Palau the town and not the island, don’t get them confused with each other. Palau the town is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea on the northern tip of the Sardinia Island with the preserved Marine Park of La Maddalena and Marine Reserve of Lavezzi/Corsica. Which if you are a diver, this s heaven and why we are here. But if you are not a diver, luck is still on your side. Beaches aglore, and beautiful waters for swimming, and landscape to explore.
Town of Palau – Things To Do
This is a small town, and one of many on the Sardinia Island. It’s accessible by car if you are traveling around the island. The local bus from Olbia, Italy travels up the coast through the small village towns, with a cost of just a few euros and is an hour long bus ride. Offers some great views of the ocean and the unique landscape on the way up. Once here there is much to see and do in the area, there is Bear Rock, Porto Rafael Square, Giant’s Tomb, and Mount Altura Fort.
Beaches of Palau
Looking for a beach or two, how about 20? Within a 10 minute walk of Palau township you can reach 7 beautiful beaches, large white sandy beaches, or some small secluded beaches. With a car, there is another 10-15 more beaches within 30 minutes of Palau. Crazy amount of beaches, we did not have a car, so we stuck close to town and enjoyed the beaches there, our favourite beach turned out to be right in town!!
Life in Palau
Not like the rest of Italies hustle and bustle, it’s laid back and relaxed. In Palau the small town allows everyone to know everyone, small local shops and the nicest people to greet and accommodate your needs. We had booked our small apartment with the dive shop months in advance, because our whole trip was booked around getting to this island for a week of diving!!!! Nautilus Diving Center had arranged our place to stay, which was one of our best highlights while on our 70 days around Europe.We had a cute and cozy place to stay, included a washer (bonus), and a huge backyard with a patio set to enjoy the warm evenings.
Entrance to our apartment
Backyard patio
Surviving in Palau
The town of Palau has a variety of restaurants to offer, and local pubs to enjoy a beer. If you find the right place, ask for the wifi password if you need to be connected. We “cooked” at home a few times, we found the local market to pick up some fresh items to put in the fridge. Some exciting things for us to find since we have been in Europe for 50 days was good tasting milk (Tyler’s favourite), some sandwich meat, sliced cheese, fresh fruits and vegetables, and evens some sweets. I would recommend taking a note pad to the store with you because not everyone speaks fluent english, so that can help out. Pick up some of the local island beer as well, very reasonably priced, and is doesn’t taste too bad either.
The local island beer – Ichnusa
How To Get Here
There is only a few options to get onto the Sardinia Island, we chose to take the Tirrenia ferry (booked months in advance) which we boarded at small port town north of Rome called Civitavecchia, and took us to the big city of Oblia. This is where the majority of transportation is found for this part of the island, this is more then just this ferry to get here. We caught a flight on Vueling airlines from Oblia Costa Smeralda Airport, Italy (OLB) to Barcelona-El Prat Airport, Spain (BCN) when we left behind this beautiful island.
