This Article Will Make You Want to Visit Sardinia

Let me show you how a holiday in Sardinia can look like

Sunrise in Nora, South Sardinia. All the pictures in this article are by the author Claudia M. Zedda

Disclaimer: I was in Sardinia for 3 weeks and I had the most beautiful time, so I thought I would share it with you all. In this article, I focus on South Sardinia because that’s where my family and I are located — but the rest of Sardinia is just as fascinating.

Sardinia is the second biggest island located in the Mediterranean sea. Its capital, Cagliari, is my hometown. It is a bilingual island where both Italian and Sardinian are spoken by the population, although the Sardinian language is gravely endangered as only older generations can speak it fluently.

Sardinia has an ancient historical heritage: the territory is scattered with ‘nuraghi’, truncated conic structures that historians dated to 1500 to 400 BCE. There are about 7000 around the island and can be found in the most unusual places!

Because of its ancient history, Sardinians are really proud to be Sardinians — so much that if you ask them where they are from they will say Sardinia before saying Italy! There’s so much I can tell you about this magical place, but I’ll do my best to sum it up here for you. Let’s get started!

The beaches

If you are going to Sardinia you must plan a few days to spend on the beach.

Sardinia is one of the most popular holiday destinations in the summer, particularly for Italians. Spanish and French tourists are also common, but this incredible island is pretty much undiscovered by the rest of the world. You can expect to see golden sand, crystal clear waters, cute little fish swimming around you and an extremely peaceful environment that will give you a new life. Let me show you a few pictures I took in different areas of Sardinia:

The Weather

Sardinia is known to have the best long, dry summers in Italy. Temperatures vary between 30 and 40 degrees Celsius, with July and August being the hottest months.

April/May and September/October are, in my opinion, the best times to visit as it’s still sunny but not as hot. Winter has mild temperatures between 10 and 20 degrees Celsius. Sunny weather is guaranteed unless you happen to be very unlucky — but even then, rain usually lasts only a couple of days.

The Food

Where do I start.. the food is just amongst the most delicious food I have ever tasted in my life.

You get the best of the Italian food but also the best quality food from the island, such as seafood, meat, fruit and vegetables. Most of the food found in the shops is made in Sardinia.

If you are a fan of seafood, this is the place for you. Octopus, mussels, and prawns are commonly found in restaurants. However, porcheddu is our traditional dish, which is simply Sardinian pork cooked on the spit.

Pasta allo scoglio (one of my favourites!)

And the best part of all this is that.. food and drink are so cheap!! A pizza is usually between 6 to 9 euro, an Aperol spritz is usually 5 euro (and it always comes with some small bits to eat too), and a glass of house wine can be found at 3 euro!

The activities

There are a lot of water-related activities that can be easily done on the island such as snorkeling, paddling, surfing, and so on.

While I was over there I went on a boat tour with my boyfriend around the coast of Cagliari. We also got to eat sushi, drink wine and see the sunset on the boat. If you are interested in this activity reach out and I will give you more information privately (make sure you don’t get seasick for this experience).

My boyfriend and I also went to visit the botanical garden in Cagliari which hosts more than 2000 species of plants from all over the world.

It took us around 1 hour to see it all — it was huge! The only downside was that the mosquitos loved our blood and that we went pretty late at lunchtime, so it was way too warm to fully enjoy it. However, we still made the most out of the experience.

The tickets were 4 euros each, but paying an extra 2 euros would have got you a virtual guide around the garden (we didn’t feel like we needed it as we just wanted to explore). I highly recommend visiting.

Me in Cagliari’s botanical garden (Picture by my boyfriend)

This is my very quick snapshot of what a holiday in Sardinia can look like — What do you think of it? Will you visit it next summer? Let me know in the comments below :)

Thank you for reading and for being part of my journey here on Medium.

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