Cagliaria.Sardinia.Italy.Day2

Yesterday I left my small suitcase at the B&B and headed out with the intent of going to the saltflat wildlife refuge thing. Only to be confronted by far-off storm clouds and a rising wind. Ok, change of plans. It's a good day to go to the ”Citadel of Museums", in particular, the Archaeological museum.  

I had planned to first swing by the Mercato San Benedetto, but had not taken into account the fact that it was Sunday, and apparently it is not open on Sundays. Thankfully, the museum(s) were near-ish, so I headed off that way.

Pictures from the walk up the hill, looking over Cagliari:

Looking towards the storm (in the general direction of Sant'Elia, where I was the day previous to swim in the afternoon):

The museum starts with some impressive Bronze-Age era (maybe earlier?) stone monuments, some 8,000 or so of which can be found all over Sardinia, called Nuraghe.

one Nuraghe model. I was surprised by how large they seemed to have been

Additionally, the "Giants' Tombs", which seemed more like your standard half-buried-in-a-hill kind of prehistoric monuments:

They also had a number of molds used for making (bronze) spearheads and so, which I hadn't seen in a museum before:

I find myself always impressed with how old pottery seems to hold up pretty well, even when not buried in mud or ash.

Assuming I understood the label, this was found near Olbia

Head jar.

There are a lot of  "statues of giants" with matching tiny metal sculptures, of four general sorts. The text that went with these basically said "we have no idea what their purpose was" but super duper long-winded, with weird poetic-seeming commentary. The small matching metal sculptures were somehow traded or something, they think. No complete sculpture has survived, which is surprising as there were so many of them. They have lots of partial ones.

Model of a Nuraghe on the left, and the boxer on the right (two types of the 4 statues of giants):

So, Sardinian timeline: Bronze age, time passes, ~750BC Punic settlement, ~250BC Roman settlement. Then we apparently stop caring (at least in this museum).

Some of the museum's contents were from graves, some from temples, some from shipwrecks off the coast, not so far from Sardinia itself, such as these Amphorae.

Niro, looking like a boss:

Some other dude; I really liked the period where Roman (burial) sculptures got very lifelike, to the point of even showing kind of grumpy people. Maybe he's supposed to look regal, but he looks grumpy to me.

I found the collection of odd hands kind of creepy.

This thing which I'd been describing as a flowering bush is in fact not. It looks a lot more like a tiny poinsettia. I'm told it's a Bougainvillea.

After the museum (and after the minor storm), I walked around the Castello district and took a few pictures.  There is a surprisingly useful Cagliari app (free!) which has suggested walking routes and sites. I was fighting hunger and a bit of exhaustion from all the walking, so didn't do everything I'd intended (e.g. the Tower of St. Pancras and the Elephant Tower remained unscaled by me).

view of Cagliari post-storm

In this next picture you can kind of half-see the wall/ramparts I was standing on:

you can tell here how much further down the rest of the city is

Nice view of the Devil's Saddle (seen from a different angle in the last post):

I walked to this square (sort of the south end of the Castello district), and almost ate lunch at the small cafe there, which primarily served beer and very small pastries.  That's a satue of St. Francis in the middle.

Facing sort of behind me at the same square. The church is on the list of things to go see, but it was full (being sunday).  Chiesa Santa Maria or so.

A future goal (for the trip back): Castello St. Michelle

Somewhere nearby was an elevator up to a nice viewing platform (elevator up from the lower part of the city, so not relevant for me, albeit a bit amusing.  That's what I'm standing on in this next picture (squinty proof I was here):

Walked a fair amount more. Ended up walking down the hill a bit and ducked into a passageway to check out a place called Marrakech. The owner knew at once I wasn't Italian-speaking and asked if I knew French, which we then used to communicate, choppily. Had Tajin (biggest chickpeas I'd ever had) and sardines.  If you ever want to be amused (or have your patience tested), eat bone-in fish with me. I am hopeless at it, to the point where the shop owner commented to me ("il pesce è difficile da mangiare", or a French-Italian mish-mash of that) and looked sympathetic.

It was adjacent to a Youth Hostel, and very cheap (pro tip: if looking for cheap grub, go looking for youth hostels and what's adjacent).

The rest of the afternoon was hot; I stopped for Gelato (fig&nut and lemon&basil) and then a coffee. Spent some quality time reading.  Wandered to my B&B to pick up my suitcase and caught the train to Oristano, where I met up with my friends and we headed to the beach for a drink and to unwind.