From The Beginning

Now - come the pictures...

I'm going to try to work my way through our vacation in Italy - slowly - from the start.  I want to pick out some of my best pictures and we'll do the story from there...

So we start...

Karen and I flew in together and Kim came separately, but met us at the airport in Rome.  The three of us then flew over to Cagliari, Sardinia (Italy) and drove a car about 2 hours or so to our house in Tortoli.

I put maps because no one knows where Sardinia is - you can see it in the first map on the side of Italy... The boot is kicking Sicily and then above Sicily is Sardinia - the already kicked island :)  Then the second map shows where we were on Sardinia.  We flew into Cagliari as its the bigger airport and then drove up to Tortoli which is right by Arbatax, a smaller airport is there.

We had a little difficulty finding the place but Antonella, the housekeeper, drove out to meet us.  As we went bumping down crazy dirt roads narrow enough for half out car, we wondered ....  But then we came to this house all by its lonesome...  Above on the terraces is the owner's apartment which they're not always there, I believe they came the last day we were there.  On the side that still has a shutter down is a second apartment and then ours was on the other side of that.  They're basically mirror apartments - 3 bedrooms, two baths, kitchen and living area and then the patios.  There was no one in the second apartment so we used both patios all week.

Walk down the steps from the villa and there is this path...

This path leads to this gate....

This gate leads to this path....

This path leads to this beach.... all ours..... !!!!!

Brittney flew into Rome too late to catch an early enough flight to Sardinia to take a bus out by us so she flew into Cagliari on Saturday and then found a bus to another town closer to us where we picked her up on Sunday.  It actually turned out that the town we had to get to was through mountains  and scary narrow roads and it was pouring rain.... freaky.  We sped up hill and down, shifting gears and squealing tires, slamming on brakes for sheep...

 for railroad crossings which were manned by a woman, or a man, and a chain and an umbrella....

 and then there was the occasional stop to allow certain passengers to take a closer look at the side of the road.... (this was a reinactment as it happened often with the windy roads that we had to drive.... Alison doesn't tend to drive slow so if you tend to get sick in a car, you'll get sick in my car in Italy!)

The first day we were all together at the house we relaxed at the beach for most of the day and then went over to Arbatax, the largest town in our area, about 15 minutes from our house.  Arbatax is a port town and, if you look at the map above, it almost directly across the water from Naples (to take a ferry from Rome, its about a 6 -8 hour ferry ride).  One of the things that Arbatax is also known for is red rocks.  There are big cliffs of them along the waterfront.

We hung out at the red rocks for a while and then wandered around town and then found a great little seafood restaurant where we ate local sardines and Sardinian pasta, which is a big fat, hollow noodle.  Sardinian food is quite different from mainland Italian food - they use a lot of seafood and have a lot of different flavorings due to the fact that they're pretty far removed from mainland Italy.  One of the spices that is locally harvested on the island is saffron.

The next day we had planned on doing some kayaking but we had to find a place to rent kayaks.  So we drove around and wound up in a small town right on the waterfront called St Maria Navaresse.  This was seriously one of the prettiest towns that we saw on the island.  We were told that there aren't many old town on the waterfront on Sardinia due to the fact that most towns were scared that they would be attacked and so they built their villages way up in the mountains.  This town was built on the waterfront as there was a Spanish princess that was travelling and was caught in a storm but they were able to land here.  Because of this, the princess (Maria) built a church to thank God that she had been saved and then the town just grew from there because people wanted to be closer to the church so they could worship.

It worked out that we were inquiring about kayaks and we found a man who spoked English who knew of an American girl, who spoke Italian, who was actually going out sea kayaking that afternoon.  He made a phone call and we were booked to go sea kayaking later that afternoon.  We met the guide and the kayaks right by our house and then followed him to a beach about 30 minutes from us (he drove crazier than I did so I ended up having to drive double crazy!)  We went out kayaking for about 3 or so hours and had a blast!

We finished kayaking and drove home to be met by Antonella, our housekeeper, and her mom.  We had arranged for them to make dinner for us that night - all local cuisine and seafood to boot!  They made SO much food - we had like 6 or 7 different dishes all loaded with seafood and enough to feed twelve rather than 4!