[ Aug.2020 ] I continue talking about the walking tour in Alghero, the town in the north western Sardinia in Italy.
We started outside of the city wall and went inside the wall to Piazza Civica, the lively square where there were restaurants and shops.
The building called Palazzo d’Albis de Ferrara facing the square is the oldest one in the town.
It was made in the Catalonian Gothic style and the windows were characteristic.
From here, we walked on via Minerva and turned left on to via Roma.
One of many coral shops was on this road and our guide, Sabrina talked about corals in Alghero.
We had leaned about the corals in Sardinia two years ago, too, but in Alghero you cannot avoid that.
According to Sabrina, even Romans were already fishing corals, but in the old way, they used to use boats which damaged the corals, so now only divers can do it.
They have to dive to a depth of 80~100 metres and now only 12 people have the licence to do so.
And they can fish corals up to 1 kg per day.
The months that they can fish is limited.
Therefore, the price of corals is expensive.
Only the shops with the certificate can sell the Sardinian corals.
But some of the things these shops sell, for example a simple bracelet, are not expensive at all.
That is because they are made by collecting and hardening the powder which is produced when corals are carved.
The area from around Bosa in the south to Castelsardo in the north is called Coral Coast.
The corals from the Coral Coast are salmon pink rather than red.
By the way, the flag of Alghero is red and yellow horizontal strips (the Catalonian flag) with the picture of a coral.
At the end of via Roma where we were walking on, there was a tower called Torre Porta Terre (the gate of the land).
The old town of Alghero is surrounded by the city wall, but two sides are the sea, so it was easy to make the walls.
And there were two gates to enter the city, one was this land gate and the other was the sea gate which is a little far away from here.
In the old days, the both gates were closed when the sun was set.
We turned right to via Simon and found a large professional photograph of an old person on the wall.
We already knew that these are the photos of people who are more than 100 years old living in Sardinia, showing how proud they are that Sardinian people live long.
Sardinia as well as Okinawa in Japan is one of the Blue Zones, which are the places where many people live much longer than average.
Sabrina told us that one of the reasons why Sardinian people live long is that they drink Cannonau wine.
Cannonau is the grape variety which is used to make Sardinian red wine.
Some components of Cannonau help people live long apparently.
The red wines sold in the supermarket in Alghero was all Cannonau.
I remember that when we came here before, two years ago, we had a bottle of wine whose name meant ‘100 years old’ at one enoteca.
We are going to drink more Cannonau wines from now on.
