After our active time in the Dolomites, we hopped on a flight to Sardinia in need for some beaches and relax time. About half an hour drive from the airport of Olbia, we checked out some first beaches early in the morning – a great welcome to Sardinia!

We had booked a couple of nights accommodation in Orosei, a little village on the East coast of Sardinia close to a national park and some amazing beaches. The plan was to do some hikes over the next few days to check these out, but also to spend a lot of time soaking up the sun. Unfortunately, the weather was not as reliable anymore: with temperatures in the low 20s, frequent rain showers and some strong wind now and then it wasn’t quite the beach weather that we had hoped to encounter. But of course we made the best of it! Our first day hike took us to Cala Luna – a hike much further and trickier than we had expected, which got super muddy and slippery due to the rains. Cala Luna was beautiful though and absolutely worth the journey!

Next day, we went on a road trip to Cala Goloritzé which is said to be the most beautiful beach of Sardinia and you have to buy one of the limited permits in order to be allowed to hike there. It was super stormy that day and while there’s a cool pinnacle rock near the beach we couldn’t quite understand the hype around it. But maybe it’s different when the water is calm… Still, the hordes of people would probably anyways spoil it for us.

Unsatisfied, we drove around a bit more in the area, got to some nice viewpoints and visited the main beach at Santa Maria Navarrese – a broad stretch of sand which we kind of preferred over Goloritzé.

The next 2 days were rainy and cold. We spent one of them mainly relaxing in our accommodation and used the other one to drive across the island up to Castelsardo on the North coast of Sardinia. To be honest, it was a rather miserable day and the rain just didn’t want to stop. The interior of Sardinia is beautiful, but in the rain the most amazing viewpoints disappear into the clouds… We did one short stop in Orgosolo, a little town that is famous for its murals. Other than that, we just drove… to get to Castelsardo and checked into our accommodation at the earliest option possible.

Luckily, the sun was shining again the day after, but it stayed windy and rather chilly. We had quite a full day planned, driving all the way to Palau, the port where the ferries to Isla Maddalena depart from and then on to our accommodation on Maddalena. It’s not a far distance, but we wanted to stop at some beaches along the way.

One of the really worthwhile stops was Costa Paradiso – a bit of a strange empty resort place (not sure if it even is accessible for everyone during high season). It’s a super pretty part of the coastline with red rocks in crazy shapes. Super cool! We walked and climbed around there for quite a bit until we had to push on.

Another cool stop with some more crazy rocks was Capo Testa. It was super windy and cloudy when we arrived, but at least it was a nive area to walk around for a bit.

And then it was all about Maddalena! I won’t go into the details of what we did each day, because the days were quite comparable to each other. Basically, during our very last few days of this holiday, we tried to chill on the beach as much as possible. Maddalena and its wilder sister island Caprera offer loads of little beaches, so there was plenty, of choice. The weather was once again challenging though with lots of wind and cooler temperatures. Every day we ended up driving around for a while to find the prettiest and at the same time least windy beach possible. And it kept changing which side of the island that would be, even during the day. So we kept ourselves busy with the hunt for the perfect beach – sometimes more successful, sometimes a bit less so…

Overall, Maddalena is a beautiful place, same as what we have seen of Sardinia overall. We are not sure whether we were just unlucky with the weather or whether this is normal for end of September / beginning October. We wouldn’t want to be here in high season either, as the beaches seem to get super crowded then, so I’m not sure what the best time to visit Sardinia would be. We still really enjoyed our time here and can confirm that Sardinia has some of Europe’s most beautiful beaches and most turquoise water!