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I went to the Italian island of Sardinia for a four day break with 6 friends of mine a couple of months ago. We didn’t do much there but to chill on the beach, but since we had an awesome time its worth sharing anyway.

Sardinia is the second largest island in the Mediterranean after Sicily. It is quite far away from Italian mainland but just a few miles south of the french island of Corsica. Sardinia is not as crowded as Sicily, and not as developed as a tourist destination as other Italian destinations. The capital is Cagliari which is to the south of the island.

We went to a place called Santa Teresa which is on the northern tip of Sardinia. The plan was to stay in a sea-facing apartment owned by parents of one of the group members. We flew to Olbia, which is a port in the north-east and serves as entry point to the posh resorts off the north-east coast, the likes of Porto Cervo on the Costa Smeralda (the Emerald coast), where the rich and famous of the world descend in their yatchs in the summer. We obviously had no plans whatsoever of celebrity-spotting, not even footballers and pop divas, so we headed straight to our less posh but much nicer destination a bit further north.

The apartment was wonderful with great views across the mediterranean (we could see the island of Corsica sitting in the balcony!) and the local harbour. We actually ended up spending quite a bit of time in the balcony enjoying long meals.

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This is in continuation of my previous post on Cornwall, where on the first day we had spent some time exploring and experiencing the coastline around Fowey in South Cornwall. The next two days we intended to visit two of the most famous gardens of Cornwall - The Eden Project and the Lost Gardens of Heligan.

The Eden project is not your local beautiful garden, it is much more, a world famous site and a unique botanical fete.  It is a very ambitious project that attempts to assemble the vastly varied flora of the world at a single site. 

We decided to walk the 3.5 mile distance from our hotel to Eden using the walking directions left behind by an American tourist who had walked a lot in these areas. Our sense of heart-thumping, adrenaline boosting adventure was fulfilled when the footpath led us straight through some dense undergrowth into a pasture with around 30 cows and bulls, and the usually docile creatures violently chased us off the pasture back onto the path! I can still recall all the bulls snorting at us from behind the gate of the pasture. We later got to know that many footpaths in Britain lead through pastures which the farmers don’t like one bit, and so we shouldn’t have hoped that help would arrive in case we had been cornered by the beasts and gored to death. A passer-by joked - “Those cows don’t know that you won’t even eat them?”

Anyway, all this meant we took an eternity to reach Eden using an alternative walking route (the main road). The park is built in a huge crater site and has three main areas - The outdoor biome, the rain forest biome and the mediterranean biome. The two indoor biomes look like huge blisters or bubbles, appearing to have landed straight out of space.

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Recently had the chance to visit Cornwall in the UK for a three day trip with my friend. Honestly, the reason was purely because I couldn’t get my visa for Spain in time for the intended trip to Costa del Sol and Madrid, and I desperately needed some sun and sand. However, having said that, Cornwall is arguably the most beautiful part of England.

The County of Cornwall is at the south-western tip of Britain, and the tip basically stretches out into the sea. So Cornwall’s north coast faces the Atlantic while the south coast faces the English Channel.

The area, although being small, provides a varied option in terms of landscape and activities. The north coast is grander with more golden sand and surfing beaches, while the south is more sheltered beaches with coves and bays. The very tip (called Land’s End for obvious reasons) is more remote and rugged than anywhere else in England. Newquay and St.Ives’ are a couple of popular towns on the north coast and Falmouth, Truro and St.Austell on the southern coast. Since we had three days and we did not want to keep driving around everywhere, we decided to choose between the north and the south. We eventually decided to go for South Cornwall, as the beaches are less touristy and more quaint, it is quicker to reach by train from London and also has a couple of extremely popular gardens that we wanted to check out. On top of it we learnt that Daphne Du Maurier, who wrote ‘Rebecca’, one of our favourite novels, based it around the area we were intending to visit. That made the excitement two-fold.

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Zurich (“Zu-reich” in German means too rich), the business and cultural capital of Switzerland, lies at the north end of Zurich Lake, in the valley formed by the ridges of Uetliberg on the west and Zurichberg on the east. Extending along both sides of the River Limmat, with hills and mountains rising up around it in all directions, Zurich is set in a spectacularly scenic, almost alpine location.

Zurich
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