Exploration And -- Exportation???? - Italy

Back to Italy - Sardinia to be specific...

So - its Thursday and our week on the island is winding down, but Melody, Brittany's friend, is flying in today and then taking a bus over.  We have some time to kill in the morning and so, lured with the temptation of a series of "secret beaches" that were presented to us on Tuesday, I grabbed good old (not really "old"... just old friend :) Kim, my trusty fellow adventurer.  We mapped out our route to the hike to the beach and we took off in Little Stickshift.  Up hill and down, around corners and curves and then - oops - reverse back to a road that was hairpinned and hidden and - up we go.  Screech right, screech left, screech back right while trying to keep the momentum of the climb up - STRAIGHT up!  We finally get to the top of the hill and pull over to look back at what we left behind us....

Oceans -- and winding roads...

Then back in the car and twisting on through other backroads.  Clarification - through DIRT backroads and herds of wild donkeys....

Very friendly herds of wild donkeys...

Very, very, very friendly wild donkeys....

After driving down a road that I'm not sure was really road, we decided to stop before we really got stuck and from there we hiked off down this pathy kind of dirt road - hoping to find the path that led to the hidden beach.  We never did find that hidden beach, but we did find this hidden church...

And then we sorrowfully headed back towards where we left our car, got in and tried to find out way back out.  When we did, we wound down the mountainside and decided to take a little siesta in the small village of Baunei - where everyone was locked up for the afternoon in their houses, but the little coffeeshop stayed open.  So - there we enjoyed a cappucino and a creme filled croissant - yum!  And then we took a little stroll around the town....

I still had a 'hankerin' to find a beautiful beach somewhere so we looked on the map and we spotted one that was basically connected to a road so we took off and backtracked towards our house, but took a side road down to a beach way down the side of a hill... Along the way we stumbled across some goats that I'm presuming were wild as the ones that were owned by people always had these big noisy bells clanging around their necks.  These were either wild or somehow escaped being "belled".

We parked midway down the hill and climbed down the rest and then scrambled over rocks and got up close to the water and were overpowered by how crystal clear and blue it all was -- amazing!

Some "crustations" that are known for clinging to the rocks in the water...

Melody was supposed to be coming in around 3 or 4 (our exportation from the US) but midway through our trek we got a text from Brittany saying that Melody had gotten in early and was waiting for us at the bus station.  We eventually left the beauty of the beach and took of to downtown Tortoli to pick Melody up at the bus station -- this was a whole different story/adventure.... We did finally find her, brought her back to the house to freshen up and then we went back to St Maria Navaresse to wander around and do dinner.  We had a particular place in mind for dinner and it ended up not being open so we wandered around to find another place and we stumbled upon this adorable little hotel called "Nascar".  There was cute restaurant and it seemed quite and clean so we went in and had an amazing meal and were waited on by an amazing owner.  (as an aside - the owner reminded Kim and I of Leslie Caron and was almost more French looking than Italian...)

The hotel was a redone building - one of the oldest buildings in the town, which was only from the 1700s.  It was really uniquely redone and a really nice place.

Some of our fresh seafood on our appetizer seafood platter.... all local fish and seafood.

The owner and our server - Kim and I ordered and split a whole fish - it came quite whole....

Our dinner party - and our last night on the town in Sardinia....

Stay tuned for the further adventures of our Italian Holiday - I'll get everything posted one of these days....