After a full day of doing essentially nothing in Cagliari, Day 23 called for a middle ground: a deliberate rest day that still left room for a proper ride out to the coast. No big loop, no ambitious kilometers, just enough movement to feel like the trip again.
Laundry, Breakfast, and a Slow Start
The morning started exactly the way a rest day should: unhurried. First order of business was the washing machine at the marina, finally catching up on laundry that had been piling up over the past few days of ferries and border crossings. Clothes went up on the line to dry while I wandered over to the little bar at the marina for a small breakfast, coffee in hand, watching the boats and the houseboats around mine slowly come to life.
It’s a small thing, but there’s something satisfying about a proper laundry-and-breakfast morning on a trip like this. No pressure to be anywhere, no packing list to check, just the ordinary rhythm of getting things back in order before heading out again.
Riding East Toward Costa Rei
By the time everything was washed, dried, and packed away, I was feeling good, good enough to want the bike under me again. In the afternoon I set off east along the coast toward Costa Rei, tracing the shoreline rather than cutting inland, letting the landscape do the talking for once instead of covering distance.
This stretch of coastline was the first time on the whole trip that it genuinely felt like being on an island again, rocky headlands dropping into the sea, watchtowers perched on the hills, and the kind of hazy Mediterranean light that makes everything look slightly unreal. Riding slow along roads that hug the cliffs, with the sea opening up on one side and scrubby, cactus-covered hillsides on the other, was exactly the change of pace I was after.
A Beach Straight Out of the Caribbean
Eventually the road brought me to a fairly remote beach, tucked away below the headlands, and it stopped me in my tracks. White sand, crystal-clear water, the kind of place that genuinely looked more Caribbean than Mediterranean. No crowds fighting for space, just a handful of people scattered along the shore and a small kiosk selling drinks.
I parked up, got in the water, and had my swim for the day, the sea cool and unbelievably clear, visibility all the way down to the sandy bottom. Afterward I grabbed a cold drink from the kiosk and just sat for a while, letting the afternoon slow down completely. Moments like that are exactly why a rest day built around exploring rather than riding hard makes sense every so often.
Learning to Pace Myself
I deliberately kept the return ride short. After this many days and this many kilometers on the road, the pattern has become clear: I need these pauses. Just grinding out kilometer after kilometer isn’t really what this trip is about for me. What I actually want is to get a little behind the curtain of the places I pass through, to slow down enough to actually see them rather than just riding past.
So instead of extending the ride or chasing another viewpoint, I turned back toward the houseboat with plenty of daylight still left, riding easy along the same coast road, in no rush to get anywhere in particular.
Back to Cagliari’s Restaurant Street
Back at the marina, a shower and a change of clothes later, I headed into the city again for dinner, gravitating once more toward Cagliari’s lively pedestrian strip full of restaurants, bars, and cafés. Tables spilled out onto the street, people sat outside chatting over drinks, and the whole area had that easy, sociable buzz that makes it easy to strike up a conversation with a stranger.
I ended up talking with a few locals and other travelers over the course of the evening, exactly the kind of loose, unplanned exchange that rarely happens when you’re rushing between stops. It turned into a genuinely lovely evening, good food, good company, and no agenda beyond enjoying where I was.
An Early Night Before the Road Home
Despite the relaxed evening, I made a point of heading back reasonably early. The days ahead won’t offer the same luxury of rest days and short rides, there are still plenty of kilometers left before I’m home, and it’s time to start treating the trip as the homeward stretch it now is.
Two nights in Cagliari, a proper mix of recovery and adventure, turned out to be exactly what this leg of the trip needed.
Day 23 in Summary
A deliberate rest day that still delivered: laundry and a slow breakfast at the marina, a relaxed ride east toward Costa Rei, an unexpectedly Caribbean-looking beach and a swim in crystal-clear water, and a final easygoing evening on Cagliari’s restaurant street, capped off with an early night ahead of the final stretch home.