Sardinia - Apartments with Pools in Sardinia, Studio Apartments with Pools in Sardinia, Villas & Apartments with Pools in Sardinia Cheap Apartments with Pools holidays - Beach Apartments with Pools & Hotels in Sardinia

Click the map to enlarge and view the places where we have properties, mainly situated in the eastern part of the island.

The second largest island in the Mediterranean, a name familiar to many but relatively unknown as a holiday destination. The little you hear about Sardinia is all true, over 1,800km of coastline, much of it utterly unspoilt and fringed by white sand beaches lapped by crystal clear waters of every shade from deep aquamarine to shimmering turquoise and emerald green. Probably its only claim to fame, apart from giving its name to tins of small fish, is the Costa Smerelda, built by the Aga Khan as a playground for the rich and without doubt pristinely beautiful, but perhaps slightly too perfect and a touch synthetic and out of context with the real Sardinia beyond its confines.

Matching the beauty of its coastline, the hinterland of Sardinia is a magnificent and uncompromising landscape of high rugged mountains, deep gorges and ravines and rolling wooded countryside, with small forests of pine and holm-oak interspersed by olive and almond groves, vineyards and citrus plantations and great swathes of green and yellow Maccia, the dense and aromatic Mediterranean scrub-land, still in some places inhabited by wild boar, a Sardinian delicacy and quite commonly featured on the menus of restaurants throughout the island.

Between the villages and towns, the interior of the island is now sparsely inhabited, but you will find many a pre-historic memento of the mysterious and enigmatic Nuraghic people, a race of warrior shepherd kings and builders of the ‘Nuraghi’, incredible, monumental, conic-shaped, stone structures, believed to have been used as fortified dwellings. There are still seven thousand of these amazing antiquities scattered around the island today and only a mere 30 have so far been seriously documented by archaeologists.

Like other strategically placed islands in the Mediterranean rich in natural resources, Sardinia has been invaded, conquered and swapped by all the great powers of history. Phoenicians, Romans and Carthaginians have battled for supremacy with Pisans, Arabs, Vandals, Barbary Pirates and finally the Spanish. Many of these different cultures have left their imprint on the island and there are a number of impressive Roman and Carthaginian ruins in coastal areas as well as beautiful monasteries, churches and many fine old buildings in the capital of Cagliari and other major towns. However in historical terms, it is the ancient Nuraghic people who have left the most indelible mark on the island and who have rightly been credited as being the precursors of the present Sardinian culture where even today, there are some thirty thousand shepherds and three million sheep!

Sardinia is a huge and spectacularly beautiful island, a vast sweetshop of wonderful places to visit. However, we have decided to concentrate on just one small area, within fairly easy reach of most of the island’s major attractions, but still relatively un-commercialised, where tourism co-exists within the local culture and enhances rather than dominates.

The Gulf of Orosei on the east coast and just over an hour’s drive south from Olbia Airport covers an area of some 80 square kilometres from Cape Comino in the north to Cape Di Monte Santo further south. Noted for its craggy white cliffs and powder white coves backed by wild and uninhabited mountainous regions, it’s wonderful country for hikers and nature lovers. Here too, the coastal waters are so clean and clear that colonies of beautiful coral grow on the seabed and the myriad’s of fish and other marine fauna attract Scuba divers from around the world, as well as the local fisherman of course!

The medieval market town of Orosei, from which the area takes its name, stands on the banks of the River Cedrino and boasts a number of lovely old churches and a warren of narrow cobbled streets leading to numerous small piazzas where the handsome old villas of the town’s former nobility, lie hidden behind high stone walls. The town is surrounded by lush green farmland bursting with orange and olive plantations and edged with a spectacular stretch of coastline and many, many kilometres of powder white sand beaches fringed by fragrant pinewoods. Inland, the Tutta Vista mountain range rises imposingly above the town to a height of more than 800 metres. The higher you go the more magnificent the scenery becomes with some incredible rock formations and wonderful birds-eye views of the coast and the vast fertile plain to the west, surrounded by hills and further rugged mountains.

South of Orosei lies the lively village of Cala Gonone with a good selection of shops, restaurants and a colourful fishing harbour, where you can hire your own inflatable speedboat to explore the coastline, or take one of the regular boat trips to the many fabulous beaches to the south of the village, which are virtually inaccessible by land. Cala Luna, the nearest, is recognised as one of the most beautiful beaches in Sardinia, whilst further south are numerous smaller coves such as Cala Sisine and the evocatively named Ispuligidenie, all with the same remarkable crystal clear, turquoise waters for which Sardinia is renowned.

Travelling around the island you will find the local Sard cuisine is subtly different from mainland Italy and although wild boar might not be to everyone’s taste, the local seafood, cheeses and various pasta dishes are extremely good. Olbia is particularly renowned for its mussel beds and moules mariniére is a favourite starter. However for something unique, try the local seafood risotto, flamboyantly flavoured by hard little crustaceans and absolutely delicious!

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that the area of Orosei and many parts of Sardinia for that matter remain refreshingly Non-Anglicised and a phrase book can be useful for interpreting menus and general communication.

On a thirsty exploratory trip to Cala Liberotto, we spent some anxious moments in a beachside cantina trying to describe a shandy in Italian and it was just good luck that the young waiter happened to speak English having worked the previous winter in a London hotel! P.S. We have since learnt that the correct name for shandy is panachée, but Birra con Sprite normally does the trick just as well!