Costa Rei Beaches

Beaches along this long coastline are characterized by golden sands, clear water, a breath taking lake system serving as a nature reserve, and the bays of Sant’Elmo to the south. The playful hues created by the sun in the morning, noon, and at dusk is one thing that keeps on drawing tourists to return to this paradise. Rock formations also dot the long sandy beaches leading to rocky bays and producing scenes worthy of a painting.

If you visit the area, check out attractions such as the Garden Beach Cala Sinzias and the Free Beach Club. Make the most of your Sardinia Island holidays by trying out several activities, including diving, horse riding, and wind surfing with your friends or your family.

Vignola Beach and Capo Testa

Vignola beach, with its white sand is the ideal place to visit if you are traveling with children. The waves lap gently against the shore. The Rena Maiori beach on the way to Capo Testa is renowned for its fantastic dunes and the privacy it offers. Capo Testa, a small peninsula also has rock formations commonly found along Sardinian coasts. These formations are as much as an attraction as the beaches because of their magnificence.

Capo Testa is also an ideal venue for windsurfing activities.

Sant’Elmo

The beaches of Sant’Elmo are known as among the most beautiful in Sardinia and the world over. Located south of Costa Rei, Sant’Elmo also offers rock formations and sandy bays that are truly a work of art. They stand like sculptures molded by huge hands as they come in many recognizable shapes like that of a whale or bears.

Sant’Elmo also hosts coves, hills, and lush plantation fields that will surely be one of the most pleasant memories of your Italian island vacation. One spot you should not miss in Sant’Elmo is the Cala Sinzia Bay off south, where the finest white sands of Sardinia Island awaits you.

Villasimius

The Villasimius Harbor is another spot in Sardinia that promises what could possibly be the most memorable beach holidays in Italy for local and foreign tourists alike. Spiaggia di Porto Giuncu could be found near the harbor. It is considered a gem in Sardinia island because although it lacks the tropical attractions offered in other countries, it boasts of the whitest, finest sand and the bluest waters.

The Lake Timi Ama is another treasure of the coast. Pink flamingoes thrive in the area, a fresh sight for weary travelers. Towards the Cape Carbona, tourists may even get the chance to get a glimpse of jolly dolphins from a boat or from Cape Carbona. Other swimming spots worth trying out in Villasimius include the bay Cala Pira, Serpentara Island, and Spiaggia di Campulongu, where you are sure to make the most of your travel in Italy.

Located in the middle of Mediterranean sea, it’s the second largest island after Sicily. It has been dominated from centuries by different conquerors such as Phoenicians, Romans, Spanish, Catalans, Pisans, Moors, Piedmontese, but has also developed an autochthonous civilization named Nuraghic era, dated back 3.000 years b.c., and for many aspects still mysterious.

Sardinian history is for this reason extremely complicated and hard to explain, but makes this island so different creating a fascinating mixture between different cultures. When you travel it around you can easily get different feelings, watching local architecture, tasting food, listening to local languages. This feature make it a never boring place to visit. Sometimes you may drive for a few kilometres and discover a totally different world. That’s why we Sardinians consider it as a small continent and not just an island.

Men have done only a part of the work, nature has done all the rest. Sardinia has a unique environment that is result of a millenary erosion of its mainland caused by sea currents and winds. Crystal seas, sandy dunes, cliffs, sandy coves, uninhabited archipelagos, are the best features of a spectacular coastline. A lush vegetation, valleys, rivers, lakes, caves, and rocky hills make the Sardinian inland equally interesting.

An ideal tour of Sardinia starts from the coast in order to enjoy its beach life, from the end of April to half October, and continue visiting the inland. Moving from north to south it’s possible to discover totally different places, cultures, food and wine traditions, UNESCO world heritage sites.

Sardinia offers several kind of accommodations that meet the needs of different customers such as hotels that may be family-run, charming or luxury, basic or luxury villas, holiday homes, apartments. A full range of accommodations that will allow you to manage your stay in a comfortably way and to plan your self-drive or guided vacation in Sardinia.

Sardinia’s northwest coast

Alghero was not greatly disturbed by foreign influences in modern times until it suffered bombings during World War II. Alghero is one of those places that the Italians have been happy to keep to themselves. Every year thousands upon thousands of main land Italians swarm to Alghero in August, the traditional Italian holiday season.

