Sardinia

After staying up all night in Livorno we met up with our friends, Vic and Ady, to catch the ferry to Sardinia. We met Vic and Ady while we were working at La Rocchetta. For some reason they took a liking to us and offered to take us to their summer house in Sardinia in exchange for help painting the place. We readily agreed and on the morning of April 12 we boarded a huge ferry for the four-hour ride to Sardinia, where we stayed for ten days. Here's a summary of our experiences:

Our Hosts: Vic is a prodigy of aging - the sharpest 80 year old I have ever met. He is passionate about languages and Spanish flamenco, and has a mean strumming/picking style which he taught himself on guitar. Ady is likewise a model for good aging, ten years younger than Vic and another twenty years younger in looks and vitality. They met when she was only seventeen, and the worldly Vic swept her off her feet and they've been traveling the world ever since. Together they made a great couple to be with, enjoying good food, good drink and good conversation - like Claudio and Michelle, they were our kind of people.

The Places: We arrived at the port of Olbia in the early afternoon and had our first glimpse of the Mediterranean island terrain, hilly and ruggedly beautiful, a shepherd's paradise. We drove across the entire island that afternoon and arrived at Vic and Ady's summer house in the southern part of the island, close to the capital city of Cagliari. The house sits in a half-circle of condominiums all deserted in April, looking out at the sea. The nearby town of Pula is a sleepy little place, but much changed in the last twenty years through the influence of tourism. The sea was still pretty cold for swimming, but very clear and deep blue. We took numerous little trips to see the ancient lighthouse dating back to Roman and Phoenician times, standing on the edges of steep cliffs looking out over the sea. Although much has changed in Sardinia, it is still possible to see herds of goats or sheep walking down the road, the shepherds willing to sell fresh cheese from their cars.

The Wine: Sardinia is one of the few places in Europe where the Phylloxera aphid did not destroy many of the ancient vines. As a result, all the Sardinian wines have a distinctive flavor that is delicious and cannot be found elsewhere. The island is also noted for its longevity and some have traced this effect to the daily consumption of local wine which is especially rich in the OPC class of antioxidants. For more on this read Roger Corder's book, The Red Wine Diet. Corder is a legitimate scientist and researcher, and I think the title must have been a conceit of the publisher to capitalize on the inexhaustible appetite for titles with the word "diet." In fact, I'm thinking of writing my own entitled "The Ancient Greek Diet: How Barley, Feta and Wine can make you fit as Apollo and smart as Socrates."

Music: The highlight of our trip was an afternoon spent at a locals bar in Pula, the sort of uniquely Italian cafe/bar where old men sit for hours talking. We were an odd sight there, three travelers outside of tourist season taking turns playing our guitar, Medora and Erin drinking Pernod in honor of Hemingway and Henry Miller. Curiosity soon overcame shyness and a revolving assortment of local characters came over to chat with us. The afternoon wore on and more people took up places out front. The owner tried out a couple of Italian pop songs on the guitar. The sky darkened and rain seemed imminent when the owner's friend appeared, who'd been summoned to play some Sardinian music. Suddenly everyone ushered us inside the cafe where they started to sing the "song that never ends," an alternating verse-chorus song where people take turns improvising verses and singing the chorus all together. The song is a battle between two sides, singers from one making jokes about the other that send everyone into hilarious laughter. We never could quite make sense of the cryptic Sardo dialect, but we were pretty sure that a few verses were at our expense, probably because I was foolish enough to enter the battle by improvising a verse.

We had many good meals with Vic and Ady, especially large lunches in the relaxed Italian fashion. We are so grateful to them for their generosity and friendship. It really was a wonderful and spontaneous opportunity, and we thank them for it.