all things Sardinian, continued

The men chanted and the women repeated a prayer. Traffic stopped. The procession wound it’s way up the narrow streets of Cuglieri.





It’s Good Friday and the air is, for once, crisp and clear. The landscape is defined. Harshly beautiful.

David (the proprietor of La Lucrezia) tells us – head out to one of the hill towns that does a full Good Friday service. It’s quite touching, actually.

It’s a morning service and as usual, we have a late start.

Driving out of our village I notice that the older women are in longer dark skirts. Dark shawls cover their heads and shoulders. Is it just today? Or is it every day?






Cugliari is north of where we are, but just barely. Maybe twenty kilometers. It's a lovely village, spilling out in a ribbon halfway up the mountain. The Basilica dominates; we think we’ll have no trouble finding it.






We park the car at the outskirts and make our way up, reaching the church just at the final stages of the ceremony. Christ has been taken down, the cross is being raised again. Most of the congregation files behind a small procession of white robed men, but a few stay behind. The older generation. Men sitting on one side of the church. A few women on the other.









And still another group of white robed men -- mostly boys, actually -- leaves the Basilica.






I join Ed outside and we spend a while sitting on the stone wall looking down at the sweeping reach of the valley below. How many people leave this place for work? How many return?









We walk back to find the car, but it’s not easy. Finding a dominating church is kid’s play. Finding a side road near the perimeter where you parked in a hurry is a challenge. As we walk up one street and down another, people are curious and friendly. A woman stands with her hands clasped, peering after the departing postal scooter...





I ask her if I can take a photo and she is surprised. Pleased. Rewarding me with the finest smile.





We do locate our car and we look for signs of the road heading north. But before we even exit Cuglieri, we’re stopped by a police officer. There is a commotion ahead.

Amazing how luck plays into our viewing of the procession. Because right in front of us, we see the men (in the distinct robes of the village churches) carrying the cross, the Virgin Mary, and finally, the body of Christ. Chanting, moaning really, in somber, nearly atonal strains.





The sound of their voices, the wave of prayer from the followers and the onlookers (there aren’t many; it appears to be a contained event; not all Sardinians are devout, not all devout are present for this, and we are in a very small town) – it all moves in somber stealth as the cars now wait behind us until the procession makes a sharp turn away from the main road and we can move forward again.


The road is curvy and as usual, I whine about the speed of our little Renault. Ed pulls over. I drive. Peace is restored.


We head up further north to Bosa. We’re now some 40 kilometers outside our village, but the scenery is completely different. Rugged. Dramatic.

Bosa itself is at the mouth of Sardinia’s only navigable river. Perched at the base of two mountains, it looks squeezed (you'll see this in a later photo from up high). Its medieval heart rises up to the castle. Its riverside houses look colorful. Simple, but well tended.













We leave the car and walk through the narrow streets. The sun is so gorgeous now that you cannot help but grow lazy with it. It’s early afternoon and we pause at a small piazza where café tables spill out toward the fountain. It’s unusual to see this: unlike other Mediterranean people, Sardinians do not appear to have the habit of meeting outdoors over an espresso. We’ve not seen many cafes in the towns and villages of this island.

We order a shared lunch: a bowl of pasta with spicy tomato sauce. With a glass of local white wine. Absolutely sublime.





Needing a walk, we head up the winding narrow streets toward the castle.










It’s closed for lunch (of course), but we don’t mind. We just want to walk. Picking a road that appears to scale the mountain, we start the climb up. The scenery is predictably stunning.






Eventually the road ends. The summit is still a little bit away, but we cannot find a way to it and so we turn back.

It’s late afternoon and we cannot let this day end yet. The sky is too sparkling, too demanding of our attention. We drive along the rugged coast, looking for a place to leave the car and walk along the cliffs that line the waters edge. We cannot find a path. Sheep, yes, we see sheep. And donkeys. Wild looking donkeys. But no place where we can safely walk.

The area is remote, but there is one roadside pizzeria where some men are moving about. We pause to ask about places to admire the scenery. We’re closed, but you can come to our terraces and look around. Always the warm welcome. Always.

Looking north...





Looking south...





South, yes, time to retrace our steps.

