Sardinia was another ferryboat ride.  Again, only days ahead of the tourist season, the roads were nearly empty, as were the beaches.  One night they stayed in a hotel that had just been built, not officially open for business.  The $150.00 per night room was $75.00 and included an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. 

     $75.00 per night sounded expensive but Donna-Rae and Greg soon learned that was a bargain for European travel.  Since the formation of the European Union, countries like Italy and Spain have upped their prices to match those of Germany and Austria.  Before they joined the EU the $75.00 room would have been $35.00.  Adding to the increased prices for everything from food to gasoline ($6.50 per gallon versus $2.00 in the USA) was the fall of the dollar against the Euro.  Five years ago 84 cents would purchase one Euro.  Donna-Rae reeled when she discovered that it took $1.30 to buy one Euro when she visited an ATM.

     A simple meal in a restaurant could easily cost $40.00 for two, and that was without swill.  Add a bottle of house wine for the swiller and the tab would be $50.00.  Long gone were their $10.00 meals and $2.00 bottles of Argentine wine.

     Traveling with budget-minded (cheap?) Greg has taught Donna-Rae a few things.  For instance, a breakfast “buffet” means fill your pockets for a free lunch.  Often a hotel would offer a breakfast that was little more than a roll, coffee and jam.  Because Donna-Rae can not eat anything with gluten, the roll goes uneaten.  By noon she would be woozy from lack of food combined with the effects of her Parkinson’s Disease drugs, requiring a lunch stop.  Gone would be another $20.00 to $30.00.  Greg taught her how to make several passes through a breakfast buffet, stuffing fruit, sliced meat, boiled eggs, butter, yogurt, and bottled mineral water into her Motophoria motorcycle jacket coat pockets.  She said, ‘ I feel bad about taking so much for breakfast.’  Greg responded, ‘If my Aerostich riding pants and jacket had bigger pockets I could get us enough for dinner.’

  The beaches of Sardinia were deserted, as were the roads.  This Italian island, which thrives on tourism, was one of the better riding places they had ridden.  Small twisty mountain and shoreline roads greeted Greg.  Beaches, sunrises and sunsets welcomed Donna-Rae.  A week after they were here Sardinia was swarming with tourists, mostly Germans trying to get away from the lingering cold and wet of a dreary winter in the north.  Greg, a professional photographer, wanted to stay for more beach photography.  Donna-Rae quashed that idea knowing he was more interested in filming big breasted Teutonic women on the topless beaches than he was in surf and sand.                              

The residents of Sardinia seemed to have learned a thing or two from USA gun toting residents.  Bullets of a large enough caliber to drop an elephant holed this sign.  It reminded Greg of home, road signs in Montana.