A Google search for “best European beaches” is what sparked my interest in Sardinia, an Italian island that up until that point I had encountered only on the back of wine bottles. Turns out that compared to most of Western Europe, the island attracts relatively few tourists. Sure enough, for our first few days in Sardinia, we heard hardly a word of English except from our friendly hosts, and often felt like the only non-Italian tourists in whatever village we pulled up in for the night.

We knew that the rest of our honeymoon would keep us busy exploring cities and mountains, and so our goal for Sardinia was to soak up as much sea and sun as possible. (FYI:  it’s close enough, and cheap enough, to mainland Italy to make for a viable excursion…)