When I was little, one of the special treats that my grandma would buy were sardines in tomato sauce. Therefore, I decided that now, twenty years later, we should plan a vacation to Sardinia!
Okay, for real, that’s not how it happened. I have a friend who moved from Germany to Japan a year before we were moving from Misawa. She always talked about wonderful trips they were able to take while stationed in Germany. One of the places she fell in love with was Sardinia. All us, girlfriends, always listened to her stories with a bit of jealousy, dreaming of our next warm vacations in the middle of one of the many Misawa snow storms. Well, after we moved to England, I remembered those stories and looked into Sardinia. In fact, let me tell you where Sardinia is! I must admit I could not have found it on a map even a year ago.
Sardinia is the second biggest island in the Mediterranean. About 1.6 million people reside on the island, that’s not including all the tourists, of course. This is the place where Italians go on vacation, with August being the busiest month of the year. That is part of the reason why we took our trip to Sardinia in the middle of July (and it turned out to be quite busy already).
This time we flew with EasyJet, another budget airline that worked just fine for us. I did have to pay for two extra suitcases since we were bringing all our swim gear AND a small booster seat for Mark to use in our rental car. The flight was only a little over two hours with no adventures to report.
We got into Olbia at about 4 pm, got our rental car (it’s a must in Sardinia when you are not staying at a resort), and got in touch with our landlord who explained to us with basically no English where to meet her and that we’d need to follow her to the house. I cannot say that the roads were super crazy, but they were very similar to our English country roads (which are quite crazy narrow and twisty). After a lot of twists and turns and going up the mountains (I had no clue they had mountains in Sardinia!) on the road that is supposed to be a one-way, but is used in both directions, we finally got to the place where we were staying.
Look how much I have written already and I haven’t even shown you any pictures of the beach yet!
You will have to wait though…as I must tell you the story called “Survivor”.
At around nine in the morning, Robert decided to find a shortcut to the nearest beach to our house (about 500 meters). We knew it was a rocky beach and we were not sure exactly how we could walk there. So he kissed me good bye and said he’d be back soon. The kids and I got up, ate breakfast, changed into our swimsuits, packed our beach stuff…It was 10’oclock and still no sign of Robert. Kids were asking me when we can finally go to the beach as they didn’t have much to do in the house. At 10:30, I started to worry. I started, naturally, thinking of all possible scenarios. He got lost. He fell down and hurt himself badly. He fell off a rock. Someone attacked him. I started to pray. I seriously was worried as I thought to myself how I would even find out what happened to him? I only knew how to dial emergency number and I was very close to doing that. I imagined that he had passed out and someone took him to a hospital and he had absolutely no ID on him—no wallet, no passport. How would I even find him? The kids were worried as well, of course, seeing me in distress. At 11:00 I was ready to go find our next door neighbors and ask for help in finding him or call the police.
Finally, around 11:15 I heard Robert running down the hill towards our gate. Oh what a relief! He was drenched in sweat and looked exhausted and only said “I need a cold shower!”. I heard his side of the story a few minutes later.
So this is Robert, sabotaging the post with MY version of the story. I haven’t read Lyana’s telling of my survival story, so let’s see if I get the facts right. The first morning we were in Sardinia, I went for a quick hike to scout out the nearest beach (on the map). I jogged a bit, found the coast after a couple wrong turns down unmarked dead end roads, but the beach wasn’t much to look at (just a boat dock, really). So I went a little further along the rocky coast and found a better beach with sand, not rocks. Well, stubborn me, I thought “I’ll just keep going and make a complete circle and find my way back to the house.” I walked away from the beach instead of going back the way I came (second mistake. The first mistake, I didn’t mention earlier, was that I was wearing shoes, but no socks, because I thought I would be back soon.) I hiked the path and found the resort nearby. I wanted to get home as quickly as possible, so I started jogging. But the road just kept going and going. It had been about 30 minutes, and the thought crossed my mind that I should just turn around and go back the way I came. But that would have been too easy. I kept jogging away from the beach, and further from the house, as the road went in a southwesterly direction, while the house was north. Eventually the road had to meet up with the main road that went north, I reasoned. So I kept jogging. An hour into my ordeal I was hot, sweaty, no sunscreen, and the day was just getting warmer. I almost attempted hitchhiking, but stubbornness won the day on that one too. Finally, I got to the main road, turned right, and my heart sank because realizing where I was, I had a good 3 miles left to go. I had already gone about 2 miles (I think). (Lyana just looked over at me and told me my story is too long.) In short, the rest of the trip was absolute torture because having no socks, my shoes wore the skin off on a couple spots on my feet. But I pressed on through the pain, the thought of my family waiting for my return, not knowing my fate, gave me strength. I survived. But the rest of the trip, I couldn’t wear my shoes, and for two weeks after it was hard to walk. The end.
I think that’s enough drama for one day-haha. It’s late here and we just finished painting our entry way and living room—so we are exhausted. I promise I’ll get lots of pictures posted in my next entry.
Good night.
Okay, for real, that’s not how it happened. I have a friend who moved from Germany to Japan a year before we were moving from Misawa. She always talked about wonderful trips they were able to take while stationed in Germany. One of the places she fell in love with was Sardinia. All us, girlfriends, always listened to her stories with a bit of jealousy, dreaming of our next warm vacations in the middle of one of the many Misawa snow storms. Well, after we moved to England, I remembered those stories and looked into Sardinia. In fact, let me tell you where Sardinia is! I must admit I could not have found it on a map even a year ago.
