April 3, 2023
Day 47: Porto Torres to Alghero
Police Encounter, Backroads and Wildflowers
We didn’t shop for food last night so our breakfast is half a clifbar and banana. We stop at the Lidl on the way out of town to buy some bread, cheese and ham. We reach the old Roman bridge expecting the road to go across it. Instead, it is only open for pedestrians and has a very rough cobble stone surface. We haul our bikes across it. We are finding the traffic is okay, even a road sign admonishing drivers to watch for cyclists.
We have a long low grade to gain about 200meters. Midway we stop for a snack break. There are lots of wildflowers along the roadsides. Once we reach the high point we briefly stop before the downhill to La Corte.
“That was an official looking car,” Rachel says and starts riding downhill and hears a beeping horn and stops. The car had backed up and Patrick is talking with an official. As the car drove by Rachel unthinkingly tossed a used tissue by the roadside. Ever since Morocco and here in Italy there is a lot of trash by the roadsides, mostly plastic that will stay there for many years. We considered our options and decided that a piece of used tissue will probably decompose after the next rainstorm. It is still littering, and were the roadsides pristine we would not toss anything, but……
Anyway, Rachel tossed something out, the cop saw it in his rear view mirror and decided to make a point. He talks Italian to Patrick quickly establishing that our Italian is insufficient. Rachel comes back and proves the same. The two cops are scouring the roadside for the piece of tissue. If it wasn’t so serious it would have been funny to see them kick aside plastic bottles and aluminum cans trying to find a piece of tissue paper. They are looking about 10 yards too far up the road though, Patrick can clearly see the still very white piece of paper. We play dumb, agree that littering is bad while pointing out the trash. What saves us is the sight of Rachel’s handlebar bag full of unused tissue. We concede something could have possibly, but not certainly, maybe, under certain circumstances have blown out while we were not looking, but while the cop was looking in his rearview mirror while driving down the road….. Maybe. This establishes it might have happened, the cop is not crazy and seeing things, but we are oblivious. They drive off, we have learned our lesson: no more tossing things out, not even tissue, banana peels or apple cores. Well maybe those would be okay?
After the downhill to La Corte, we turn onto a smaller country road. Rachel crested on small hill and said to Patrick “Look at all those sheep.” Only Patrick had stopped a ways back to take another picture. The field is covered with sheep. Then Rachel observes sheep dogs herding the sheep away from the fence and road. As she approached the area three sheep dogs came barking back and stayed there until we moved on.
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When we are close to Alghero we stop for a cup of coffee, then we catch a bike path that goes all the way into Alghero. Somewhere along here we stopped again to eat a sandwich before continuing on into the city. We are early as our check in to the B & B ElClaCa is 2pm. Most of the cheaper accommodations we are finding in Sardinia and Sicily are not hotels but B&B’s with just a couple of rooms and no reception. It is advised to arrange a meeting time with the host at the building. We select rooms with the earliest check-in times, but 2:00 is pretty common. Our phone is not yet working so we cannot contact the host.
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We find a spot at a table in a café facing the bay instead of the street like in Morocco. We wait to order. There is a different rhythm here in Italy and patience is needed just as much as in Africa. Our order is finally taken and we relax with two beers. A man at the next table asks if we will watch his suitcase and when he returns he joins us. He is British here on business and we have a nice conversation about travelling.
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Finally time to find our place for the next two days. A little after 2pm a man arrives, owner of the B&B. He’s very friendly and helpful; there’s a spot under the stairway for the bikes, and he helps carry up some of the gear. Once settled in and cleaned up we go out to explore.
We start walking around the ramparts of the Old Town. We are also looking for where to eat dinner. Most of the restaurants in this area advertise different courses and side dishes. We’ve also read about hidden charges and service fees. Later we did some research to understand how to read the menu and the classic Italian meal structure. There are 5 courses: Antipasto, Primo (more like an appetizer of pasta or rice), Secondo (the main course), Contorno (platter of vegetables), Dolce (dessert).
We walk back to the waterfront and find a restaurant that is not so fancy. As we look at the menu, there is a solo woman at the next table taking mussels out of the shell. She says it’s mussel soup and she is counting them, at the end she announces there are 80 mussels.
We order the same and a platter of fried fish.
Today's ride: 49 km (30 miles)
Total: 1,539 km (956 miles)
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