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Porto Rafael, travel notes

A few suggestions to explore the area a bit or take part in the most characteristic events of Porto Rafael: don't miss.

Capo Testa, peninsula of the island.
The beauty of Porto Rafael beaches is certainly competing for primacy with an unmissable land itinerary towards Capo Testa, the small peninsula located in the north of Sardinia, a few kilometers from Santa Teresa di Gallura, overlooking Bocche di Bonifacio. Connected to mainland by a narrow isthmus, along which lay two beaches, promontory is made up of typical granite rocks of Gallura, with their touching ancestral architecture. Capo Testa is a site of community interest and it is included in the system of areas dedicated to the conservation of biodiversity. On its promontory there’s the most important lighthouse for navigation in the northern area of Sardinia. Active since 1845, it is a fantastic observation point on the cliffs below and on Corsica. Among the beaches of Capo Testa, the famous Valle della Luna, name attributed to Cala Grande in the 1960s, when a community of hippies chose it as a symbolic destination of counterculture values of the times, and which today it is still considered a place of peaceful transgression.

Talmone Military Battery, a jewel of FAI.
For two hundred years, Talmone Military Battery has overseen the stretch of sea that separates island of Spargi from Sardinia in a landscape made of epic granites, sea and Mediterranean flora. Important testimony of military history of our country and hard daily life of soldiers, after years of neglect,  in 2002, it was entrusted by Sardinia Region to FAI for a careful and demanding restoration, which nowadays guarantees its opening to public. The battery, perfectly integrated into the Mediterranean scrub, can be reached by a suggestive path among aromas of juniper, mastic tree and myrtle.

Capo d’Orso, the stone zoo.
A halo of legend with roots even in Odyssey encircles Capo d'Orso, the promontory in front of Arcipelago della Maddalena Park, which takes its name from a spectacular rocky sculpture resembling the shape of a bear, pointing sea with his head. It is Capo d’Orso, a natural monument that stands on a granite rise above 120 meters in height. The sculpture has always been a reference for sailors who ventured off the coast of Gallura and Bocche di Bonifacio, clearly visible from sea and mentioned in portolan charts. Today it is an unmissable destination for thousands of tourists fascinated by its ancient evocative power.

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Porto Rafael b.C..

The Nuraghi, center of social life in ancient Sardinia, dating back to around the second millennium bC, are today recognized as World Heritage of Humanity. Rests of these settlements can also be found near Porto Rafael: Barrabisa nuraghe, Lu Brandali nuragic complex (Santa Teresa Gallura) and La Prisgiona (Arzachena). In the area you can also visit some Tombs of Giants, the closest is Li Mazzini (Palau), known for its legendary healing powers. Do invest some time around Nuragic traces in Sardinia even moving from the geographical area of Porto Rafael: it can be a very interesting itinerary, which allows to experience an aspect of the island full of emotional surprises.

Trip to Bonifacio
From Porto Rafael it is easy to embark to the Corsican small town, built around a deep inlet similar to a fjord surrounded by white limestone walls, for a day tour visit in which being fascinated by its astonishing cliffs over the sea. Connections between the two islands are many, and tourists can also use the ferries in continuous transit to and from Santa Teresa.

Mario Formenton Trophy, the man with the sea in his eyes

The sailing trophy dedicated to Mario Formenton, the businessman who passed away in 1987 and who elected Porto Rafael as buen retiro, where the family still spends holidays in the property villa, needs no introduction. Formenton formed very young in Mondadori Publishing where in1982 he became President and CEO: few know that during his exemplary career he was also awarded by "Achille Marazza Award" for human relations in the workplace, a recognition that symbolically confers also in Porto Rafael a moral position of excellence. Biennial regatta, it is a festive event where owners and sailors may experience a day among the islands of the Arcipelago, under the gaze of a audience distributed from afar in the gardens and in the villas around the sea.

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Tik Tok, c’mon!

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In 1960, when Rafael laid the first stone of his village, Italian television broadcasts one single channel, channel one precisely. In 1961 channels broadcasted become two, followed very shortly by Italian Swiss Television. Since 1971, the new black is receiving at home channels one, two, Switzerland and Koper, strictly in this order.