Alghero has become a major package destination, yet it has retained its distinctive Catalan character – the result of intense Spanish colonisation in the fourteenth century. Strangely given this faintly exotic tinge, it is simultaneously the most “Italian” of Sardinia’s holiday towns, its old centre a tight web of narrow lanes packed with boutiques, bars and restaurants. The town has countless boutiques and a busy weekly market as well as a fruit, vegetable, fish and meat market held in the town centre on Monday to Friday.

Alghero is often compared to mainland resorts like Sorrento or San Remo, and if it lacks their glamorous edge, it’s also refreshingly free of their cynical hard sell. Even a short stay should be enough to get acquainted with the abundance of enticing beaches in the vicinity and to investigate the area’s most important archaeological sites, not to mention the famous Grotta di Nettuno (Neptune’s Grotto) on the point at Capo Caccia.

Outside the resort the northwest coast presents a wild and rocky aspect, sparsely populated and ideal for roaming. Although public transport services are adequate for travelling between the main towns and villages, hiring a car gives you more freedom, while renting a bike is an enjoyable way to cover the shorter distances. The local terrain is rewarding and challenging for walkers, with few overly strenuous tracts though they should be aware that the rough and rugged nature of the coast means that much of the alluring Alghero – Bosa stretch, for example, must be tackled on the road; fortunately, it’s free of much traffic most of the time.

Alghero is a very rare Italian phenomenon: a tourist town that is also a flourishing fishing port, giving it an economic base entirely independent of the summer hordes. The predominant flavour here is Catalan, owing to the wholesale Hispanicisation that followed the overthrow of the Doria family by Pedro IV of Aragon in 1353 – a process so thorough that the town became known as “Barcelonetta” and is still known as Little Barcelona to the locals.

According to some, Alghero’s name is derived from the Arabic, al-ghar, meaning cave or cavern, possibly a reference to the celebrated Grotta Di Nettuna [http://www.in-alghero.com] nearby, still Alghero’s largest tourist attraction. To access the caves you can either take a boat trip or a drive along the coast. The boat stops at the entrance to the caves, the drives involves a rather energetic walk down approximately 750 very steep steps. The views are amazing on the walk down, just bear in mind that you’ll have to climb the 750 very steep steps after touring the caves with only the rock face to look at!

Others suggest that its original name was S’Alighem (L’Alguer in Catalan) meaning “seaweedy” or “place of algae”, though there’s little evidence of this today in the clear blue seas, although the Lido beach in the town does get rather a lot of seaweed accumulating on it’s shoreline. In fact, it is the purity of the water together with the spectacular coast that have helped to put the town on the map in recent times.

Tour operators homed in on Alghero in the post-war holiday boom, which gave birth to the boom of hotels and restaurants that exist today, catering to a constant influx of mostly British and German tourists. As you might expect, the choice of accommodation is extensive, but booking is essential at any time. Although over the past forty years hotels have sprung up all along the coastline the Alghero town council still has very strict building laws for the area to stop the coastline from becoming a skyline of high rise hotels.

Thankfully, the resort has escaped the fate of many other Mediterranean holiday spots and resisted the lure of tweeness and commercial saturation. Instead, it remains a fairly easygoing place, with a sharp but good-humoured population, who themselves like nothing better than a good night out in a trattoria or a stroll along the passagiata, a one and a half mile promenade. In fact the quality of Alghero’s restaurants is generally impressive – the presence of the fishing port ensures a regular supply of the freshest seafood, and the varied local cuisine also makes good use of the Catalan culinary tradition. The town is additionally blessed by its proximity to some of Sardinia’s most famous vine yards, producing eminently quaffable wines. As well as wonderful local Sardinian food it’s possible to find some wonderful Pizzeria’s in the town.

However the real attraction of Alghero is its atmospheric old town centre, an intricate mesh of mainly car-free lanes at the heart of which Via Carlo Alberto, Via Principe Umberto and Via Roma have most of the bars and shops. The old town’s finest architecture dates from the sixteenth century, built in a congenial Catalan-Gothic style; a walkabout should also take in the series of seven towers which dominate Alghero’s centre and the stout girdle of walls that encompass it. The Spanish connection is never far away: the street names are all in the Catalan dialect – carrer for “via”, placa for “piazza”, iglesia for “chiesa and palau for “palazzo” (though, they’re also in Italian which is what most of the locals use). Beyond this historic core, the new town’s grid of parallel streets In little of interest beyond its restaurants and hotels.

