Stylish Costa Smeralda / Hotel Cala di Volpe / Sardinia / Italy

Sardinia is always nice and we love the beaches, besides the beaches you will find eg the Cala di Volpe, designed in the style of a traditional fishing village.

Beautiful, defintely a mediterranean’s glamour hideway, with the combination of beautiful pastel accents, original artwork and hand crafted Sardinian furnishings, the hotels 97 sea view rooms and 17 suites are a picture of rural sophistication.

The Hotel was a castle, it has everything you need on campus and you could quite happily spend lazy days here without ever venturing outside the hotel.

A large pool of 160 sqm dominates, the Volpe is equipped with an outside Jacuzzi with cold water and last but not least the marvellous swimming pool.

In the area there are famous white sandy beaches such as Porto Istana, The Reef, Porto Taverna, Brandichi the Cinta and Budoni, which constitute one of the most marvellous marine Protected Areas in Italy.

The 500 sqm villa is totally independent, surrounded by a garden of 6000 sqm shielded by walls and illuminated by 25 external lights.
A spacious patio which covers the whole front view of the villa, is furnished on one side with sofas e chairs and on the other side with a table for 10 people, where you can eat by candlelight in front of the charming sea view.
The lawn of the garden is partially disrupted by the typical Sardinian rocks, which the property owner wanted to keep to leave the villa in harmony with the natural environment of the coast.
The villa is on an about 600 m distance from the road and there’s a port, complete with hotel-owned boats, a sea-water swimming pool, an extraordinary level of service and endless Bulgari cosmetics in your room.

No wonder Cala Di Volpa consistently makes US Condé Nast Traveler magazine’s list of the world’s top 10 hotels.

It’s the place where royalty, Italian international footballers and supermodels enjoy the summer.
Its more trashy than Capri, Costa Smeralda its still the place to be for certain folks. If you’re feeling flush and flash and you are one of those glamour-loving types then head for Costa Smeralda. The 40-mile stretch of coastline just half an hour north of Olbia airport somehow manages to incorporate 90 bays and has a high concentration of photogenic scenery. Before the 1960s, it was famous only for its bandits and mosquitoes. Mussolini tried his best to attracting tourists by banning the word malaria. Then Karim Aga Khan, flying over the coastline one day, looked down from his private plane, observed the jade-coloured sea lapping against the white sands, saw its potential, and set about creating a holiday resort for the wealthy people.

The Aga Khan brought in famous architects and laid down strict rules about design and build quality. Waste, he instructed, would be processed by the most expensive treatment plant in the world. Telephone wires and electrical cables must be buried underground.

Almost overnight, the Aga Khan’s attractive brand of understated, luxurious chic turned the area into a summer playground for the likes of Princess Margaret, Peter Sellers, Princess Caroline of Monaco, King Juan Carlos, Audrey Hepburn and Jean Paul Belmondo.

Furthermore you will find celebs like Flavio Briatore, Sivio Berlusconi, Naomi Campbell, Francesco Totti.
In between flutes of champagne and the “highest concentration of beautiful girls” Costa Smeralda continues to attract Europe’s richest families, The Olivetti family has a villa at Romazzino, Mick Jagger is a regular visitor.
Sad story of the Princess of the hearts Diana spend her last summer holiday aboard Dodi Fayed’s chartered yacht.

And when that first warm summer breeze, you’ll understand why they say that this where the wind was born.

We started off with a visit to Porto Cervo, the hub of Costa Smeralda’s buzzing, summertime social scene. This is where the rich and famous place their yachts.

The glowing pastel-toned houses of Porto Cervo, with the pleasant, blue-chip rustic construction of the Hotel Cervo as its main attraction, suck you in just like the first few pages of a trashy airport novel. You don’t really want to like it but you just can’t help it.

We enjoyed a stop at inland Arzachena, where we had normal-priced fresh seafood and Carta di Musica, (literally, music parchment) that delicious, olive oil-drenched, paper-thin bread which was invented on the island, is served with just about everything and is the most moreish bar snack.

The countryside is quite spectacular and constantly unpredictable. One moment, it’s wild, rolling untamed Iranian Steppe, the next bleakly beautiful Balearic scrub. Around one corner, you’re looking at Scottish lowlands; around another, you’re suddenly in High Chaparral territory, scanning the crags in the extraordinary, wind-sculpted rock formations. Not surprisingly, this kind of geological terrain and effulgent flora attracts a few rucksacks and anoraks.

We stayed at five-star Cala di Volpe Hotel where they shot bits of the movie “Wizard of Oz” and a scene in a 007 James Bond film.

Indeed, one can well imagine Moore, feeling very much at home in this superannuated stockade.

You can easyly and quite cheap reach the airport of Olbia and if you do not like it the south and Cagliari is different.