Cagliari

We just returned from 12 full days in Sardinia, which is an island off the western coast of Italy (it's part of Italy, not a separate country). We started off the trip with a few nights in Cagliari which is where the main airport is located. There aren't really many touristy things to do in Cagliari but there are many shops and churches and restaurants and fun streets to wander down. It was a nice way to spend the first two days of our trip so we didn't have to deal with a long drive after flying in. But beware it's built on an enormous hill! And it's unavoidable - old town on the top, shopping street running top to bottom, and restaurants at the bottom. No shortage of exercise here, my calves got bigger just walking to and from dinner each evening.

Here's a picture of the church in the old town of Cagliari, Chiesa della Santa Maria. It was pretty impressive inside with many carvings and paintings on the walls:

Here's a view of the more residential part of Cagliari, as viewed from up the big hill where the old town sits. I find it quite colorful and full of character:

The ocean in the distance:

We were able to climb to the top of a big tower to get a view from higher up but it actually wasn't a better view than what we got from the bottom of the tower. And it cost us 4 euros each to climb it too!

Here are some pictures of the narrow streets in the old town. Our B&B was on one of these tiny streets and it was quite loud every time a car drove down the street because it echoed so much between the buildings. There was supposedly a law in effect that you couldn't drive down these streets between midnight and 9am but nobody seemed to follow it. What was neat about these streets was how the neighbors would come out onto their stoops and chat with each other across the way or gather in the street to chat. There were small restaurants and shops hidden in the ground floors of the buildings sometimes too. Here's Garmisch sitting on the railing of the balcony of our B&B room:

And a few shots from our hotel room at night. Not sure how Martin managed to get them to come out so well, we're usually such failures at taking nighttime pictures. This is the door from our room leading out onto our "stoop":