Kiwi Roaming

It’s tough doing nothing but eating, sleeping, drinking, swimming and chatting with friends but we’ve managed to knock off a week doing exactly this. I have been plagued by mosquito bites – I know nothing new there – needing to run the air-conditioning and take antihistamine just to sleep on these hot hot nights.

Our last couple of days in Cannigione were lovely, over 30C during the day with a light sea breeze to stop us from completely expiring. We walked north on our final day to a lovely grove of trees with picnic tables and two small beaches, here we picnic’d with our baguettes, pancetta, tomatoes, cheeses and iced teas. Without waiting an hour for our food to settle we then went for a quick final swim next to a couple of influencers filming their every move. It was blissful, clear calm water, a little cooler today but omg so hot when we came back out of the sea.

Rubbish/Waste management on Sardinia

I do need to talk about the rubbish system. Our accommodation in Cannigione had a clause we would be fined if we didn’t get rid of all of our waste before leaving the property so Steve obsessed about the rubbish system. I can attest it’s the same in Cagliari too. You separate all of your waste into small bins, then every night a different bin goes out, bio waste (food) has two nights in a week as does general waste but bottles, plastics, paper etc only one bin night each. Alternatively we can take our waste to the refuse centre who asked Steve for the tax code of our accommodation the first time he rocked up. Needless to say we got rid of our waste correctly before departing but it added complexity we didn’t really need.

A final dinner of gnocchi and salad to use up ingredients in our fridge, a few Campari spritz and lovely chatter followed by a very early start to catch the first of two buses into Olbia Terranova (the main train station) 20+ kms away.

Olbia – Cagliari

After two bus rides we left Libby at the Olbia Terranova where she was meeting her niece for a long weekend nearby at another resort beach. Steve and I caught the 10:07 to Cagliari, which also required a train change after about 90 minutes into the journey. The trains were commuter ones, nothing fancy at all and the second one was slightly more comfortable than the first. People had loads of gear including bikes onboard and the seats were about 80% full.

The countryside was very boring, lots of fields with hay or already bailed hay, cork trees every now and again and a few sheep. Villages are painted off white so blended in with the beige countryside.

(little rubbish bins out for collection above).

We got to Cagliari at 1:30pm and with the temperatures nearing 35C decided to eat lunch in the first place we found. Interestingly the cafes and bars near the train station have no street presence at all protecting the air conditioning inside. We chose a busy pizzeria and shared a pizza and salad caprese – which were yum but huge.

Google took us on quite a hilly walk to our apartment, a 32 minute walk away through the main shopping streets. We passed loads and loads of cafes and restaurants including an Irish bar of course. Half the shops were closed as it was siesta already, but I was sticking close to the doors in the hope of catching a wee bit of cold air as we walked past the open ones. Just over half way I called a stop and we sat in the shade on a bench that warmed our bottoms (not what we needed) it was so hot! It’s amazing how quickly I have lost conditioning for carrying my backpack long distances.

Our apartment is in a residential complex with about 10 buildings. It’s huge, brilliantly set up with lots of free goodies – teabags, coke, beer – plus everything we will need for 3 days. We have a wee glimpse of the ocean from our deck, a big tele to watch Australia playing USA (happening while I write this) loads of storage and a comfy bed.

Cagliari sounds like Calgary (the Canadian place) in Italian. We haven’t explored much yet other than checking out another supermarket brand, found a chemist (who sold me wonderful bite cooling cream) and walked through residential streets which are all apartments. There is dog poo everywhere, the bins (as described above) out for collection and interesting city smells.

Our lovely host walked us through the city highlights, which buses to catch and which beaches to head for. He also told us about how great it is here for kite surfing, how Luna Rossa are based here for their warmup so we might seem them out practicing.