Cagliari has proved to be a really nice place to spend Christmas. There's enough going on to make you feel festive:


The shops are piled high with panettoni (more on that in a minute), and the streets are busy with shoppers. But it's not nearly so wall-to-wall and in-your-face as the festivities in Britain; your ears are not battered with carols everywhere; and -- at least compared with Dubrovnik last year, when all the shops shut for what felt like ages, necessitating meticulous forward-planning -- a reasonable number of provisioning places have remained open throughout.

The evening of Christmas Eve is quiet on the streets. Good for a look at the lights:




And the morning of Christmas Day is a great time to walk, because you have the place pretty much to yourself:





Our destination that day was the Tuvixeddu Necropolis. Nothing like a massive graveyard to make you feel Christmassy...

But this is really quite something. It was the Carthaginians who first coopted this hill to bury their dead, and it became the largest Punic necropolis on the island. The site was used by the Carthaginians until the 3rd century BC, after which the Romans took it over.

It's very impressive, and your visit is free:







Then home for lunch. It's easy to make up a festive platter here, with ham and olives and a selection of salad things.




Having sniffed around for a while, comparing prices and reading labels, I was very happy with our eventual choice. This is a GOOD panettone. Rich, moist, and bulging with fruit:



Everyone needs a reviving walk on Boxing Day morning. So we decided to bus over to Calamosca, and climb the formation known as La Sella del Diavolo (the Devil's Saddle):











By Boxing Day evening, everyone's out and about, strolling and filling up the cafes. Our final seasonal sinful treat was seadas... You'll find all the low-down here, but they consist of a crispy semolina pastry wrapped around a sheep's cheese filling, and drizzled with honey. The combo of flavours is sensationally nice. Ours came from Saseada. We had a traditional one and a saffron one, and chose (from a long list) a different honey for each. Paired with a little glass of Sardinian moscato, they were absolutely delectable (and it WILL be diet time next year):



Which brings us to today. Which turned out to be something of a fiasco...

We were back on the nuraghi trail that we'd begun in Mandas. Not far along the coast to the east of Cagliari, the map shows us the Nuraghe Diana, dating back to the 2nd millennium BCE. And we can get there on the bus.

The lady in our favoured tabacchi now knows what we want when we arrive, and we duly bought our two tickets out and two tickets back. You change buses once, and the whole journey takes about an hour. The outward trip took us along by the lagoons, where we saw lots of flamingo (including two in flight, like pink arrows, impressive but impossible to photograph).

So we arrive, and we can see the nuraghe from the road. But it really looks as though someone has decided to close off the site. There obviously was a path up (now blocked), and if you go up by the road, you draw another blank. There's a lane that looks as though it ought to lead to the complex, but the signs have all been scrubbed out, and there's nothing to reassure you that it's not private property.

Defeated, we dropped back down onto the beach path, and it's from there that you get your best views of the structure:



So that was all a bit disappointing. But at least we got good views:







We had what seemed like an endless bus journey home, although I suppose it was a good way to see some of Cagliari's burbs, which have quite a good vibe.

And, once home, there were compensations. There was still some of last night's red wine left (it came from Sant'Antioco, an island just to the west of Cagliari), as well as some pane carasau (semolina flatbreads, very crispy and tasty, and said to have been a staple of Sardinian shepherds because they kept so well):



While I'm on the subject of these, I might as well bring up the cannoli...

It's Sicily that's famous for cannoli (crunchy, wafer-like tubes filled with sweetened ricotta). But one of the first things we saw while walking up from Cagliari station a week ago was a cafe window full of the most delicious-looking cannoli...

And it seems there is such a thing as Sardinian cannoli. The difference lies in the wafer dough, which in the Sardinian case is made from carasau bread, which is soaked in milk and sugar, pulped, drained, and dried into cylinders. Now, I wasn't going to interrogate our cannoli-suppliers as to whether this is indeed how they made their cannoli, or whether they import the shells from Sicily. Any which way, they were absolutely delicious:



Tomorrow is our last day in Cagliari. All being well, the evening will find us on a big boat sailing to Palermo.

I've loved being here, and would gladly come back.