Program

• DAY 1: On your eight-day full immersion journey into Farm Food Sardinia you will start in Olbia. If you would like to spend a day  here in this city before our week starts, then we can give tips on how to move around and where to go. At the airport you’ll meet up at 6 pm with the rest of the group and we will head out in a 9-seat van and extra car to the first destination: an agriturismo (homestead) that is idyllically set between granite rock formations. In the morning the sunrise over the lake – only a stroll away – will be awe inspiring indeed. A hidden natural pearl, this combination of rocks and lake and sun! This agriturismo serves fresh delicious local food, prepared by a woman chef in charge. The father likes to come in and sing, for instance a Sardinian love song that touches the heart of every Sardinian, and probably also yours. Pureness from the heart!

• DAY 2: After the delicious breakfast we will visit one of Sardinia’s biggest mysteries: a prehistoric “rock altar” containing cavities in the crystal rich rock. A most healthy place for a lunch picnic of local delicacies. You might see a rock moving in the distance: a big turtle, and around that corner a stone formation ‘is’ a giant cobra head. An inspiring place. This day we sleep outside the village of Bitti, to enjoy a fantastic agriturismo, highly regarded for its traditional food… Bitti is famous for its “Canto a Tenore”, a singing modality recognized by UNESCO. We will learn about them and sleeping in our comfortable rooms in the farmhouse we will be guarded by the beautiful bright stars in the darkest of skies of Sardinia. In the morning the chiming of cowbells and sheep bells will accompany your short walk to the restaurant, for a breakfast featureing the yogurt and cheese made here on this farm from their cows as well as the eggs from their chickens and vegetables grown on the farm. Warm milk fresh from the cow for your coffee after a nice walk greeting the animals who provided your breakfast help you begin to understand why these people become centenarians.

• DAY 3: After a farm-produce breakfast we will set off to the village of Oliena, where we will sleep in a mountain hotel with a fantastic view over the valley. This is the village of the master embroiderers, papal level, and of course we will visit their workshop where you can see their designs. Fine, gentle, talented women, serene atmosphere, top-level work.

  Dinner will be in a fabulous home restaurant of a couple that was forced to close their successful fourty year old restaurant – after Covid – and chose to convert their stables into a beautiful warm dining room, serving a menu made by hand using recipes coming from a Nobel winning literature source from over a century ago. Expect poems read by the owner in between the courses. And the wine is famous for not getting us drunk or leaving us hungover made by locals of each village we visit, surprisingly.

• DAY 4: After breakfast, we will set off for the hospitable and once ‘invincible’ mountainous area that the Romans called Barbagia. (‘Those Barbarians. Wouldn’t let themselves be romanized!’) The wild heart of Sardinia… We visit the village nearby, a bastion for Freedom Fighters internationally, you will see the colourful and often iconic mural paintings in the village honoring these freedom fighters. Then we will settle in for another gourmet picnic featuring the local cheeses, meats, and vegetables these centenarians enjoy next to a breathtaking lake! What a place for a picnic!

  Dinner will be in a family run farm that will cook specially for us, led by La Nonna, the grandmother. The road to this agriturismo in 5 minutes already took us much deeper Into the Sardinian Wild than you would expect, and now you will feel immersed in Sardinian authenticity and hospitality. We sleep that night in the village, in an agriturismo right in the idyllic center of town. If the internationally famous women choir is practicing, we will go and hear their ethereal singing.

• DAY 5: After breakfast we will head for the west coast, where we will visit the picturesque village of Santu Lussurgiu. Here you will enjoy a full local produce dinner in a historic centuries-old mansion, located down hidden alleys. The local food, the ambiance… The romantic glow of streetlights makes the walk back home after dinner magical and meditative.

  On our way to this beautiful entourage our lunch picnic of local cheeses, breads olives, meats and vegetables will have been under an impressive cork oak next to a superb prehistoric stone tower complex, three millennia old at least. Sardinia has many surprising remnants of inspiring grandness, still not explained properly, as you will have seen throughout the week. We will stay two nights here in this village.

• DAY 6: At breakfast this time we might do as the locals do, with some additions: both “al bar”, at the local café, and in the picturesque green park, enjoying a surprisingly simple but oh so important local ingredient, pure spring water that flows from taps around the village.

  After this cultural ánd healthy experience, we will travel just two villages away, where we will meet a Sardinian master musician and witch doctor: he will present and play traditional and invented instruments of the region, and he will invite us to sample his own medicinal elixirs and potions. Ah, and he makes his own wine too. In his beautiful home and garden you will feel transported to a simpler magical place and time.

  Tonight we will dine in a farmstead in the so-called Iron Hills, on a breathtaking ranch, run by a family where they cook only their local produce and meat. The local olive oil, the seasonal products, the natural environment…. Not the standard touristical restaurant at all, and still only 10 miles from the sea. Here you taste the freshness and proudness, and as we stroll back to the car after our meal you will be in awe at a spectacular night sky filled with more stars than you can imagine in the middle of this unspoiled land. All this is within the quaint village of Santu Lussurgiu, surrounded by lush green hills, famous for its aria buona and acqua buona: good air, also socially, and good water, from the famous fresh healthy springs of the area, which is also coming out of your shower to refresh you every morning.

• DAY 7: Today we will head to the fish village of Cabras, also visiting the famous quartz crystal beaches with sand of sparkling white crystal spheres, the best place for a lunch picnic indeed! We are also in the village of the mysterious giant’s statues from prehistory here! Do share your spontaneous insights about them with us, for no-one has a clue why they were built, really!

  Tonight we will dine in the fish agriturismo of a local fisherman’s cooperative, experiencing their way to preparing fish. You will see the old laguna and structures that once were used to catch the fish. We sleep in a cute hotel in Cabras, with apartments along an alley, just like Locals Restaurant in Fairhope.

• DAY 8: Early rise and transfer to Olbia, where later that day you will have your flight, if you haven’t decided to stay a little longer. The rest of your Europe trip awaits? Depending on flights departures, during the transfer we will surely stop at yet another inspiring site on this beautiful island that the Italians refer to as the Isola Mito, the Island of Myths. By now you understand why.
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