Day 18: Deň 18: 6 Sept 2022
28 km · 712 m climbing · 695 m descent28 km · 712 m stúpania · 695 m klesania
The botanical garden in Cagliari with its huge Roman cistern, and finally the ferry to Naples.
· 221 km · 5396 m climbing · 5391 m descent · Download GPX
· 221 km · 5396 m stúpania · 5391 m klesania · Stiahnuť GPX
Sardinia was a compromise we made because we wanted to spend a few days with friends. That worked out well, and after a fancy ferry from Genoa, where we even had our own cabin, and a tasty pizza we managed to pack for the trip, we were reunited with our friends in Alghero.
After almost a week of great Sardinian beaches, good food, and lazing around, we got back on our bikes to ride the western coast of Sardinia. South of Alghero, the coastline is extremely hilly and offers genuinely beautiful views.
The only problem was that, despite it already being early September, Sardinia was in the grip of crazy temperatures during this period. Highs of around 39 degrees simply wouldn't let us cycle the way we wanted to. After just a few days we realized the only way to survive was to cycle after seven in the evening or early in the morning. During the day we always looked for some refuge, and probably the best one was an air-conditioned department store, from which we were eventually kicked out by security after six hours of camping there, bikes and all.
The highlight of Sardinia, though, was the botanical garden in Cagliari, home to thousands of different cacti as well as an old Roman cistern. Water used to be drawn from this cistern to supply the botanical garden, but today it's no longer in use and is open to the public - you can even walk straight into it. It's genuinely huge and has really interesting acoustic properties / echo. If you're ever in Cagliari, I highly recommend visiting it as part of the botanical garden.
Our original plan was to continue by ferry to Palermo, but unfortunately no ferry was running for the next few days. So instead we took a ferry to Naples and made our way to Sicily from there by train.