The drive out to the north of Alghero will take you through the low-key resort of Fertilia, an alternative place to stay if Alghero is full. If you do stay in Fertillia be sure to check out the old Roman bridge that still stands acrocc the river. Fertillia was built during the 1940′s as one of Mussolini’s land reclamation projects, there are a few bars and trattoria’s here but only enough to keep you amused for a day. Close by is the area’s most important nuraghic complex, Nuraghe di Palmavera, not to mention some fine beaches such as La Bombardi, Lazzaretto and Mugoni. Inland, you could drop into another archaeological site belonging to an earlier era, the necropolis at Anghelu Ruju, set amidst the endless vineyards that produce Sardinia’s excellent Cannonau wine.

Further a field, the undeveloped coast south of Alghero is a jagged and dramatic interplay of rock and sea, with a few select beaches tucked out of sight, There are no habitations here, not until you climb to the village of Villanova Monteleone, situated inland amidst a bare mountainous terrain. In the opposite direction, the country north of Alghero is much flatter, but there are a couple of places worth exploring: Lago di Baratz , harbouring protected wildlife, and the abandoned mining centre of Argentaria, dominated by the eighteenth-century workings of a once flourishing industry.

Indeed! In our opinion the best way to discover Sardinia is to explore it by car (your own or an rented one).

A day of history and sea (with an appetizing final).

The itinerary that I suggest to you today will lead you to a some sort of time travel. From the depths of the Neolithic, through the lesser known recent history of Sardinia, until the touristic present.

Tip: to easily visit the places that I suggest is better wake up not too late. Although the distances in km are not that large, it is better to travel slowly from place to place of the map of Sardinia in order to appreciate the incredible views that this region offers.

Stintino and Alghero are only 55 km far, but might not exist two Sardinias so different. If Stintino falls partly within the parameters of classical tourism Sardinia, Alghero is a world apart. This is due its history and its traditions. In fact, Alghero is a Catalan oasis in Italian territory. And the Catalan heritage is still very present, beginning with its language, that is a variant of Catalan.

But this itinerary does not include a visit to Alghero (it would need at least an entire day to visit it), but its surroundings. Near Alghero, in fact, there are many historical and architectural treasures of Sardinia.

The necropolis of Anghelu Ruiu is certainly one of these treasures. Sited not far from Alghero, this necropolis discovered in 1903 dates back to Neolithic times. It is a true system of catacombs richly decorated. Although the original archaeological finds are now at the archaeological

museum of Sassari, just one km from the cemetery you can see some great replicas at the Museum and Estate Winery down the road to Porto Torres.

On the coast and midway between Alghero and Stintino, there is Argentiera, an ancient and abandoned mining city. Since the Roman times until 1963, when the mine ran out, here mined silver. Since then the city was abandoned and everything from homes to the mines, from the chapel to offices remained intact as if the people who lived and worked there disappeared in question of few minutes. It is a disturbing experience and able to give chills down my spine even in full sun.

To recover yourself, you can decide to end the day relaxing on the white sand beach of La Pelosa near Stintino. The places is plenty of restaurants and cafes where you can end the day having dinner watching the sunset.

Sardinia

Sardinia is in fact a real world apart, offering endless opportunities for diversion and that is offered completely for every type of tourist.

For example, if you want to escape the ‘monotony’ of the sun and sand seaside holiday, and maybe if you’re staying in one of the many villas in Stintino, you could spend a day exploring the National Park of the Asinara island.

The National Park of the Asinara island is fairly recent, having been established only in 1997. The island of Asinara was for nearly a century home to one of Italy’s most famous prison, and thanks to its status as “prison island” was saved by the boom in tourism that – for better or for worse – has transformed, for example, the island of La Maddalena, even though it is true that man’s presence has transformed the area, so one of the objectives of the Park is the recovery of the original flora and fauna of the island, for example, the original White Donkey (or Albine Donkey) of which only 120 specimens survived.

Asinara is semiarid, an island where it rains very little and is beaten by the West wind and the Mistral. A place that offers magical views, in which the stone punctuated by green Mediterranean vegetation is reflected in its turquoise waters.If you visit the island for the first time, it’s best to rely on a one of the many organized tours that are offered. The group visits aboard the train or bus are recommended to get an overview of the island.

If instead you want to make a more detailed visit, you should use an SUV.

Instead, if you have already have visited the park, we advise you to live it with freedom, by bicycle or on foot trekking the trails. You can also explore the island on horseback. And, of course, you can spend the day exploring the villages on the island and / or exploiting the beauty of its beaches.

The sea, then, offers further opportunities for diversion: trips with the fishermen, diving or exploring the coves with a private sailboat.

For more information please visit the official website of the Asinara Park.