by Nick Taylor and Barbara Nevins Taylor

We piled into a spiffy little Renault SUV called a Captur, a diesel with an automatic shift that we rented from the Hertz office in Cagliari. Nick put the Renault in gear and we found the road west and the beginning of a spectacular road trip around Sardinia.

First stops: Sant’Antioco and Bosa.

On a map, Sant’Antioco looks like a fly speck off Sardinia’s southwest coast. But at 42 square miles it is Italy’s fourth-largest island, after Sicily, Sardinia and Elba.

We came across it when we were planning our trip and it looked interesting, not least because the prolific Sardus Pater winery was there.

Remains show the Nuragi were the first inhabitants, then the Phoenicians arrived and put down stakes in the 8th century BC. Then came Carthaginians and then Romans, who built to stay in this mineral-rich region of Sardinia.

Soon the hills and weary industrial scenes dropped to the shoreline and Sant’Antioco — the town and the island — appeared across the water a short bridge away.

Fishing boats bobbed on moorings and seagulls wheeled overhead.

When we checked in at the Hotel del Corso on the tree-shaded main street, we got our first lesson on parking in Sardinia.

The young man at the desk explained that you had to park in a blue-lined space on the street or in a lot. White-lined spaces were for locals. Parking was free from one to four in the afternoon, when the shops were closed. Then you had to pay from four to midnight, and again in the morning, except on Sunday, which was free

Oh, and since this was Saturday, the whole street became a pedestrian zone from five to midnight, so good luck. 

Back at the hotel, we walked past its outdoor cafe,

through the gelateria-pasticcerria, filled with tempting treats,

to the hotel elevator. Four young, pleasant staffers, happy to practice English, helped us check in and get situated in a large spotless room, and great value, that overlooked the main street. When we came down later, they were hunkered over books studying for their high school final exams.

We strolled down to the harbor front and found the I Due Fratelli restaurant run by a local fishing cooperative. We were almost too late for lunch, just at the 2:30 p.m. cut-off. But they agreed to serve us antipasti only. Just fine with us.

After lunch we went looking for the winery that had lured us to the island. Barbara had emailed to ask if we could take a tour. They didn’t respond, but we were curious and, being persuasive, thought we’d give it a visit anyway. 

The Sardus Pater Enoteca sits on one side of a parking lot that faces a supermarket at the edge of town. When we pulled into the parking lot, we saw an African migrant lying under an awning that covered the shopping carts. He was caught up in a conversation on a mobile phone and ignored us. It seemed cruel to take a photo.

So we just headed into the wine shop. “No. No tours. The winery is closed,” said the man who seemed in charge. “Please look around here.” So much for our persuasive skills.

Sardus Pater is a cooperative winery that’s been around since 1949. It specializes in reds produced from Carignano, a clone of the French grape Carignan. The Sardinian grapes come from vines planted seventy to eighty years ago and, unlike their French counterparts, were never touched by disease. And they almost all come from small family vineyards.

 

They get high marks from enthusiasts for the intense taste of red and black fruits.

Sardus Pater also produces a Vermentino, another Sardinian specialty, with a linear palate that white wine drinkers like. 

But the real kick for us came as we watched a fellow, in shorts, sleeveless shirt and a baseball cap, fill up plastic jugs of wine from machines that looked like gas pumps.

The prices even clicked off as the wine flowed. You pumped your choice of red, white, or rosé from a hose for a euro and a half per liter. Watch the video at the end of the post.

But since Sant’Antioco is an island off of an island, we decided to skip filling up our plastic water bottles and went looking for the beaches and cliffside retreats that make it a tourist draw.

We skirted low hills and entered a town, Maladroxia, that overlooked a beautiful sand beach filled with swimmers and sun bathers on a sunny Saturday.

We turned west across the island and back north, past the catacombs that hid St. Antiochus.

Olive groves and vineyards lined the roadsides, and the Mediterranean shone blue to the horizon.

 Photo of Cala Grotta is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Back in town, Barbara went ahead while Nick followed the rules to park the car.  She sat down on a bench in the square next to a stylish man who introduced himself as Roberto. 

When she told Roberto she was from New York, he asked, “Why are you here?” with a clear tone of incredulity. She explained that Nick had Sardinian ancestors way back.

“Mmm,” he responded and leaned back into the bench. And then Barbara asked, “What’s your favorite place in Sardinia?” He smiled and said, “Right here.”

When Nick ambled along, the discussion turned to Roberto’s straw Borsolino. “Where did you get it?” Nick asked

“Milano,” he said, his tone adding an unspoken, “of course. Where else?”

That evening we returned to I Due Fratelli, the cooperative fish restaurant, for dinner: pasta with bottarga, grilled swordfish, grilled sea bream, and the house bianco.

 

We talked about the earliest choices we make as children and whether they foretell one’s course in life. We tried to remember what might have happened to two toddlers that encouraged their mutual lust for history, travel, road trips and off-the-beaten-track locales and, years later, brought them to Sardinia.

