Biosciences Bonn: Alghero, Sardenia, Italia!

The weekend before Berlin, Nicole, Laura and I went to Alghero. (It's a city on a little Italian island called Sardenia!) Let me just say, this place was BEAUTIFUL! When we left Germany from the Dusseldorf Weeze airport, we had to wear pants and jackets, but as soon as we landed I could already tell this place was warmer! (And more humid since the airplane windows fogged up super fast!) Benniamino met us at the airport holding a sign that said "Laura Warren." Trusting he wasn't a killer, we loaded our stuff into his vehicle and then hopped in for a ride to our hotel. Well needless to say, when we arrived there we realized that it was NOT a hotel. My friends, it turns out we were staying at a private VILLA! Can you say luckiest girls ever?! It came complete with a cute outdoor garden, living room, kitchen, bathroom, and two bedrooms with four beds. This place was perfect! Since we got there super late on Friday, we decided to sleep in to about 8am, and then venture out to the city.
Saturday morning, we were up and at 'em! Thankfully we packed some snacks for breakfast, and then headed to town to find postcards, a shot glass, and then the beach! Honestly, it was the first place I had been where people don't speak English, or at least very very little English. But the Italians were super nice! We found postcards for cheap pretty easily. I remember in one store, the man was attempting to tell us about his daughters that had made the coral jewelry, but that's about as much as I got out of the conversation haha. But he even gave us a tiny piece of red coral (what Sardenia is known for) and gift! Then we wandered around the city some more and took a bunch of pictures, everything was so cute and pretty! Finally around noon, restaurants starting opening up. We decided we wanted REAL Italian pizza, so we wandered around until we found a place with a good price. I will never forget what happened at the first one we went to. So we sit down and start looking at the menu, and all of a sudden, Laura points out that there's a cover charge of two euros per person. (mind you I only have 15 euros to eat for the rest of the weekend, and to get back to the airport.) So when the waitress comes, I asked her what that meant. She tried to tell us that every restaurant in Italy will have that, and that it just covers the napkins, glasses, and silverware. At that point, I asked if I would still be charged if I didn't use them....to which she just replied with a 'look'. So I told her that I didn't have enough money and would need to go the ATM, at which point we hauled butt out of that restaurant! Then we came along the most perfect little pizza shop ever! A hand-made, brick oven cheese pizza for four euros.... and not a tiny crappy personal sized pizza either! Oh God it was DELICIOUS.
After lunch we decided to try to find the beach. Let's just say, we MIGHT have misjudged how far it was....oh wait...we didn't even know where we were going, we were just walking. haha It had started to rain slightly, which slowed us down, but we trudged on anyways. Finally, after what felt like 2 hours of walking (which it was definitely less than that) we found a little hiking trail thing on the side of the road. Being the adventurers that we are, we took the trail up over a ridge, and WAH-LAH! There was the glorious beach on the other side! We had found like a hidden trail to a private beach! There was not a soul in sight! So what did we do? Make jumping pics of course! We stayed on the beach for a couple hours, but then decided to head back since we thought it would close to 2hrs to get back to the villa, and didn't want to stuck walking in the dark. We also stopped at little supermarket and bought pasta to make for dinner. (For some reason people couldn't tell where we were from...like some asked UK, some assumed Spanish...yeahh...or none of the above, but never Americans hah.) (Oh and I'll never forget the one lady that started talking to us in Italian, and then her friend came up and tried to "translate," which meant she listened to the first lady and then looked at us and spoke in Italian again hahaha) Nicole cooked, while Laura and I studied, and OH GOD it was sooo GOOD!!! Then we went to bed relatively early, so we could get up early and enjoy our last half a day there.
Sunday morning we ate leftovers for breakfast. Then stopped and got mini canolis to try (gotta do the cultural thing!) Then we headed back to the beach since we figured it was a long walk, and the sun was shining! Due to the nice weather, we had some company on the beach, but it was still far from crowded. We even got to tan for a little bit! But then the dreaded time came and had to head back to the bus stop for the airport. Since we had POORLY misjudged how long it would take us to walk, we had plenty of time to try out McDonalds in Italy! (I was super excited since I'm trying it in every country!) They had the most amazing potato slices ever! (Like ruffle chip shaped potato slices baked with spices. NOMMMM.) Then we caught the bus back to the airport....
The weather was so nice that we decided to wait outside the airport for 30min, (since we got there 2 hours early.) The sun was shining, so naturally, I decided I wanted to try to tan....in front of the airport....and then nuns walked by....and then a family....and then I decided I was done. hahaha Thankfully when we landed back in Germany we were greeted with decent weather, but I definitely missed Alghero. That beach was BEAUTIFUL!
We landed at Frankfurt Hahn airport, and then had to find the bus that would take us back to Cologne. I swear we waited for freaking ever outside, and after the sun went down, it was VERY cold again. We ended up getting to Colonge after 11pm, and still had to wait and catch a train back to Bonn. Of course the next train came after midnight..it was a LONG night to say the least. And, even better, we were leaving for Berlin the next morning and had to be to the bus at 6:30am...and I still had to pack for that trip...can you say #winning? #nosleep? But somehow we managed, and no regrets! Italy was totally worth it! :)