Our dinner pick is quite at the opposite, southern side of our village and so we head back along the curvy roads until we reach the region’s capital – Oristano. With a population of about 50,000, it feels quite urban and worlds away from the hill villages we’ve just explored. We find out dining spot on a small, intimate almost, pedestrian street.





We know to moderate our ordering. I ask for the plate of mixed appetizers, followed by pasta with local shrimp and mushrooms.









The food is delicious: salami, prosciutto – all Sardinian favorites. Pickled mushrooms, fried artichokes and eggplant. Outstanding. And slices of meat swimming in olive oil. I ask the proprietor – What meat? Oh, our very own donkey meat! -- She tells me, beaming. Ah.

The tiramisu is rich, satisfying. The day ends with a short drive back and a philosophical discussion that has no purpose, no answers, no finality. But that’s fitting, I think, for a Good Friday in Sardinia. With the taste of olive oil and a memory of the rugged cliffs and mountains.

all things Sardinian

Don’t ever mention food to me again. Ever. Not in any shape or form. Especially octopus. Please, avoid spelling out the virtues of octopus, in olive oil, in tomato sauce -- no, I don't want to hear it.


Even as the day started with a lovely breakfast of croissants, cakes and sandwiches and cups of yogurt and fresh fruits. And a cappuccino. And another – the second taken, as usual in the sunlit garden.

I talk to Paolo and David and later, David’s partner, Clara about our last days here. Because it’s Easter, they offer suggestions on how best to experience this holiday in Sardinia.

Much of the talk is about where to eat what. I tell them that we want simple foods (easy: Sardinian cooking is fresh and not fussy), eaten in joyous settings, with a preference for non-meat options. Normally in our travels I don’t need this qualifier, but in Sardinia, places often specialize. It will be all seafood or all meats. And if it’s all meats, they mean meats. The kind that you encounter in the fields and forests. The kind that pull at Ed’s heartstrings.

For reasons that remain unclear to me or him (as he really hasn’t thought much about it, it’s all rather intuitive), chickens and turkeys are okay on a platter, but rabbits and wild boar are not. And he’ll tell you that an octopus is way too charming to eat, but that he’s fine with mussels and okay with shrimp. How could one possibly explain any of this to anyone except to say – basically, let’s stay away from meats. That part about octopus I leave out because really, how likely is it that the menu will be all octopus. I mean, not very likely at all.

The plan for the afternoon and evening is to drive down to Cabras (some ten minutes away) to the store with Sardinian products, and then to swing by the coast, finally returning back to Cabras for a very simple seafood dinner. We are assured that there will be some limited choices, just in case we hit something that falls into a protected by the heartstring category.

The drive to the shop is known to us – we’re finally getting familiar with the twisting options in and out our village.

As usual, Ed offers to stop if I want a photo. And as usual, I cannot resist the olive grove. This one is a favorite of mine as it deftly conjoins olives and vines.





Oh, fine, the one across the road as well. With the every joyful flowers.





As Ed finds a spot that allows him to pull over (the road is narrow, with bands of grass at the side), I want to say “watch the ditch” but I choose my instructions carefully now, because the replayed conversation is getting slightly old. Ed tells me later that had I said it, it wouldn’t have mattered as he now tunes out sentences that begin with words like “watch” or “careful.”

This time, his wheel misses the small mud bridge and winds up in the ditch, so we hang almost suspended in a way that I cannot now properly describe.

There is a chance that the front wheel can catch solid ground out of the ditch. In the alternative, the car could miss it and slide further into the steep gutter.

You drive, I push. He tells me. As always, he is frustratingly calm. As if in the normal course of any day, we push cars out of tough spots and hope that they don’t roll into ditches.

I can’t. I’ll miss the spot and then feel terrible.

That’s silly. You wont miss. Drive.

But I know I’m likely to gun the motor with such force that it’ll send us flying to God knows where.

Okay, you push.

I do, with all my body strength. And we are saved. The car does me a favor and grabs the grass, then the road, and I hop in and we continue. Two occasional traveling companions, as mismatched as they come, as congenial as ever.


We reach the store with only a half dozen wrong turns. And let me explain – it’s not really a store, it’s a warehouse where Sardinian products are displayed and where buyers make commercial purchases, but you and I can shop there as well. Moreover, they have a few tables set out. If you want to eat a Sardinian lunch, they’ll prepare one for you.

We’re not extremely hungry yet, but we think it would be fun to nibble on something local.

