Cagliari – June 10, 2023
Jul 26th, 2023 by rallyadmin
The plan for today is a day off from driving. That, of course, doesn’t mean a day off from walking. The destination is a park, Parco Naturale Molentargius Saline, that is built around some tidal salt flats. In the park there are some lagoons that are the home to some resident flamingos. Yes, I said flamingos. Some very lost flamingos.
Barbara has found the park in her trip research and she says that the park is only a couple of kilometers away. Out on the street. Take a right out the door. Take another right at the corner and start up the hill past where the I’ve parked the car to the top of the hill and head back down. (Have I mentioned how much I hate it when Google Maps picks a route that sends you up a hill and then back down when it could have mapped out a route that is 2 centimeters longer and doesn’t have a hill?) The route takes along some very busy avenues but the Maps app shows us getting closer though this is hardly a walk that anyone would recommend.
We get to what appears to be the park entrance. We take a left and walk down a narrow road past a sailing school(?) only to be blocked at the end by a locked gate. This can not be right. But in the distance, the far distance, we can see some whitish dots that may actually be flamingos. We re-trace our steps back to the main road and take a left to continue on until we do actually find the official park entrance, complete with a “You Are Here” map of the park.
The park map shows a couple of areas that are called out as flamingo reserves and they are halfway across the park from the entrance. Down the road. Take a left across the canal. Walk through the park. Cross another canal that has what appears to be a old gun tower protecting the bridge across the canal. Into another park area. Across that park area and down another road to a viewing platform.
Through the fence and into the raised viewing platform. Look out the slits in the wall. And, sure enough, there are little white dots in the far distance. And, yes, they probably are flamingos although it’s a bit hard to tell at this distance.
The highlight of this adventure turns out to be totally unexpected. Just as Barbara looked out of the viewing slit/port a flamingo flew in and landed in the small canal just in front of the viewing platform. We look out and see a nest with what looks like two nestlings in the reeds on the other side of the small canal. Our desire to see wild flamingos satisfied, we start back to the apartment.
When we get to the end of the park entrance road, we take a different route back to avoid the busy avenues with very narrow sidewalks. There’s is a busy expressway on the other side of the canal that paralleled out way into the park. We cross the canal and find a wide walk/bike path and head back in the reverse direction that we came in. The problem soon becomes apparent that there is no way across he expressway to get back to the neighborhood and our apartment.
We trudge along a nice walkway but we can’t find away across the expressway. Finally after what seems like a couple of kilometers the expressway ends in a roundabout and we get to head off in the correct direction. Maps gives us a route which, of course , is up and over a hill. It turns out to be a shorter route than we expected and suddenly we at the apartment house door without even realizing that we have been walking down the correct avenue.
The bad part of this route, though, has been that there are no restaurants or cafes along the way. (Where do these people eat?). We head up to our room (yes, the keycodes work) and rest up for a bit and then head back out for some lunch at a small bar across the avenue from our apartment.
We hadn’t even thought of the Blue Bar as a place to eat thinking that it was just a small drinks cafe. We walk in and they do serve real food and there is a Brit regular who takes over duty as an ad hoc waiter. He doesn’t work there but he starts translating for us and then actually waits on our table. I get an order of spaghetti with oil and garlic which is delicious, the best I’ve had in years. Barbara ordered something that they had just run out of so she ended up with a salad that was also delicious. A nice conversation with the Brit “waiter” and then back to the room for some rest.
We’re leaving for Napoli in the morning so we decide on take out pizza for dinner from a small takeout pizzeria just a few meters from the Blue Bar. While we are waiting for the pizza we have a nice conversation with the owner and his staff. They are very interest in where we are from and even more interested in how we feel about Sardinia. We tell them where we’ve been so far in Italy and more specifically Sardinia. They seem very pleased that we like Sardinia as much as we tell them we do (truthfully, we do love Sardinia.)
Back to the room. The pizza is great. It’s been a long day. Tomorrow will be even longer.
Obiwan
