Sardinia is an “Italian” island located in the Mediterranean
Sea just south of the island of Corsica (France), and west of the Italian
peninsula. There is a lot to say about Sardinian identity and how they are
truly not Italian; however, I will let my personal hero and famous travel
personality Anthony Bourdain clarify this a bit better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRL47lXOuk8
Additionally, although talking about traditional food from
my travel destinations is one of my favorite topics, I think my man Bourdain
did a good job at that as well. Thus, rather than adding anything new, I will
corroborate that the slow smoke-roasted, pig, cow, lamb, donkey and horse (yes,
donkey and horse are traditional dishes in Sardinia and you’ll find them in all
restaurant menus) really is as good as advertised. By destiny, or how my
girlfriend would describe it, extreme luck, we decided to drive to Sassari, the
second largest city in Sardinia on June 2nd, where they were
celebrating the day of the birth of the Italian republic (I know quite ironic
if you have already seen the Anthony Bourdain video linked above). At the
festival, in the main city square (plazad’Italia), I found a very large number
of people surrounding a huge roast of multiple animals, what these animal where
I will leave to your imagination (see image to the right). Of course I tried
these animals, and unless you are a vegetarian, I would not recommend leaving Sardinia
without trying them as well. 
So leaving the former topics to Tony, I will focus on more
of what he would ridicule as “Samantha Brown” kind of traveling, but giving it
a new twist for those people on a tight budget. I’ve told my best friend in the
US, who is soon moving to Germany, how cheap it is to travel in Europe if you
know how to do it. So I decided to write these blog to give my insights, I
guess mostly for my American friends, as I am sure most of these things are no
secret to my European friends. My girlfriend and I flew from Frankfurt to
Alghero (Northwest Sardinia) and back, rented a car that we used for the whole
stay, rented a whole apartment for 5 nights near the beach, went spelunking in
an amazing historical cave, scuba dived and snorkeled, and last but not least
ate like kings for a grand total € 580.98.
Before I tell you how you can a have dream vacation like this one, at
such a low budget, I will describe a bit more of why you should go to NW
Sardinia. First of all, it’s a place full of history that has been conquered by
many kingdoms including the Roman Empire in prehistory, the kingdom of Aragon
(Spain) in the 15th century, and now the republic of Italy; where 3
different languages: Italian, Sardinian and Catalan are spoken as a fingerprint
of this rich history. Second, this section of the Mediterranean Sea is full of
marine life to appreciate snorkeling
or diving, especially the many underwater caves that you can explore if you are
an experienced diver. When I was in Nashville for my PhD, I was introduced into
spelunking and cave mapping by one of the most adventurous and fun guys I know;
since then I am very fond of caves and cave formations. The stalagmite and
stalactite formations at a cave (Neptune’s Grotto) formed by the Mediterranean
Sea in Capo Caccia, at the further most Northwest corner of Sardinia, are by
far the best I have ever seen. This cave actually has a vey rich history as
well, and during the times of the “Kingdom of Sardinia” the kings used to have
concerts inside the cave to take advantage of the incredible acoustics. See the
attached pictures! 
Unfortunately at the time I did not have a water camera, so
I missed out on taking pictures of all the amazing marine life that I saw while
scuba diving and snorkeling. However, the highlight of it was a forest of giant
mussels that I ran into while snorkeling about 100 meters from the beach. Watch
this documentary where they found them under the large cruise ship (the
Concordia) that you may remember recently sank in Italy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHdcHrdTF8Q
I spotted one that was dead, picked up one of the shells and
took it to the beach to take pictures; I of course returned it to where I found
it. See the picture.
Now, to get into the how to do all this on a budget part;
usually when traveling the major expenses that you encounter are the flight and
the hotel. First, the flight part, in Europe it is really cheap to travel with
the low cost airlines, the number one in my opinion and the one I use the most
is Ryan Air. With Ryan Air if booking at least 2 weeks in advance and knowing
how to book, you can always find flights for about €20 each way, from pretty much
any country in Europe to virtually anywhere where Ryan Air has a connection. I
know, I was at first skeptical about this dirt cheap price, especially coming
from the US, but this is actually a great company and their planes are all
almost-new 737-800’s even in better condition than those of the traditional
expensive airlines. I have by now used this company for around 20 flights, they
were surprisingly never delayed a single minute (I think this has to do with
their usage of small airports with low air traffic), and always very safe.
Now with where to stay, I think if you look hard enough you
can get a good deal on most hotels and hostels. Having used hostels in Europe
frequently, I can tell you that they are the best option if you are traveling
alone, and don’t mind noise but actually encourage it; in hostels you’ll meet
other people like you that are traveling alone and most of the time want to
party. If you are not alone, having 2 or 3 people in your group will make
hostels actually more expensive than a 3 star hotel, and you are not in serious
need of the socializing with other tourists part; thus from the 2 options so
far, I would recommend that you go to Expedia and book a 3-4 stars hotel for a
cheaper price. Now what I think is the best option and one that I just recently
while traveling through Canada learned about, AirBnB. I will enumerate the
advantages of this option:
1)
It fits all budgets, here you can rent a small
cheap room next to the main square of the city or an entire Island if you like.
2)
You are actually staying with locals at their
home, who are going to tell you what to do in the city and how to do it. Most
of the time they become your guides and show you around.
3)
The Airbnb website is extremely user friendly.
4)
I like the concept of helping both the costumer
and the host financially: as a traveler here you’ll find the best quality
places (better than hotels and much better than hostels) for the cheapest
prices, and as a host you’ll make money for having someone stay in your spare
room while meeting many people from all over the world. As a host you can only
accept who ever you like whenever you like.
So in Sardinia using this website we were able to rent a
whole apartment near the beach in an Sardinian farm where the hosts brought us
a few liters of their home made wine twice during our stay and were the most
friendly people ever: we are fb friends now and will with no doubt keep in
touch. This was all at a fraction of the price that we would have paid at a
hotel, 5 times the space, and a billion times the comfort. I highly recommend
using airbnb as both a traveler and a host, I have done both and the experience
amazing. Actually just looking through their website now I found a way to give
a link in which you can save $25 on your booking if you try them out, another
reason to try it out as a traveler or a host: www.airbnb.com/c/dgutierrez21
Moral of the story, visit Sardinia it is freaking awesome.
If you do, stay with Dario at Sa Branda B&B in Alghero, who you can find through
Airbnb. He was awesome.