The tables are all occupied by area workmen – from construction to police to mechanic – out on a protracted lunch break. And it becomes clear that once you sit down, you are committing to a meal.

The store manager is also the waiter and he explains the meat choices. They seem so abundant that I run for the protection of vegetarianism. I figure we’re on light ground here.

I am wrong.









They’re delicious platters: artichoke (we see them growing everywhere here – lovely full fields of green heads rising tall above the leafy mounds), eggplant, lentils, followed by beautiful bowls of pasta with asparagus.





And a delicious red wine that I wish I could pour into some small container and have at my side always, just for the comfort and the memory.

Ed says we should think twice about also eating dinner, but I tell him that for once I am holding a reservation, as the dinner place is small. I reassure him that we have before us still a nice long walk along the coast.

I purchase the fruity Sardinian olive oil and a bottle of local wine and hope that I am correct in my calculations as to what Ryan Air will tolerate from my little send-through suitcase.


We head north, with only a few minor pauses along the way.









Our walk is along a path that winds its way around another peninsula – the perimeter of which is roughly a dozen kilometers. The scenery is beautiful and the fields of flowers now, in full spring, take your breath away.




























Early on, we pass an older couple in a moment of joyous embrace...





...and then we are alone, sharing the walk with a few lizards, gulls, and for a brief while, a pair of mismatched dogs, also out and about for the sheer pleasure of being finally at the cusp of summer.


And now again we encounter a small group of people. They're working away at shucking sea urchins.





I watch for a minute and I wonder if these will make a Sunday appearance at someone’s Easter lunch.

At the end of the peninsula, there is a crumbling tower and a lighthouse and again you are reminded that Sardinia was forever defending herself from the outside world, even as it now so much depends on an influx of us, the outsiders to sustain economic progress in these complicated times.





As we round out the loop, returning now along the beautiful northwestern shore... another tower, another splendid view... another field of flowers...


















...I notice that the sun is again playing games over the sea. Glancing inland, I see that the mountain where we hiked yesterday is hidden behind clouds. The coastal skies are less gray, but there are definitely clouds moving in.

Within minutes, it starts to rain. A relentless cold rain that falls, then stop,s then falls again. By the time we reach the car, we’re mostly wet. We have no choice but to return home (where, nota bene, it has not rained) and dry off before setting out for our evening meal.

Clara is at La Lucrezia, along with her dog, Lora (which is completely amusing as my daughters’ second names are variations of those). She offers a typical Sardinian mixed predinner drink – a light combination of wine and soda (it’s called a bicicletta – it’s very common here)





And we talk about learning languages (she teaches Italian to immigrants from Morocco). She asks how is it that I come to speak Italian. That, more than anything, makes me appear so un-American. (Indeed, at the artisanal foods store, I got the usual question – where are you from? Maybe Germany?) I explain that as a young adult, I fell in love with Italy. France came later – the second and stable love, as it were. But Italy was my youthful fling. And so I tried to speak her language, learning it briefly in a class, then embracing it more completely through songs, movies and repeated travels here.

Clara of course, like everyone in Europe, knows more English than she will admit knowing and speaks it if pressed to do so. But like so many here, in Sardinia, she is delighted when the visitor stumbles along on the familiar ground of her home language.


At 8:30, we set out for our meal at Mare d'Inverno. We’ve been warmed. It’s very casual. They serve what they like. It’s seafood. There may be some choice. It’s cheap.

And hard to find. We were given detailed directions and still it’s well after 9 when we pull in.

The cheerful waitress does offer choices.
Mixed appetizers? - she asks.

Sure.

For the next course, spaghetti with clams or with octopus?

Clams.

Maybe one of each?

Okay, one of each.

Then fish: grilled with herbs or pan fried?

Grilled with herbs.

Easy.

Except that with the first course, we already feel overwhelmed. Vegetables, yes, there are those, Zucchini, tomatoes, onions, beans. And there are shrimp. And crab legs. And a plateful of mussels. And a heaping platter of octopus.





We try to eat it all, knowing that any one plate would normally constitute an ample dinner for us. People around us are eating it all and so we do not want to appear wimpy. We dig in. The burden of cleaning the octopus plate is, of course, mine and I almost succeed. But by the end, I have had enough octopus to last me a while.

