On the second day of our stay in Alghero in Sardinia, Italy, the weather was not very nice and it looked like it could start raining at any moment, as the weather forecast had predicted.
We did not have any plans, so we went out and walked in the old town and the port again.
When the weather was bad, the sea looked depressed, too.
This town seemed to have a lot of interesting stories through the long history, but they did not have any walking tours.
They did not even sell any guidebooks in English, either, though there were some picture books.
We found a few boats lined up to go to the limestone cave at the port, so we decided to take one.
The fare for the boat was €15 per person and the entrance fee for the cave was €13 per person.
The destination is the cave called Grotta di Nettuno, which is situated at the bottom of cape Caccia, facing Alghero.
It was quite far away and it took about 45 minutes to get there by boat.
When
we were close to the cave, I could see the staircase on the cliff and people were walking down there.
If you take an overland route to the cave, you have to come down these steps.
According to the websites, this staircase is called “Steps of Roe Deer” or “Goat’s Staircase” and, apparently, there are as many as 656 steps.
Coming down is OK, but imagine going back up!
Our guidebook says “walking the steps is a pretty exhilarating experience”.
For me and my husband, who are afraid of heights, it would be a “terrifying experience”.
Good thing we took the boat.
This limestone cave is one of the biggest in Italy.
Every visitor has to join the half an hour tour with a guide to get into the cave.
The path where we could walk was about 580 metres long, but the rest, which was not open to the public, was huge.
We walked, listening to the guide speak about the cave.
For example, the lake just inside the cave made up of sea water, is 10 metres deep and the highest column is 18 metres tall.
There is an area called “Smith Room” and this Smith is a British man who explored this cave thoroughly in the 19th century.
Inside the cave was a beautiful artistic display of stalactites, which are formed by the rain drops over the course of 2 million years.
Compared with that, a human being’s life seems so tiny.
These 
kinds of limestone caves are similar all over the world for a layman like me, but I have not been to a cave like this for a long time, so I enjoyed this one very much.
When we came out of the cave, we found the weather had changed.
The sky was clear and the sea had come back to life, showing a beautiful blue colour.
We went back to Alghero, enjoying the lovely coastal view.
[ May 2018 ]
