Alghero - Day 4

Craziness followed us all the way until we left Alghero airport.  Being Monday, we chose to have a lazy morning.  Our flight didn't leave until the evening, so S decided to try to find a spa of some variety and J and I decided to mosey around and perhaps do a little shopping.

J and I started by wandering through the cathedral that was near our flat but under construction.

Cattedrale di Santa Maria from the back, the side not under construction.

It was interesting in that the sandstone parts of the cathedral were starting to erode, possibly from the constant seawater barrage around 300 feet away.  At the same time, a lot of the nice sculptures and artwork inside were still in good condition.

We have come to learn that this is a Catholic symbol for a relinquary, a place where a vessel holds a physical part of the corpse of a saint.  It's a old Catholic thing.

This was one of the more impressive altars I've seen in Europe thus far.  It was marble and silver, from what I could tell, and it was legit inlaid with marble.  Up to this point, we had only seen faux-marble inlay.

I liked the upper piece over the window.  It was sandstone, but carved thin enough that the light shone through it to give a glow-look to the heavenly scene it depicted.

We then had lunch near our flat.

Oh yeah!  "Business Lunch" style!

We still had a few hours to burn, so J wanted me to find a master-craftsman-made Sardinian blade.  Using the Lonely Planet - Sardinia book we had, I found one store that seemed to sell quality-craftsman-made blades.  I selected four blades that were not insanely priced and had a handle built out of one solid piece, not two pieces riveted or screwed together.  At a loss for how to narrow it down, I instinctively checked the balance of each blade.  Only one balanced in the middle, so I bought that one.  The sales lady immediately seemed excited, for some unknown reason.  

When I tried to asked whether it could be mailed to us, as I was trying to avoid checking a bag at the airport, she couldn't understand me and got the store owner.  The store owner spoke pretty good english and the first thing he said was, "I made that knife."  It was a funny situation.  They thought I was questioning the quality of the knife after buying it when I was actually trying to ask if they could help me ship it back to Germany at minimal cost.  I immediately asked him for his card, having accidentally now met a local knifemaker.  Sadly, they couldn't help me out in terms of shipping.  

It's a simple yet sizable blade, roughly 4 inches long.  The handle is roughly the same length.

 The balance, while not perfect, it pretty good.

 The piece joining the blade to the horn-material handle seems to be made of one piece of brass.

The handle is one solid piece with trench carved out for the blade to fold in.  In case you can't tell, I'm happy with it :)

We got back to our flat, to start packing our things when we found someone already in there.  She was cleaning.  Confused, we talked to her and she immediately got us on the phone with the flat owner.  He was confused at first, then remembered that we weren't leaving until later.  He said she was his "cousin" and she was supposed to be there the clean.  S showed up in the midst of this and we promptly gathered our bags and left.  

With still some extra time, we decided to try to avoid the expense of a taxi to the airport and bought bus tickets, 1 euro each!  Happy with our find, we waited for the bus.  All of the buses came at the exact same time, so we started asking bus drivers which bus was to the airport.  The third driver we asked pointed to the opposite side of the block we were on and said that was where the airport bus pickup was.  Why the cashier lady did not point this out was beyond us to reason, but we were again frustrated at being forced to spend extra money for a cab...this time being out an extra 3 euro.  At least we still had the cab as a backup option.

At the airport, we had to check a bag in order to bring the Sardinian knife back.  Because we did not pay for this online at Ryanair in advance, we had to pay an additional 60 euro!  

We finally got back, and went our separate ways.  

My pros and cons about our experience in Alghero:

Pros:  AWESOME food, very relaxed environment, beautiful-to-the-ear language, lots of beaches, lots of old-school architecture, a good number of local master craftsmen, lots of pets, relatively clean area, nice people

Cons:  weather didn't cooperate, price-gouging in a lot of places, very touristy, not much to do if you don't plan ahead or have your own transportation

Would I go again?  Yep.  But I would plan ahead at lot more in terms of transportation and weather.  The public transportation is decent, but not too conducive to general exploring outside of the city.  I would consider renting a car next time for the purposes of seeing more of the island.