First of all, I had my first Ryanair experience! It was a bit of a task because we had to first take a train to the Luxembourg Gare (train station) which is about forty minutes from where I live in Differdange. Then we had to take a bus from Luxembourg to a tiny little airport in Germany called Frankfurt-Hahn. For Ryanair you need to get to the gate at least 30 minutes early or they won't let you on, so a lot of people have warned us to get to the airport at least an hour early, if not two hours. Funny story - we booked these tickets for Alghero over the summer and I hadn't quite worked out how long it took to get to Frankfurt-Hahn but I figured, Hey! Get out of class at 11:50, we could probably make a 15:05 flight! Um, no, that is literally impossible. With forty minutes into Lux city plus an hour and forty-five minute bus ride (that for us turned into two hours due to traffic), clearly we wouldn't have made it even if we were allowed to run onto the plane as it took off. All that being said, Mary and I got SO SO LUCKY that our history class on Friday got canceled and we made it to the airport with time to spare. Anyways, a roughly two hour flight got turned into a five hour travel experience during which we were pretty much running blind. Good news is that my backpack is definitely carry-on compliant if I can keep it under 10 kg… Score.
Anyways! When we got to Alghero we were tired but raring to go. Since we couldn't figure out the bus system - aka where it even picked people up - we got an overpriced cab to the hostel. I was really pleasantly surprised by the hostel. It had big rooms with normal beds instead of bunk beds, free internet, free breakfast, sold bus tickets, and even though our check out on Sunday was at 10am, they let us keep our bags in the luggage room and use their showers after we went to the beach in the morning. The only slight downside was that the hostel was in a small town called Fertilia, about three miles away from Alghero. It was a nice little town, but it made getting into and out of the city where everything was kind of difficult since the bus only came every hour and we never did really figure out when the last bus ran from Alghero. I heard 10:30, 11:30, and midnight, so who knows.
Back to Friday. We dropped off our stuff and caught the bus into the city and at this point we just wandered. I saw this great pair of boots in the first store we walked into marked half off for 24 euro. But obviously I couldn't buy something in the first store we checked out, so I figured we could just go back later since it was right next to the bus stop. Sadly when we went back they were closed! I actually ended up not buying anything but food all weekend, but I do kind of regret not getting those boots. We spent a while just looking at stores - I was looking for a fall jacket and Mary was looking for boots - until we started getting really hungry. By then we were in the old town city center, which was a little more touristy, and so restaurants were all more expensive. We stopped and got drinks and appetizers at a restaurant overlooking the harbor, but we were still famished when we left so we went on a search for cheaper restaurants. It's my personal opinion that run-of-the-mill restaurants in tourist areas are never worth their prices and the best places are tucked away in hole-in-the-wall areas like back streets. Unfortunately that principle kind of failed us the first night. We had done a loop of the restaurants in the old town without much luck and I was so hungry I just insisted we eat somewhere and we stopped at a restaurant on a back street. Not good. I got ravioli that tasted alright but it was obviously no homemade ravioli (a la my certain favorite restaurant in San Lorenzo). The worst though was that we got a bottle of dessert wine to share because the owner of the restaurant said it would be cheaper than getting glasses of white or red wine (not sure how that works… I think we were all collectively confused about the whole question-answer process). It was awful! It seriously tasted like honey perfume flavored cough syrup… needless to say we didn't even get close to finishing it and had to get a bottle of water to share. Don't worry though; we got gelato afterward so it wasn't a total food flop for the night.
On Saturday we were really excited to get into the city again because we had this grand plan to rent mopeds and then find a nice beach someplace we couldn't reach by bus. This plan got derailed by the fact that you had to be 21 to drive - so I couldn't get my own, but Mary could and we could switch off secretly - but more specifically by the fact that they wanted to freeze 500 euro in our bank accounts while we had the scooter out, I guess as collateral in case something happened. So then we had the terrible alternative of just going to the beach instead. Life is tough.
:: we were ok with going to the beach if we had to ::
When we got hungry we left the beach in search of a restaurant I had found through an online tourist guide. I was determined to find this place because the guide claimed it was inexpensive and good. Unfortunately, it was closed, but on the way there we had passed a cute little terrace restaurant tucked away in the corner of a street. This time, the stumbling-upon-it method worked like a charm. I got very tasty gnocchi sardi, or gnocchi with traditional sardinian sausage and cheese. Buonissimo! This was definitely my favorite meal of the weekend. I was so stuffed I almost felt sick, but that was fine because after a little more wandering and gelato, we went home to take a nap.
:: we met this really friendly cat and named him Ferdinand ::
At night we met some new friends from our hostel on the way back into Alghero and spent the evening with them. They were Juan and a woman who's name started with 'M' though I never quite got the pronunciation. They were both from Spain and traveling alone at the moment, so it was fun to get to know them and learn more about their culture. The only thing really to mention about Saturday night is again food related - I tried a traditional Sardinian dessert called seadas that was very good, but it sounds weird. It was cheese inside a fried shell covered with a honey sauce. Strange but good. The night was just really relaxing because Alghero wasn't really a going-out sort of town. People were out on Saturday night, but they were more just walking around the town outside. I liked it... but since we thought the last bus went back at 10:30, we went back to Fertilia and hung out there for awhile.
Sunday morning we just went to the beach in Fertilia and I actually enjoyed it more. It was a smaller, but a little cleaner, had clearer water, and was more private. Very nice beach… Juan showed up a little later in the day so we hung out with him some more and got lunch and gelato before Mary and I had to catch our bus to the airport around three. Shout out to Melanie - I had diavola pizza for lunch and it was delicious!
:: the beach we went to on Sunday - Punta Negra ::
Altogether, it was a really nice, relaxing weekend. One thing that I really liked about Sardegna was that it was a tourist place - people from all over were definitely vacationing there - but it didn't feel touristy. I have no idea how that works, but it was nice! Another thing I liked was that it was Italian! Ahhh I've missed Italian culture. Obviously it was a little different than Rome, but it felt so right to be saying scuzi and grazie and ciao again! In some ways, I feel more comfortable in Italian culture than in Luxembourgish culture, but that could be for any number of reasons… I should probably give Lux a little more time. Regardless, had a great weekend. Now back to fall...
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