Kiwi Roaming

Painting project completed and real estate agents shown the apartment also done, we shouted ourselves a drink at one of the many local watering spots, sitting outside in the drizzle dreaming about our imminent trip to Italy.

Next morning we caught the train to Milton Keynes for some quality catchup time before the 5 of us (Paul, Karen, Steve, pēpē and I) headed to Luton for our flight to Sardinia that Saturday afternoon. Yay heat here we come.

Cannigoine, Sardinia

We landed early evening and were greeted by Libby at the gate, she had flown in from Milan a few hours before. Luckily there were plenty of large taxi vans outside that could accommodate 5 adults and a car seat – not so luckily was the staggering price of said taxi ride €150 or $300NZD! for a 45 minute drive. I was sat in the front so got to chat with our driver, who spoke excellent English and is such a proud Sardinian I learned heaps about the island and Cannigoine the wee seaside town we are staying in.

Once a tiny fishing village this is now one of the holiday resort towns in this north eastern corner of Sardinia. The fishing wharf has given way to a large marina populated by super yachts and other more normal sized boats. The main activities here are water based, swimming in the wonderful Tyrrhenian Sea (which connects with the Mediterranean), boating, visiting the nearby historic La Maddalena Archipelago of islands (the tours take 8 hours), kayaking and fishing.

According to our taxi driver tourism is the fastest growing segment of their economy, they also produce wine, cheeses, grow fruit and veggies which are exported to mainland Italy and they have the next largest number of sheep per sqm after NZ. We have sampled some wine a sparkling rose (frizzante you can see a 1L jug below at dinner) and it was excellent.

Adjusting to Italian life

We are here for a week and have adjusted pretty quickly to afternoon siesta, eating late, gelato and early morning queues at the bakery. We are also remembering how you take your life into your hands every time you step onto a pedestrian crossing, the smokers everywhere and how pedestrians don’t relent space as you walk. We’re in Italy.

Paul and Karen are staying in a beautiful resort with swimming pool and a wonderful balcony to spend our evenings on. When we first arrived we dropped them from the taxi at 10:30pm and headed into the main strip looking for food, which – reminder we are in Italy – was very easy to find. So Steve, Lib and I were sitting down in a wee courtyard restaurant ordering our pasta and wines by 10:45pm surrounded by other people eating and drinking and enjoying the wonderful temperature.

Our apartment is 12 minutes walk from their resort and is lovely, all newly renovated with new everything. It’s near the main drag and 1 min from a bakery and 4 square sized mini-mart, 2 minutes from the super yacht marina and there are restaurants galore around us.

We have only eaten out one other night as the pēpē in our group has a pretty strict routine so finding places that are open by 7pm is one of our challenges. We did spend Monday morning at the weekly market selecting vegetables, cheese and meats for our meals while taking a nosy at lovely linen clothing and gorgeous baskets and bags.

Each evening as we walk back from the resort we wander through the local night market, this one has a wider variety of stalls with foods, liqueurs, locally made crafts as well as beautiful linen clothing. So far we’ve struck the market after 10:30pm and it’s been humming each time. The temperatures don’t drop below 23C at night so perfect for the late night market exploration. There is a constant breeze coming off the ocean so staying by the coast keeps us cool vs the high temperature warnings for inland Sardinia.

It is very very beautiful here.