Welcome to Paradise

The flight from Geneva to Sardinia is just over an hour and it seemed like we were already starting our descent before the flight attendants had even finished with the beverage service. As we passed over Corsica and then the Costa Smerelda (Emerald Coast) of Northern Sardinia, I new that we had picked the right spot for a couple of days of relaxation. Everything was beautiful.

By the time we picked up the rental car it was only 8am and we were ready to make the drive down to Cala Gonone from Olbia. The drive took us down the eastern side of Sardinia and the geography reminded me a lot of certain areas in Southern / Baja California – very arid and almost desert-like at times. But there were also small mountains and the coastal areas consisted primarily of cliffs with little direct accessibility to the beach.

After roughly two hours on the road, we finally arrived at our hotel. It was a very nice resort-style setup that was a 10 minute walk from the beach. The rooms were basically bungalows with private entrances and we had a nice spot facing the main pool.

After getting settled, we decided to head to the beach and stop for a quick lunch along the way. Here’s a photo of the view from our table at the restaurant.

The food was good, but all we could think about was the beach. As a result, we rushed through lunch so we could let the true relaxation begin.

Once we were at the beach, we absolutely collapsed. The combination of the early flight and the airport madness definitely took its toll. And for the next seven hours we more or less just slept, read and swam in various iterations.



















The weather was perfect – sunny and warm. And when it got too warm, we simply cooled off in the water or took advantage of the complementary umbrella from the hotel.

In a few respects, the beach reminded me a bit of the Cote d’Azur in France. First, the beach was rocky. This isn’t really my preferences, but given how nice it was I couldn’t complain (aside from the misc. stubbed toe here and there). Second, there were far too many middle-aged (and over) women who were far too comfortable with their bodies. I’m not sure where specifically the line for wearing bikinis / going topless should be drawn, but I’m pretty sure that there should be a line somewhere…

After we reached our beach saturation point for the day, we headed back up to the hotel to get cleaned up for dinner. Here are some pictures that I took during the walk back.










For dinner we ate in the heart of the port area of Cala Gonone. Since we hadn’t made a reservation, we unfortunately weren’t able to get a table outside. But the atmosphere in the restaurant was very nice and the food was good as well. The only problem was that there was a too much food. While we had ordered both a primi and a secondi, we didn’t expect both courses to effectively be main courses. Thankfully we had a nice walk back to the hotel to partially make up for our gluttony.