Except now of course comes the pasta course. Mine has octopus and a light tomato sauce. And it is magnificent!





So that I dig in appreciatively, even as I know that I am rapidly reaching my limit as to what I can possibly consume in the next two weeks or so.

And of course, by the end of this course, we are ready to crawl under the covers and never come out again.

Except there is the grilled fish.





By the end, I feel I have the entire ocean’s offerings in my stomach. The jug of wine merely helps create a buoyant atmosphere for all that is within me. I am ready to collapse.

A wonderful meal. Even if I may join the club of those who regard octopus as too charming to eat. Ever. Or at least not for a few days.

scaling stone walls, getting tangled in bramble and watching out for wild boar

A quiet morning in the sunny courtyard of La Lucrezia. A second cappuccino fixed by Paolo, a cousin of David (the owner of the b&b). I ask Paolo about growing up here (his grandparents lived here when it was still an ordinary farmhouse). His memories are of playing in the garden. Small wonder. It is a lovely little place, now filled with the blooms of spring and the warble and chirp of birdsong.














We’re heading inland today, for a hike up the mountains. The mountains that are closest (about a ten – fifteen minute drive from Riola) aren’t the highest (they average 1000 meters), but we’re happy to be going somewhere that doesn’t require a long drive and in any case, we want to make it up to the summit and back before sunset. We figure we have a solid six or seven hours of good daylight left.

The drive to where we think there may be a trailhead is pretty – past small hill villages and the beautiful olive groves...





Up a winding lane that offers views onto the valley and the mountain range beyond it.










So close and so remote. The road winds into the forest and as we leave the car to search for the trail, it strikes me that we’re not likely to see anyone on our walk up the mountain.

Our experience with trails in the south of Italy has been that they are a work in progress. They require a certain amount of confidence and a belief that the beauty is in the journey and not in reaching any particular destination.

Today’s trail is much in line with this. The path isn’t difficult. It makes it’s way through a green forest that is intensely quiet, except for the occasional loud flight of a frightened bird.





There are frequent posting asking us not to hunt, and by the looks of it – ignored by those who did and left empty cartridges behind. Early on, there is a display notice explaining the animals that you may encounter – with images of the footprint that they leave behind. Cinghiale. Lots of talk of the cinghiale (wild boar).

We continue up. There is an occasional swatch of blue paint and so we are confident that we are heading... somewhere.

But after about an hour, the marking stops. We are near a dirt road and so we imagine you are to continue along this road, which does appear to at least aim up toward the peaks. But a few minutes later, we’re convinced that we made a mistake. There are no swatches of blue and the dirt road levels off, circumventing the mountain, rather than offering a way to reach the summit. The views are gorgeous already, but we know we have a ways to go before the top.

We return to where we last saw a blue paint marking. There is another path – a low road, as it were, offering another possible routing. We take that. It’s less developed, but clearly others have used it and so perhaps this wooded trail along the stone wall is the way we’re meant to go.

Still, no blue marking. A red one appears on the stone wall and I suggest that maybe we’ve merged with another trail. Or, the trail marker ran out of blue paint. Or something.

But as the path becomes less discernable, I note that there really are no footprints. Hoof prints, yes, those. And many examples of burrowing in the wet ground by the trees. Something a boar might do when searching for truffles, for example.

I ask Ed if one could get away from a wild boar by climbing the stone wall. As usual, my traveling companion uses the opportunity to make up stories about boar that fly at people with the speed of lightening – up stone walls and beyond.

More importantly, Ed tells me, we are lost. He suggests leaving the forest and cutting across the fields beyond the stone wall.

At least we’d be heading up.

But there are animals beyond the stone wall.

Mules. Harmless mules.

How do you know they’re harmless?

Look at them.





Fine, they do not look like they’re ready to charge. But they hee haw sternly and in any case, they’re awfully motley looking.

Still, we skirt the field briskly and head up. We want to leave the field of mules, but there appear to be no exits. No gates that open, nothing but bramble and stone and occasional fencing with ruty barbed wire on top.

We have no choice but to climb over the bramble. I note that I chose this day to wear pants that leave my ankles bare and vulnerable. 

Is bramble poisonous? – I ask Ed.
The odd thing is, I often don’t know if you’re serious or not when you ask these things.

