White beaches, blue water, sunny days, and a terrible cold!

Eight days ago I arrived in Sardinia feeling very tired, hot, and uncomfortably sweaty.  Now, I'm about to leave Sardinia, again feeling tired, hot, uncomfortably sweaty, and this time sick with a cold.  I have no idea what happened to me, but right now I'm congested with a runny nose, a sore throat, and an achey body.  Fortunately this sickness just started yesterday, so I was actually able to enjoy my stay in Sardinia while it lasted.

I really love it here; it's a beautiful island with a lot of colorful buildings, amazing beaches, happy people (happier than the rest of Italy), and good weather.  When I first arrived it reminded me of Nice, except in Italy, with Italians walking around instead of Frenchies.  I could tell as soon as I got here that Sardinians are much much nicer than Florentines -- they actually look at you when you ask a question.  But what you should know is that Sardinians are very very different than other Italians, which is why they don't like to say that they're Italians.  Their language is a mixture of French, Spanish, Catalan, and Italian and it's very difficult for non-Sardinians to understand them when they're not speaking proper Italian.  Physically, a majority of the people are very dark with black hair all around and very tan skin -- especially since summer has started.  So I guess I blended in well, haha.  The reason I came to Sardinia is of course because of the Phoenicians; they were the first people to really colonize this island, so there are a lot of Phoenician buildings/ruins that still remain, although many of them were built on top of later on by the Romans.  Also, I noticed many signs of restaurants, shops, roads, and towns that are a reference to the Phoenicians.  Unfortunately though, unlike Malta, the Sardinian language did not really retain any of the Phoenician language due to linguistic influences from the Roman Empire.  However, Sardinia has had a history completely different from that of Italy.

View of Cagliari

While in Cagliari (the capital city of the island), I visited three of the most breathtaking beaches I have every seen in my life.  One of them was probably just as beautiful as the Bahamas...but I've never been to the Bahamas so I'll have to wait and see before confirming that.  The water is as clear as bottled water for meters into the sea.  Then, as it gets less clear it becomes the color of the sky, but still 99% transparent.  It's really unbelievable.  This very beautiful beach - called Baia Chia - has fine sand that's  nearly white.  What made it even better was that there was almost no one at this beach, so it was very natural and peaceful.  On the other hand, the other two beaches were still beautiful, but were kind of packed with people.

Baia Chia's clear water

Baia Chia

Baia Chia

The hostel that I stayed at was located right in the middle of Cagliari, which was convenient.  It was a very clean, fancy hostel that almost resembled a hotel.  It's one of the only cheap forms of accommodation that exists in Calgiari, so there were a few families and old people also staying in this hostel.  During my eight days, I met a lot of interesting people from all over the world including a guy from Scotland, another guy from Poland, a woman from England, another woman from France, a Brazilian guy, two Brazilian girls, an Australian, a very nice Italian man, two old Italian women, and plenty of Sardinians.  (Thanks to the three Brazilians, I've started learning some Portuguese...of course I'm excited about that.)  A lot of these people were lone travelers, so I was able to make friends easily and I really enjoyed the company while I was there.  And the two bar tenders/bar owners in the hostel were very young, cool Sardinian guys who have traveled quite a bit...I became good friends with them too.  But the downside to all this was that my hostel had no internet, therefore it was really difficult for me to get internet all week. I finally found an internet café, but I tried to avoid going there since it costs money.  I also found out that the city of Cagliari provides free internet on the streets to those that have an Italian cellphone number.  That was really cool and convenient, but I could only use my iPhone, not my computer, and it was a limited amount of internet each day.  So I'm sorry, family, for not being able to talk to you :)

The Courtyard/Bar at my hostel in Cagliari

I was fortunate enough to have a nice friend here in Sardinia who was able to show me around and teach me a lot about Sardinia during the time of the Phoenicians.  There were a lot of important places for me to visit, including an island off of Sardinia called Sant'Antioco, where I'm sure that a majority of the population is of Phoenician descent.  The reason I don't mention much about my research on this blog is because it will all be available once I'm finished, but for now I don't really want to give anything away.

View from Nora, an ancient Phoenician site near Cagliari

So now, I'm spending my day like I usually spend most of them -- in an airport waiting to board a plane. I'm off again to a new place...this time Sevilla, Spain and Gibraltar!

Panorama of Cagliari