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I returned a few days ago from 3 nights in Cagliari at Hotel Calamosca, 3 nights in Alghero at Hotel Catalunya and 4 nights in San Pantoleo (in the vicinity of Costa Smeralda) at Hotel Rocce Sarde. From Sardegna we did a day boat trip to the Maddalena Archipelago and took the ferry to Bonifacio, Corsica. We utilized Rent.it for an automatic car rental.

We then flew to Naples and we picked up another car through thrifty.it. Both of these companies rates were much lower than autoeurope for an automatic. We spent 2 nights at the Grand Hotel Pianeta in Maratea, and 8 nights in my family's town in Calabria. In Calabria we day tripped to Tropea and Taormina.

When I get myself organized I will write up a trip report and post pics, but for now if anyone has questions please ask.

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My father & I (28 & 58 years old) departed for 20 nights in Italy on 8/11. My father was born in Italy but moved to the USA over 40 years ago. He speaks Italian, but it's mostly dialect so sometimes other Italians have difficulty understanding him. I have been studying Italian for almost a year now. Neither one of us has ever vacationed for that long and I was very excited about the length of the trip.

We departed from Newark-Rome, then Rome-Cagliari. I was impressed with the security in Rome, they pulled me aside and checked my carry-on thoroughly. I saw them do this to many people. I was very lucky that Delta had already changed my connecting flight to Cagliari to a later time, because if they hadn't I might have missed my flight to Cagliari due to us having left Newark 1 1/2 hours late. The Cagliari flight also departed Rome 1 hour later than scheduled.

When we arrived in Cagliari my luggage came out on the conveyer belt and my father's did not. We spent about 1 1/2 hours filling out paperwork with Alitalia. A security guard told my father that another flight from Rome was due in soon, and that we should wait to see if his luggage shows up. Sure enough, it did. My question is why did this information not show up in their system when we were filling out all the missing luggage paperwork? There was about 6-7 people on our flight missing luggage. It would have saved us much stress, but in the end thank god it worked out.

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After the luggage drama we picked up our automatic rental car that I had booked on rent.it, the company the car came from was Eurorent. I had prepaid for the rental. I added the extra insurance coverages, and even with that the price was dramatically lower than Autoeurope. I had absolutely no problems with this company.

The drive from the airport to Hotel Calamosca was really easy. I was glad that for this time of year that I had opted to stay outside the city and on the waterfront. The beach at the hotel didn't look like anything great (I never actually went to it), but the views from the rooms were very nice. The hotel is a simple 3 star. The rooms were quite large, as were the bathrooms. It was clean, and we paid the supplement to have a/c in our rooms. They have a restaurant that was packed every night, we didn't do half board so we never ate dinner there. We drove into Cagliari for dinner each night and parked in the public parking area on Via Roma. It was really easy once you got used to it, even at night. We ate at various restaurants in the neighborhoods behind Via Roma (thanks for the tip GAC). Each one was good, but I must admit I was shocked to see "Bistecca di Cavallo," (horse steak) on almost every menu.

That first afternoon I drove (I did all the driving on the trip, I wasn't so sure how my father would fare if he drove), toward Villasimius. There was, of course, loads of traffic and the road was full of twists and turns, but the views were gorgeous. I probably should have taken into consideration that my father would be tired from the traveling because he was somewhat cranky and I don't believe we ever actually made it to Villasimius. We went to some beach that was packed for a little while and had a strawberry granita.

When I am on vacation I am really hyper and full of energy, while my father would be content most of the time to just relax. This difference in travel styles would rear it's ugly head many times over the next 3 weeks.....

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Day 2-

We drove to the ruins at Nora and took a tour in Italian. Afterwards we drove to Chia beach. The scenery was absolutely beautiful, and it actually wasn't too crowded. There's a small hill you can climb up to, and there's a tower at where you can pay about 1E to go to the top of the tower. I took some really beautiful pictures from up there.

We had forgotten some very important items for this trip, the most important being beach towels. We asked around in Cagliari and all the stores were sold out.

That night we ate in town and I had Sebadas for the 1st time. They are a traditional dessert, fried ravioli with honey. They are delicious and I had them many times after this. We also had mussels, which seemed to be a very popular dish in Sardinia. I usually don't like mussels but I really liked them everywhere that we went on the island.

Day 3-

In the am we went sightseeing in Cagliari. We walked to the Antiteatro Romano, but if I had read my guidebook more carefully I would have noticed the part where they gave a heads up that in the summertime it is pretty much covered up for concerts and such. There wasn't much to see because of that and it was a fairly long walk from where we had parked in front of the department store "La Rinascente" on Via Roma.

We then went to the Duomo, and to the Bastione. The views from the Bastione over Cagliari were beautiful.

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In the afternoon we drove to Teulada. The one thing I learned while driving in Italy for the first time is that distances can be much longer than expected. While at Chia the day before we had seen signs for Teulada that said (I believe) that it was about 17km away. What I didn't know was that it was the crazy twisty-turny mountain driving that takes twice as long. Once we were out there we asked a local vendor where the best beach was, he said "Le Dune" and "Porto Pino." On the way I saw what looked like huge mountains of snow, but I realized it must be the sand dunes that I had read about. At that point we had to be at least 3 miles from them and they still looked vast. We saw the signs for the "Le Dune" but the road looked like it didn't go anywhere so we continued to Porto Pino.

Porto Pino had really calm and beautiful water, but the beach was pure madness (typical in August I suppose). From where we were sitting I could see the huge dunes on directly across, so I decided to set out on foot to see them. It was at this point on day 3 where my dad & I started to get on each other's nerves. He stayed with our items at Porto Pino because he wasn't interested in the dunes. It took me an hour of walking on the beach to get to the dunes. Once there I was absolutely facinated by the huge sand dunes, and I climbed up them and took a zillion pictures. The name of the area is "Sabbie Bianche," and people are only allowed here in July & August because it is on military land.

Once I returned back to my father it was about 2 1/2 hours later and he was fuming because he felt like he couldn't leave our items on the beach to walk the 6 feet to go into the water. Now there was nothing all that valuable with us, so I'm not so sure why he was so paranoid but I realized at this point that the next 17 days with my father were going to be challenging.