CAGLIARI, SARDINIA

Today, we arrived in Cagliari (pronounced ‘cal-ee-arr-ee’), in Southern Sardinia.

Originally, we were cooking up big plans for this port stop; looking at a couple of nature reserves some distance away from the ship; walkable, and accessible, possibly in conjunction with a bus or taxi ride, if necessary.

These plans changed when we realised that it was only going to be a relatively short stay, with an all-aboard time of 3:30pm. Add to this the fact that Tracey wanted to make use of the launderette (which you have to be up at the crack of dawn for on anything other than a port-day), we decided to scale-back our ideas in favour of a more modest meander.

We were parked alongside the Costa Toscana, Costa’s new monstrosity of a flagship, and a second Costa ship was also berthed on one of the outer quays. The Toscana carries a maximum of 6,554 passengers, and manages to make even the Spirit of Discovery look small.

As it turns out, it was also an important bank holiday for the citizens of Cagliari. Today was their ‘Liberation Day’, the 77th anniversary of the day in which Italy was liberated from Nazi-fascism and the path twoards the Republic began. The day was marked by a massive procession through the streets of Cagliari, which we were fortunate to witness.

We previously visited Cagliari on a cruise last year, and for whatever reason, it failed to excite us. Today, we chose to walk a similar route around the city, but in reverse, in the hope that it may grab our interest a little more. Our first stop was the Botanical Gardens which, for a €4 entrance fee actualy turned out to be quite interesting. It was was also quite busy, presumeably because of it being a Bank Holiday, but the sun was out, and I have to say that it was the warmest we’ve been on the whole trip.

Botanical Gardens aren’t usually our thing, but we were open to be changed on that. These turned out to be quite large, and extremely well presented. We particularly enjoyed looking at the large range of cacti they had on show, and the colours and smells were relaxing and thoroughly enjoyable.

At one point, as we were climbing some steps, I placed my hand on a handrail, and right onto what appeared to be a very large cricket, or locust. I’m not sure who was the more surprised, me or the insect. Either way, it made me jump and pull my hand away very quickly, and the locust-thing flew through the air and bounced a couple of times on the steps behind us. A slightly surreal moment, if I’m honest…

Next to the Botanical Gardens is a Roman Ampitheatre, which was closed when we visited last time, but was open today. Having said that, most of the site remains inaccessible while it is undergoung restoration, and ony a short section of pathway is open to visitors. We paid our €3 each anyway, and enjoyed a slightly closer look at the ruins than we’ve hitherto experienced; maybe one day we’ll get to see it returned to its full glory.

From the ampitheatre, our route took us up to a high point, and a small outdoor cafe that we had eaten at on our last visit, and was planning to eat at today. It was particularly busy, though, and because there seemed to be a lot of people smoking at tables that were placed quite close together, we changed our minds and carried on walking. Fortunately, a little further on, we came to another outdoor cafe that wasn’t nearly as busy, looked cleaner, and didn’t have any smokers sat at the tables. We stopped and had a drink and snacks before heading into the final section of our city meander.

Because we’d made the height, walking into the Old Town was easy. Here, we took a look inside the Cathedral and stopped to enjoy the expansive views across the city from several dedicated viewpoints. Eventually, we walked the many steps back down to lower levels and made our way back to the ship, in time for afternoon tea.

We’re now heading towards our final port-of-call, Lisbon, where we will be arriving in three days time. This means we have two sea-days before then, on which I’ll be teaching classes. After that, we’ll be on the home run, back across the Bay of Biscay, and are due to arrive back in Portsmouth on Bank Holiday Monday. It all seems to have gone rather quickly…