Porto Rafael Shire

By Danielle Sassoon • March 20, 2023
If after an intense day at the beach you feel nostalgic for the old farmhouse in central Italy where you used to spend summer, and you feel like sipping the excellent wine your grandfather used to get, never been able to drink elsewhere; if today you wish to sit once more under your figs, listening the farmer saying anecdotes about your family, even if always the same and repeated hundreds times; in short, if you would like to swap perfect sunset which stands now in front of Villa Aidan with a less performing sun, when it intertwines with trees and breaks behind the hills, releasing long and shady twilights; well, do not abandon the island. It is our duty to inform you that the farmhouse of your childhood is now surrounded by anonymous residential complexes delimiting city boundaries, which are now close and looming.

Porto Rafael, a rash decision

By Danielle Sassoon • February 17, 2023
Winter, as we know, makes us melancholy. Holidays are a distant memory, and even more distant seems the flight to some beach where forget cold. Among the ones more eager there is a person we’ll call The Type: woman, around 45 years old, living on the continent in an industrialized town. She is married or separated, has two children or none, works in a communication agency or volunteers. She would like to be now on a boat, but the only possible crossing in these gloomy hours is the one navigable on search engines. Her smartphone is waiting for a simple gesture of her fingers to sail anywhere, but today she doesn't feel like pulling up even the anchor of her virtual sea. Maybe is this thick and thin rain, or the night outside despite it's just 5pm. She feels a hundred years old. She types the word "old age" on the phone with the same ambiguous curiosity one may have for a scary movie. First link appears on the screen, and at the same time a stairlift advertisement starts, in which a happy old lady transports
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Sardinian spoken

By Danielle Sassoon • February 17, 2023
Infrequently, but it does happen, in Porto Rafael people complain about Sardinians, blamed for every single hitch. Owners and tenants when meeting occasionally at the market - one of the best in the area, with an excellent selection of products aimed at Italians and foreigns - by glances and half-words make an appointment at Harry's Bar outside, to talk freely far from the ears of the three market owners: Grazietta, Ilaria and Giulia. Once the shopping is over, while Ilaria has just finished advising an uncertain English lady on the best oil to buy, here come vacationers by groups of two or three, go ordering a cappuccino to Diego (over which there would also be a lot to say, but he is from Rome, and for the moment he will be spared).

One's head in the clouds

By Danielle Sassoon • January 3, 2023
If you too have been scolded all your life for having your "head in the clouds", and always been exhorted to remain firmly planted on ground and walk quickly towards objectives reachebles only with shoes on your feet, in Porto Rafael you can finally free yourself from ballasts, slowly lifting you up, while an unexpected panorama of life, shapes and colors opens up above and below you. A few inches from ground, when just started your timid ascent, like children disobeying their strict preceptors, you are likely to narrowly miss the head of a cormorant coming out of the sea, with a small fish in his beak, before he resumes his taut flight along water. Funny mix of terrestrial and aquatic nature, cormorant prefers sheltered seas, avoids deep waters even when close to the mainland and rarely moves away from shores. It spends a lot of time on land, perched on rocks, cliffs, sandbars, shipwrecks, poles or bare trees. So don't be offended if he just bless your journey with a long questioning look: he is bar

Not only salt

By Danielle Sassoon • December 15, 2022
If you suffer thalassophobia and for this reason shun sea destinations (a fortiori the islands, Sardinia included), but still not disdain idea of cooling off during hottest summer days, from Porto Rafael you can take a reinvigorating excursion along paths and creeks of sweet waters. Over ninety waterways cross Sardinia, among which Tirso, Flumendosa, Coghinas, Cedrino and Taloro rivers.
a group of people are toasting with wine glasses

Dining out in Porto Rafael

By Danielle Sassoon • February 27, 2020
Going out to dinner in Porto Rafael is a pleasant alternative to dinners at home, from where you hardly want to go out, but some addresses are really valid for deciding to close the kitchen or to give your private chef a free evening, always assuming he is not taking it personally.
Porto Rafael the other Coast

Porto Rafael the other Coast

By Danielle Sassoon • February 26, 2020
Even today, for many, Costa Smeralda represents almost everything that is known about Sardinia: Porto Cervo and its coast continue to gather an uninterrupted consensus, which in the long run has made these places very similar to many other so-called elitist destinations, which bended to the globalization of luxury. If it were not for the different landscape details - a sea of rocks, wide sandy beaches, marble quarries, expanses of hills or mountains around - today it is almost impossible to recognize where you are spending a holiday: however far you go the sad surprise, even at the end of the world, is to feel precipitated in a big shopping center, or in the hall of a seven, eight, one hundred star hotel, but identical to a thousand others, with a string of boutiques, jewelereries and shops that could be found everywhere, that are found everywhere.
What to do in Porto Rafael

What to do in Porto Rafael

By Danielle Sassoon • January 24, 2020
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