Every guide to this coast tells you it is expensive and then declines to say how expensive, which is not much use to somebody trying to work out whether they can come. So here are numbers. They are for a…
Archives for September 2026
The Nuraghi and Tombs of the Giants at Arzachena
Ten minutes inland from a coast where a hotel room can cost four thousand euros a night, there is a stone tower that was already ancient when Rome was a collection of huts, and on the morning I went there…
The Best Day Trips from the Costa Smeralda
Everybody comes here for the coast and then discovers, around day three, that they have run out of beach. That is not a criticism of the beaches. It is arithmetic. The bays are small, they fill by mid-morning, and after…
Costa Smeralda Nightlife, and What It Really Costs
The nightlife here has a reputation, and the reputation is accurate, and it is also only half the story. There are clubs on this coast where a table costs more than a week’s accommodation somewhere sensible. That is real and…
The Best Time to Visit the Costa Smeralda
September. That is the answer, and I will spend the rest of this explaining why, and what the alternatives cost you. The short version is that the Mediterranean is slow to warm and slow to cool, so the sea reaches…
How to Get to the Costa Smeralda
Olbia is the airport, forty minutes of granite hills is the drive, and a hire car is not a preference here. It is the infrastructure. That last point is the one that catches people, so it gets a section of…
Where to Eat on the Costa Smeralda
There are two entirely different dinners available here and they are about ten minutes’ drive apart. One is on the water at Porto Cervo, with lit yachts behind you, excellent fish, and a bill that will make a particular impression….
Where to Stay on the Costa Smeralda
There is one fact that decides this question and almost every guide buries it under a list of hotels. The beaches are public. Every one of them, including the beaches directly in front of the most expensive hotels on the…
The La Maddalena Boat Trip from the Costa Smeralda
This is the best day out from the Costa Smeralda, and the one most likely to disappoint you, and the difference between those two outcomes is almost entirely about what you were told before you booked. So let me get…
Porto Cervo: What to Do in a Village Built in 1962
Porto Cervo is younger than my mother and it is designed to look older than my grandmother, and once you have noticed that you cannot stop noticing it. There was nothing here before 1962. Not a fishing village that grew,…
The Best Beaches on the Costa Smeralda
The beaches here are not the reason the Costa Smeralda is expensive. That is worth saying first, because it changes how you plan a week. The beaches are free. All of them. There is no gate, no wristband, no booking…
The Complete Guide to the Costa Smeralda, Sardinia
There is a number that explains this coast better than any photograph of it, and almost nobody quotes it. Less than four per cent of the land is built on. That is not an accident of geography or a happy…