The next morning, we headed for Bosa, up the coast and over serious mountain roads, for the real start of our road trip around the island.

 We plunged into densely forested mountains that pulled us around one hairpin turn after another as we climbed and climbed. Now and then we’d break out of the trees and be treated to spectacular long views that stretched to the horizon. Then the forest would close in again.

Up high in the mountains along the west coast, the sky was moody and gray, threatening rain that never came.

 

We drove through ghostlike towns dotted with abandoned mines and skeletons of factories that once made this area a thriving industrial center. And the history of mining goes back to the Bronze-age Nuragi, the Carthaginians, the Romans and the Pisans who tapped the veins for silver, lead and zinc.

The real ramp-up in mining came in the late 1860s with the unification of Italy.

Then the island had more than 460 mines and produced about 10 percent of the zinc in the world. Mining continued in Sardinia through the 1990s and included gold, bauxite, industrial minerals and semi-precious gemstones. But in the 21st century, Sardinian mines and factories closed.

Now the Sardinian tourist bureau promotes the mining region for sightseeing, combined with trekking in the forests and enjoying the beaches on the coast. UNESCO designated the area as part of the Parco Geominerario della Sargegna.

Eventually we descended and emerged and reached a hillside where we could look down on Bosa.

Bosa appeared just as the guidebooks had described it, a “pretty little river town,” its pastel houses with red tile roofs rising from the river to a hill surmounted by a Medieval castle.

We found our hotel, the Palazzo sa Pischedda, on the south side of the river opposite the main part of town. It had a Sardinian rarity, its own parking lot (dirt, with about a dozen spaces).

We checked in to our small room with a bonus, a view from the small private terrace overlooking the town, the castle, and the river,

Our need for food, late again for lunch, took us over the one-lane bridge across the Fiume (River) Temo, the only navigable river in Sardinia.  We found a restaurant in the Piazza Constituzione and Nick ordered his usual octopus, shrimp and calamari salad and Barbara chose a simple carponata with carrots, celery and peppers.

Salvatore Ledda, an enthusiastic Bosa native and one of the three owners, talked proudly about his town. He was happy to be back after stays in the north of England and then the Canary Islands. 

He explained that most of the architecture in this old part of the city was truly historic and hadn’t been rebuilt. Under Aragonese rule, Bosa had been northwest Sardinia’s major sea and fishing port and it pretty much stayed that way until the advent of the airplane. Bosa had no land flat enough to build an airport and so development shifted to Alghero to the north.

That saved Bosa from Allied bombing during World War II, and kept things as they always were. That reminded us that the town, the island and Italy had been very much on the wrong side of World War II. 

Digesting that a bit, we started the climb to Il Castello Malaspina, named for the Genoese family that built it in the 12th and 13th centuries. It became a fortification to fend off the Aragonese, who fortified it further when they took over under Alfonso the Magnanimous in the 14th century.

None of its occupants made it any easier to get to. We followed the town streets asking directions until one of the locals grinned sympathetically and pointed to a set of stone steps that seemed to rise forever. “The stairway to heaven,” he said. “Only longer.”

We reached the top to find more climbing lay ahead. We asked each other if we were up for it, but it was too late. You can’t go halfway up a hill and turn around. We kept climbing, and eventually reached the castle wall where we paid four euros each to enter.

A 14th century church and an ancient olive tree sit in the courtyard under the ramparts.

 

When we mounted the ramparts, our reward stretched out before us.

We saw the roofs of Bosa and the Temo River, sinuously winding through the town and spilling into the Mediterranean three kilometers away.

We shunned the steps on the way down. It was easier on the knees to descend through sloping back streets and alleys and we came out close to where we’d started, near the bridge back to the hotel.

We booked in the restaurant at the Palazzo sa Pischedda, which was operated separately from the hotel, and found it surprisingly wonderful. 

Local families filled the modern restaurant and the wood-oven pizza seemed like the draw for most of the crowd.

But we ordered real food and felt instantly rewarded when the starters arrived —  thin-sliced swordfish carpaccio came over fennel with just oil and lemon — exquisite!  

 Zuppa di cozze with mussels and clams.

Nick enjoyed ricotta ravioli with rabbit tidbits spooned over the top.

Barb had calamaratta — pasta shaped like calamari rings — with cream of pepper sauce and gamberetto (shrimp)

We drank a bottle of Sardinian Vermentino and ate dessert for a change — tiramisu for Nick.

As we enjoyed our meal, the lights dimmed and the whole staff gathered at a table to sing Happy Birthday to a highly embarrassed teenager seated at a long table with her mother and father and grown-up brothers and sisters.

The next morning, we explored Bosa’s coast.

And stopped to see the beach.

And then we headed north to Alghero. Spectacular is an overused word, but our road trip around Sardinia was shaping up that way.