If, like me, you love islands as well as Mediterranean food and culture, you owe it to yourself to visit Sardinia.

Sardinia sees almost daily cruise ship visits from the biggest to the smallest cruise companies. Given all Sardinia has to offer, though, I strongly recommend planning a post- or pre-cruise visit to explore the unique culture of this beautiful place more fully.

Costa Smeralda, Sardinia

My family (consisting of me, my husband Alex, our 5-year old son, and my 77-year old father) travels to experience natural beauty and to enjoy different cuisines. Sardinia perfectly suits our style of travel.

If your cruise ship visits Sardinia, you’ll likely dock at dock in Cagliari, the island’s capital, located in the far south. I recommend renting a car for a few hours to head out into the countryside. Have lunch or dinner at an agriturismo. Find a secluded beach (there’s almost 1,200 miles of coastline) and enjoy a swim, but make sure to see some of the magnificent sights mother nature provides us with on Sardinia.

If you come for a longer visit, you have several options. Sardinia is large enough to host three international airports. Cagliari has many regular and many charter flights to to tourist resorts in the southern half of the island. Many flights from Europe fly into Olbia in the in the north.  To the northwest, the charter airport in Alghero feeds the big hotel complexes. Given the island’s size and location, there are also a number of ferry connections to the Italian mainland, Corsica and other European destinations.

Traveling through the landscape is truly the best way to experience Sardinia. There is a freeway from Cagliari north toward Olbia with ab branch west to Sassari and Alghero. The other roads are fairly narrow and curvy as they wind through the terrain. Sat-navs work reliably. If you’re an avid “ferrosexual,” or just prefer trains to driving, Sardinia also has a fairly large rail network, and some trains take you through spectacular terrain.

As an agriturismo guest, you’re typically served both dinner and breakfast. Not a la carte , but just what the kitchen serves, very Italian, with antipasti, followed by first course of pasta, a secondo of meat, potato, vegetables, and concluding with dolce.

In one of the places we ate, we were served no less than thirteen different antipasti in enormous quantities, some hot, some cold, followed by three different pasta dishes, all before the main course, roasted piglet, was brought out, served with potatoes and vegetables. To say we were stuffed by the time we left would be an understatement.

You also get plenty of local red wine, and water to drink. With your coffee, don’t forget to try a glass of mirto , a liquor made on the basis of grappa, but flavored with myrtle. Slightly sweet, tart and delicious.

Eating at an agriturismo is frugal as well as filling and delicious. Our entire meal came at thirty-three euros per person, all drinks included. (They didn’t even charge us for our son’s meal.)

A typical Sardinian speciality is bottarga , salted, cured fish roe, often served with pasta. It’s considered a delicacy, sometimes called “Sardinian caviar.” It is quite expensive, but a bit of an acquired taste, due to its fishy smell. Also don’t forget to try typical Sardinian bread, pane carasau , a wafer thin dried bread, or pardulas , a ricotta-based tart. I could go on forever, but I’ll stop here. You’ll find a lot more to discover in Sardinia!

Cork oaks

Sardinia is relatively dry, and the grapes get lots of sun. The wines are therefore on the heavier side, and the wine makers push the envelope of many bottles to move 15% alcohol. I’m no sommelier, so don’t expect me to go on about berries and chocolate, but if you like great wines, Sardinia will definitely have something for you.

Speaking of wine, Sardinia produces cork, not as much as Portugal, but you’ll find cork oaks everywhere. Stop, have a look. It’s definitely worth seeing where those brown bottle stoppers come from.

World’s oldest living olive tree

Grotta di Nettuno, Sardinia

Steps to Grotto di Nettuno

Town of Bosa, Sardinia

One of the favorite things we did were drives along the coastline. The Costa Smeralda is spectacularly beautiful, and the views across the strait to Corsica with its snowcapped peaks was impressive.

The waters of Costa Smeralda

The visits to farms was also a great idea, as kids love to pet a horse or a pony, count cows on a meadow etc. Further south on the island are amusement parks and water parks, but we never made it that far. Also, it was at the beginning of the tourist season, and this spring was unusually cold across Southern Europe. Swimming was not on the menu, despite the beautiful pool at our hotel.

Since we live on an island off the west coast of Sweden, taking ferries, boats and ships is nothing new for our son. He loved taking a car ferry across a small straight to the island of La Maddalena, a national park, but also an inhabited island with an old city and lots of great beaches. Although we visited too early in the season to swim, Sascha still enjoyed walking along the beach, throwing stones and looking for sea treasures.

Hans M Hirschi still considers himself a fairly recent “cruise convert” with six cruises under his belt, all with his husband Alex and their son Sascha on Norwegian Cruise Line ships. Hirschi is the author of contemporary LGBT fiction and a Stonewall Awards nominee. His most recent novel, Return to the Land of the Morning Calm, is a feel-good story about a Korean War Veteran. His travel and cruise experiences tend to find their way into his writing. He lives with his family on a small island off the Swedish West coast in Gothenburg. Their next cruises will take them back to Hawai’i aboard the Pride of America and later this year down to the Caribbean from New York on the Norwegian Gem.

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