Thursday, November 23 – Cagliari, Sardinia

It may have been St. Augustine who referred to a “city on a hill,” but he wasn’t talking about all of the hill towns we have seen.  Cagliari is another example of a city rising from the edge of the water and going straight up.  Like many of the others, it is primarily beige.  Whether these cities are constructed mostly from stone or stucco, the color is the same.

There are exceptions, of course.  Palermo and Naples come to mind.  Although they, too, are vertical, they are more modern, the result of reconstruction due to damage suffered during WWII.  Their streets are just as narrow and winding, and often cobbled, but there are more high-rise offices and apartments than there were before the bombing in the 1940s.

Cagliari has its share of tallish buildings, but the oldest section is still relatively low; the taller structures are on the fringes of downtown.  The streets we wandered were stone with handrails on the sides to assist in going up and down the steep incline which rose from the water.  These streets were narrow and not particularly straight, but that added to the ambience of the town.

We took a shuttle to the bottom of the city.  Atop the hill is the cathedral and there are other churches and historical sites as well, but we ignored all of them.  There was no way we were climbing up to see them.  Instead, we meandered through a couple of blocks close to the bottom, looked in tchotchke shops and then found a café.  It was too close to breakfast for a pastry [breaking our string], but we got cappuccinos and watched the locals including the dog whose owner sat next to us.  The coffee was good and the rest benefitted MA’s back.  Perfect timing.

We returned to the ship for lunch and then waited to video-chat with the Herstein-Bieze clan in North Carolina.  For a change, audio and video were fairly good although we used a tablet rather than the laptop.  Maybe that accounts for the better connection.

TOMORROW – Another Sea Day

SATURDAY – The Rock