This time we flew with EasyJet, another budget airline that worked just fine for us. I did have to pay for two extra suitcases since we were bringing all our swim gear AND a small booster seat for Mark to use in our rental car. The flight was only a little over two hours with no adventures to report.
We got into Olbia at about 4 pm, got our rental car (it’s a must in Sardinia when you are not staying at a resort), and got in touch with our landlord who explained to us with basically no English where to meet her and that we’d need to follow her to the house. I cannot say that the roads were super crazy, but they were very similar to our English country roads (which are quite crazy narrow and twisty). After a lot of twists and turns and going up the mountains (I had no clue they had mountains in Sardinia!) on the road that is supposed to be a one-way, but is used in both directions, we finally got to the place where we were staying.
Looks nice, right? It was indeed a great place to stay in a very quiet location. We could only use the bottom level though, but still we had two bedrooms and a nice kitchen and living area. 
The backyard was full of huge boulder rocks so the kids had lots of fun exploring it.
…until one day when Alex fell down from the rock shaving off a whole bunch of his head hair and scraping his legs badly…but that’s just a minor set back.
Of course, the first place we went for dinner was a pizzeria. 
I should have learned by now—we need to bring a phrase book with us wherever we go! And another thing I keep failing to do is read about whether or not and how much to tip at a restaurant. When we received our bill, we saw a 10 euro charge for “something”. Lack of Italian from our side and a limited English vocabulary from the waiters’ side left us guessing what exactly we were paying for since the waiter explained to us it was for using tablecloths and napkins. (We were like “what??”haha). Okay, later we found out that no matter where you go in Sardinia, you automatically get a 2 euro per person charge when you eat at the table. So that’s where our 10 euro charge came from. 
Look how much I have written already and I haven’t even shown you any pictures of the beach yet!
You will have to wait though…as I must tell you the story called “Survivor”.
At around nine in the morning, Robert decided to find a shortcut to the nearest beach to our house (about 500 meters). We knew it was a rocky beach and we were not sure exactly how we could walk there. So he kissed me good bye and said he’d be back soon. The kids and I got up, ate breakfast, changed into our swimsuits, packed our beach stuff…It was 10’oclock and still no sign of Robert. Kids were asking me when we can finally go to the beach as they didn’t have much to do in the house. At 10:30, I started to worry. I started, naturally, thinking of all possible scenarios. He got lost. He fell down and hurt himself badly. He fell off a rock. Someone attacked him. I started to pray. I seriously was worried as I thought to myself how I would even find out what happened to him? I only knew how to dial emergency number and I was very close to doing that. I imagined that he had passed out and someone took him to a hospital and he had absolutely no ID on him—no wallet, no passport. How would I even find him? The kids were worried as well, of course, seeing me in distress. At 11:00 I was ready to go find our next door neighbors and ask for help in finding him or call the police.
Finally, around 11:15 I heard Robert running down the hill towards our gate. Oh what a relief! He was drenched in sweat and looked exhausted and only said “I need a cold shower!”. I heard his side of the story a few minutes later.
So this is Robert, sabotaging the post with MY version of the story. I haven’t read Lyana’s telling of my survival story, so let’s see if I get the facts right. The first morning we were in Sardinia, I went for a quick hike to scout out the nearest beach (on the map). I jogged a bit, found the coast after a couple wrong turns down unmarked dead end roads, but the beach wasn’t much to look at (just a boat dock, really). So I went a little further along the rocky coast and found a better beach with sand, not rocks. Well, stubborn me, I thought “I’ll just keep going and make a complete circle and find my way back to the house.” I walked away from the beach instead of going back the way I came (second mistake. The first mistake, I didn’t mention earlier, was that I was wearing shoes, but no socks, because I thought I would be back soon.) I hiked the path and found the resort nearby. I wanted to get home as quickly as possible, so I started jogging. But the road just kept going and going. It had been about 30 minutes, and the thought crossed my mind that I should just turn around and go back the way I came. But that would have been too easy. I kept jogging away from the beach, and further from the house, as the road went in a southwesterly direction, while the house was north. Eventually the road had to meet up with the main road that went north, I reasoned. So I kept jogging. An hour into my ordeal I was hot, sweaty, no sunscreen, and the day was just getting warmer. I almost attempted hitchhiking, but stubbornness won the day on that one too. Finally, I got to the main road, turned right, and my heart sank because realizing where I was, I had a good 3 miles left to go. I had already gone about 2 miles (I think). (Lyana just looked over at me and told me my story is too long.) In short, the rest of the trip was absolute torture because having no socks, my shoes wore the skin off on a couple spots on my feet. But I pressed on through the pain, the thought of my family waiting for my return, not knowing my fate, gave me strength. I survived. But the rest of the trip, I couldn’t wear my shoes, and for two weeks after it was hard to walk. The end.
I think that’s enough drama for one day-haha. It’s late here and we just finished painting our entry way and living room—so we are exhausted. I promise I’ll get lots of pictures posted in my next entry.
Good night.
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