we got up around 5:30 for our flight out of Gerona. After napping, we realized yet again how luck was working with us: the delay by a day of the Malta International Fireworks Festival. It was supposed to realizarse the 30th of April to the 1st of May, which was sad as we were arriving on the 2nd. Somehow, due to a stroke of ENORMOUS LUCK, one of the barges wasn’t working at the time thus forcing them to push it back a day. Matt and I with eager eyes watched on as the Poland team shot fireworks off to the soundtrack of starwars (so great) while Australia shot off fireworks to the Moulin Rouge soundtrack.
The next few days were pretty neat, we took a day trip to the sister island of Gozo by means of a 20-25 minute boat ride. Unfortunately it was a Sunday and the buses had awkward schedules which restricted us from doing what we actually wanted to do. We did however get to visit Gozo’s largest city, Rabat. Here we managed to see the large church I mentioned previously along with a nice old fortified city and locust, too!
In all, I was extremely impressed with Malta. It was something that I would have never been able to imagine or classify if I hadn’t gone. The language was beautiful. I left wanted to learn it but then realizing that the only upside to all the frustration of learning Maltese would only open up a job at the American Embassy in Valletta… which isn’t the most bustling city. Thinking about this past weeks adventures have left me starving some Maltese desserts.
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