Some guests book before arrival when buying tickets or by comparing prices on an aggregator such as noleggioauto.it, others head to the hall next to the airport upon arrival. For scooters, rentforcagliari.it, carbustec and autonoleggiosardinya.it (none of these has been tested)
If you are arriving by car in the Northern part of Sardinia, you might be interested to make a few stops for sightseeing landscapesLicenseLicense, churchesLicense, some of the numerous Nuragic, Roman and Carthaginian archeologic sites such as TharrosLicense (see tharros.info and opening times), Santa CristinaLicense (tharros.info and opening times), BaruminiLicense (unesco.org and opening times) Small villages in the heart of Sardinia have a special charm and a few stops could be : village parties (saint birthday, after grape harvest, Sartiglia tournaments...), wine or cheese cooperatives, muralesLicense of Orgosolo
A car is very useful in Sardinia, since public transport is not frequent. However, it is perfectly possible to get to our villa with public buses and most of the time we are willing to help guests for shopping heavy items with our car. From the Cagliari Elmas airport (and also other major airports of Sardinia) a bus takes you to the central coach station, "Autostazione Arst", next to Cagliari's habour. Then a coach heading for Villasimius or Costa Rey or Muravera or San Vito stops at "Cannesisa" (lines 101, 103 and 135). Check timetables at ARST (select a province then click on the map marker close to Torre delle Stelle to download the relevant pdf timetables, check the period of the year) or arst.sardegna.it
We have nice memories of boat trips to Sardinia, with or without cabin (open deck without armchair reservation is usually fine since there are plenty of armchairs). It is possible to travel around the Tyrrhenian islands (Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Sicilian archipelagos) without stops on the continent (except for Elba island).
In Sardinia, car sharing hasn't yet taken off. However, if you have some spare time, you may be able to get lifts all the way to the harbour of Genoa or Marseilles and then take a ferry across to Porto Torres. We have used covoiturage.fr before but there are many more. seat61.com is a brilliant website by a train afficionado who provides the most detailed advice about plane-free travel around the globe. bahn.com is our favourite tool to search for possible journey itineraries from A to B in Europe by train. It is often impossible to book on this website so once you have worked out the best route, you can then go to raileurope.com or other retailers to book your tickets. Generally, one can plan any trip that goes through either Spain, France or Italy to get ferried to Sardinia. For example, for travellers coming from the UK and not having much available time it is possible to visit either Paris or Rome before reaching Cagliari in two days and a half (either two nights and one day or two days and one night)
Last update: 7th April 2014
First published: 7th April 2014