Put it this way: Ed is a walking encyclopedia of miscellaneous information. You could view my questions as an analogue to googling the possibilities out there. If you have strange symptoms, you may google them to see if you have some incurable disease. If you encounter strange plants and animals, you might probe Ed to see if there’s a chance you might have come across something so obviously toxic that you should quickly seek emergency care. Wild boar chases, biting mules and plants that scratch at your legs seem worthy of inquiry, no?



Eventually, we make our way across the probably most serious challenge to good health – rusty fences – and in a moment of great joy, we find a road. At this point, we’re not fussy. A road is a road, who the hell cares if it’s the road.

Eventually we find a spot that is shielded from the wind. Eating a sandwich overlooking a fine view is one of the best parts of a hike, in my opinion. I pull out from the pack a leftover pecorino and smoked salmon bun and take in the landscape.









We have been hiking for almost three hours, but we’re not near the summit. We can see the craggy ridge line, but we have yet to find a way to get near it. I recall reading about this trail in an Italian brochure on hiking in this region. There was mention of opening and closing gates. We’ve just passed two gates that did not have locks on them. Feeling a bit like game show contestants who have to pick between door number one and door number two, we open the first gate and pick up a rough road heading up.

And it is the good road. We are in luck. It’s 3:30 and we estimate in a half hour, we should reach the summit.

And the views are beautiful – all the way down toward the sea, gray now in the faintly clouded-over sky. We note the peninsula where we had walked the previous day...





...and the coast line view toward the north of Sardinia:






A photo of a victorious ascent...





...and we turn back. Among a rocky path with bands of daisies at the side.





We’re not entirely sure of the way back (neither of us wants to cross the bramble fields again), but we take some educated guesses, and this time we are on a roll of success. By dusk, we are again by the car.


When the sun sets, the sheep come out and we encounter one herd on the winding road down to the village. The farmer herds them to a pen and then, in calculated groups, lets them out to the trough for an extra feed and the milking session. Straight into the bucket.





Leter, to be transported in these containers. Ubiquitous here, in Sardinia. Hauled in small pickup trucks at the end of the day.






It’s not quite dinner time and we make our way further inland to a small hill town that our proprietor thought we might enjoy visiting – Santu Lussurgiu.





It’s unusual, in that it has a large number of homes made of stone. We park the car and stroll through the narrow passageways where young boys are kicking a soccer ball around.





...and old women walk in black skirts and black shawls against the evening chill.








We could stop for dinner here, but we’re reluctant to eat in the recommended restaurants. They seem too quiet, too formal. They lack the convivial atmosphere that we found so engaging in Cagliari.

As the sun throws final colors up at the darkening sky, we drive home.





Stopping only once now, to watch, in the dark,  one more flock of sheep being herded into the hills with the twinkling now village lights beyond.





As we head home, Ed and I fall into our now much rehearsed pattern of conversation. Because the roads have too many sharp curves and the men are having their usual game of taking them at full speed and every once in a while, Ed joins in, against my admonitions. Futile, of course.

You want to drive? He asks again.

No, not especially, but please slow down.

I’m going fifty kilometers!

In a place that deserves thirty.

...but everyone else is going sixty!

They know their road, you don’t.

And he slows down, only to speed up again, and we rerun the same words, until we finally reach Riola.

We know there is a good pizzeria in town and we head straight there.

And it is as we like it: a family with a little boy who begs for attention and only occasionally gets it, from his big sisters, from his mother. A birthday meal (at 9:30!) for a half dozen nine year old girls and their mothers. The place sings with loud conversation and laughter. I watch and I smile in the way an aging aunt would smile at her family from a distance, enjoying the splendidness of it all, wishing just a little that she could take that laughter back home, where things are so much quieter, so much less family centered, so much more work driven.





The menu here, at La Ginestra, is like at yesterday’s place – long, but not necessarily something you can count on. Sardinians, we have been told, are the original local eaters. They cook what is there, in season. If it’s not available, they simply tell you to pick something else. Even in this pizza place, you need to have a back up plan. And another.

I finally get to choice number five – a delicious paper thin pizza with mushrooms, endive, peppers and zucchini, neatly arranged in separate portions. With a bottle of local white.





Eating pizza and then a delicious tiramisu in the clamor of a joyous dining room, I am certain that we have stumbled upon the treasures of Sardinia today. You mean there's more? Couldn't be.