Alghero – June 7, 2023
Jun 24th, 2023 by rallyadmin
We recover the car and head out for our first search for ruins in Sardinia. That shouldn’t be hard and there are literally thousands of ruins here from about 8,000 BCE forward.
Just who and/or what is Sardinia? Here’s a quote from the Wiki article about the island, “Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, and one of the 20 regions of Italy. It is located west of the Italian Peninsula, north of Tunisia and immediately south of the French island of Corsica.
It is one of the five Italian regions with some degree of domestic autonomy being granted by a special statute. Its official name, Autonomous Region of Sardinia, is bilingual in Italian and Sardinian: Regione Autonoma della Sardegna / Regione Autònoma de Sardigna. It is divided into four provinces and a metropolitan city. The capital of the region of Sardinia — and its largest city — is Cagliari.” Here’s a link for the full article.
What the article doesn’t say is that since the most common way to get here is to fly or ferry from Napoli, the contrast between the Sardinians and Napoliano is more like night and day. Life here is noticeably slower, the people more polite and more tolerant of tourists and has a much more desirable vibe.
Like all metropolitan cities, Cagliari has traffic and, like the rest of Italy, some very small streets so getting out of Cagliari and heading north takes a bit of patience but the drivers are much less aggressive and, as we pass the airport, the traffic thins and the remaining traffic speeds us.
We are headed for a nuraghe excavation name Genna Marie that is a well-excavated example of a typical nuraghe village. The nuraghe village was typically centered around three towers surrounded by smaller conical-shaped buildings all enclosed by a rock wall. See this Wiki link for more info.
The notable thing about Genna Marie is that although the buildings are all just foundations now and the three towers are only short stubs of towers, you can easily get a feel for the sire as it must have been 5,000 years ago. To help you understand the enormity of the site at various points along a walkway out side the enclosure wall there are glass panels that have the missing parts of the structures drawn on the glass so that you can visualize the view as it existed in the past. (PXL_20230607_075634738)
Of course, much of what is “known” about the nuraghe and the people who built them is supposition. The construction, though, is truly remarkable. The amount of work it took to construct and maintain this village is astonishing. And the site of the village overlooks a rolling plain to the sea in the distance.
We left Genna Marie and drove on to find another nuraghe site which Google Maps lead us to believe was only a few kilometers away. Silly us. After about 45 minutes, we still hadn’t found the site and decided to abandon the search. Google 2, us 0.
We still had a couple of hours to our next night stop in Alghero and found another nuraghe site in Palmavers. This site is right along the roadside. A quick stop to visit the site (no climbing or long hike) and a long overdue bio break. A very nice friendly woman at the ticket counter. This site with some very interesting designs of the site layout. And then back on the road.
Our stop for the night was the B&B, Sain’Anna. As usual the B&B was somewhat out of town, down some ever-narrowing roads to a left-hand turn onto a dirt road and a few hundred meters to a right turn through the stonewall in the parking area surrounded by beautiful gardens.
The B&B is run by an older couple and true to the concept of a B&B, there is no dinner but there is a Bed and a Breakfast. It’s a lovely quiet place that really is kept in immaculate condition.
We settle in and then leave to find dinner. A nice restaurant near the water. Good food and a glass or two of wine. Then back to the B&B for the night.
We are really getting to like Sardinia. Tomorrow, we visit the necropolis.
Obi-wan