Sardegna - La Vendetta

I vaguely remember hearing a text alert which prompted my to open my eyes, only to be dazzled by the lights that were still on. So I got undressed, turned the lights off, ignored the text and turned over to go back to sleep again.

I vaguely remember getting another text alert and this time looked at the phone to see a message from Julia saying “breakfast at 10”, and then turning over and going back to sleep.

I vaguely remember hearing another text message arrive and this one said “meet in the lobby at 11.20” – it was, by my iPhone, 10 am so I had plenty of time to get my shit together and meet the girls. I get up and there are the remnants of last night’s excesses about me, namely an empty packet of Pringles lying on the duvet. There are no coffee facilities in the room, and I look too horrendous to go down to breakfast, in case I put people off their food, so I consider ordering room service until I realise that I hadn’t set my iPhone clock to Italy time and it was, in fact, 11 am!

I rush around, have a quick SSS, and head down to the foyer, to see Tamsin asleep on the sofa in reception and Julia and Sarah looking a bit fragile too…Anyway, we head off in the car (I am now navigating as there is no way Tamsin is in any fit state to read a map) and decide to go to the biyatch beach (Baia Chia) which is about 40 km southwest of Cagliari and near small towns of Pula and Nora. After driving about town for a bit (all looking lovely in the sunshine) we decide we need a map (plus full fat coke, sausage rolls, coffee, lard etc) and pull into a service station which sells none of the above so we wander hopelessly about trying to get some drinks at least and manage to find a café which provides our sustenance – it’s amazing what a cake of coke can do; I felt great afterwards! 

The consumption of sugar has not improved my sense of direction though and we are not heading southwest yet (in fact, we are going uphill which means we must be going north, according to Julia) and decide to head to Villasimius instead, as we see signs for that (Southeast from Cagliari). Almost as soon as we had decided to head there, we re-found the signed to Baia Chia, Nora and Pula and resumed our original quest.

Nothing to do with the fact we were all probably still drunk!

After about an hour, we found a lovely coastal road and it puts Julia’s driving skills to the test – the road is incredibly winding and undulating – in fact, it was beginning to make me feel a bit sick, but I tried to put that to the back of my mind! Tamsin was still sleeping in the back and Sarah and me were reading excerpts from the guidebook on the places we were passing. Pula and Nora were ancient settlements apparently and there were the remains of a Roman civilisation there, plus various archaeological sites/excavations that we could go and look at. I make this suggestion, but this was met (rather surprisingly I thought) with the deafening sound of tumbleweed. Beach it is then!

The scenery is spectacular and we all comment that none of us has taken any photos yet (I had forgotten my camera that morning in my haste to get out) and we quickly decide to stop and take some.

The car behind us was not impressed by this decision…

Anyway, we head on and reach the beach, and I was feeling somewhat jaded as we trekked form the car park to the sand and plonked ourselves on the sun beds under the parasols for our afternoon on the beach. Unfortunately we were not allowed to sit there, as they belonged to the hotel that was attached to the beach, and we were moved on. I did hope that as we looked so awful he might take pity on us and let us stay, but it was probably the fact that we did look so bad that we were moved on…

So we found the beach bar and sat there for a while, and I went up to get some more hangover remedies – coke, water and ice-cream, and it seemed as soon as I made the decision to go up to the counter, so did everyone else on the beach. A nice man helped me with the translation from my rather rubbish “kwatro agwar, ee kwatro cock-a-cola, ee doo-oh magnum bianco ee doo-oh magnum chocolado” into proper Italian so that the waitress could understand me.

Cock-a-cola has never tasted so nice, and I sat there whilst the girls went for a swim (in my haste this morning I also forgot my trunks and a towel). I must have looked pathetic, all pasty and hungover under the shade of the sombrero.

At about 3 we headed off in search for some lunch, as we were all feeling pretty starving by now, and we drove further along the winding coastal road for what seemed like miles, though ghost town after ghost town, and came across a small place (Teulada) with a café, which was closed! Eventually we spotted this sign for a bar and stopped the car whilst I investigated: it was open! I sent an “Aperto” message to Julia and waved frantically at them to join me where the owner was happy to make up a few paninis that were absolutely delicious!

Mind you, a toenail cheese sandwich would probably have tasted nice at this point!

In the bar there was a large television playing all sorts of power ballad songs, and it reminded us that we had not turned on the music in the car yet to find some Euro trash station to sing-a-long to. We then saw Robbie and Gary’s duet, which was really awful and looked like they were about to shag! I Google it later and apparently it was supposed to be like that…

After being fed and watered, we head back out on the road and decide to head back to Cagliari as the drive was probably about 2 hours along the coastal road. Weirdly, we seemed to have entered into a vortex and within 5 minutes of setting off, we were back at the beach again, having cut out virtually an hour of driving on the coast! Perhaps we’d all fallen asleep and just don’t remember the drive.

We are sensible tonight and don’t want to have another heavy session on the booze and we look for recommended places in the guidebook to eat: there are a few in Cagliari old town and we make a reservation at this lovely place called St Remy, where I share a delicious sea bass with Tamsin – the fish was really fresh (in fact it was on a table looking at you as you sat down, much to Sarah’s dismay). We are all a bit jaded by the end and we head back to the hotel and to bed.