Sardinia's lively capital, Cagliari is situated at the broad curve of the Golfo di Cagliari, backed by lagoons and surmounted by an imposing ring of medieval walls. Apparently DH Lawrence, seeing it from the sea at the start of his visit to Sardinia, compared it to Jerusalem,'strange and rather wonderful' in 1921.
By contrast, we traveled 227km from Alghero, and reached Cagliari by a precipitously steep winding road, and amazingly nipped into a car park built into the hillside where we left the car for 2 days. Our accommodation was in the old part of the town where houses line narrow roads only available for car use at certain times of day. They were a bit warren like, and the first night we panicked slightly when trying to get back there.
Having settled into our house, we set out to find somewhere high to view the sunset; the nearby Bastione di Saint Remy reached via Piazza Costituzione is advertised as a fabulous place to do this. The fabulous, grandiose white limestone steps take you right up to the broad terrace above where you can get views of the port, the lagoons and the mountains beyond, except that as the Rough Guide says, parts of the Bastione are closed for renovation in 2017. It took a while to work out how to get onto the terrace, other than by the steps.
A view of the sunset from the bar
and from the Bastione where there were lots of other people gathered to watch the sunset.
almost gone..
On the way to find something to eat, we passed the Cattedrale di Santa Maria dei Castello which was originally built in the thirteenth century
The next day, I suggested we could walk to the beach at Poetto, a suburb of Cagliari. On the map, it looked reasonably close, and I hoped we might be able to see some flamingos, although knowing really that they would only be seen at sunrise or sunset. It was a bit of trek to the beach, the first part of the journey along the harbour where we saw a young comorant:
The beach when we got there was lovely, interesting to walk along as well
It was a bit windy on the beach, with a bit of sand blasting going on, so still no swimming in the sea for me.
We went back during rush hour, and found the buses frequent, but very busy.
We repeated the previous night's activity, with another beautiful sunset
and I've included a photo of flamingos I found on Twitter, credited to RobyZ by someone else, I didn't see any!!
By contrast, we traveled 227km from Alghero, and reached Cagliari by a precipitously steep winding road, and amazingly nipped into a car park built into the hillside where we left the car for 2 days. Our accommodation was in the old part of the town where houses line narrow roads only available for car use at certain times of day. They were a bit warren like, and the first night we panicked slightly when trying to get back there.
Having settled into our house, we set out to find somewhere high to view the sunset; the nearby Bastione di Saint Remy reached via Piazza Costituzione is advertised as a fabulous place to do this. The fabulous, grandiose white limestone steps take you right up to the broad terrace above where you can get views of the port, the lagoons and the mountains beyond, except that as the Rough Guide says, parts of the Bastione are closed for renovation in 2017. It took a while to work out how to get onto the terrace, other than by the steps.
And on cue, there was a small bar from which to watch the sunset just by the terrace
We repeated the previous night's activity, with another beautiful sunset
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