OK, in general: you'll be in the north, surrounded by countryside that will be hilly and kind of sparsely inhabited. But you're also a shortish drive from all of the resort towns along the beautiful north coast: the Emerald Coast, if I remember correctly. That's the ritzy area, packed with European tourists in the summer, very well-to-do.
Apparently your town is famous for its thermal baths, and has been a tourist destination for about two thousand years. Cool. It should be pretty cosmopolitan. Most of Sardinia is, speaking practically, although to American eyes it LOOKS ancient and therefore we might tend to think the culture is "backward." Perhaps some of the little specks in the most hilly interior might still be, but not near the Emerald Coast! Your area will be nicely over run by European families touring on their vacations and you should have good opportunities to meet a lot of Euroteens.
Loie and I are faithful Cadogan users; we know Dana Facaros and Michel Pauls. We like the tone of the writing and the topics the Cadogan guides discuss, but they do tend to focus on the more scholarly, historical aspects of a place. Read or at least skim both the Rough Guide AND the Cadogan, which should be available through your library.
Sardinia is famous for its weird nauraghe: huge stone towers built in the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age. You have a few good ones near your town and should at least check them out: you won't see anything like them in the United States, that's for sure! Sardinia is also famous for its Bue Rosso (Red Bulls), an ancient variety of cattle indigenous to the island. If you're not a vegetarian, ask if your host family will help you sample some; delicious. A herd of those in the golden evening sunlight will make a prize-winning photo, too.
Loie and I didn't have the chance to spend any time on the north coast; Sardinia is a big place and one week wasn't enough. But we did spend a morning in Arzachena, on our way south from our ferry, and that was just cute as a bug. Ask if you can go over to see the "Mushroom," one day, just for fun: a strange stone outcrop sculpted by wind and rain and used by Stone Age people as a shelter.
Finally, we found the beaches to be congenial, but European. Europeans just don't really know about beaches, and will take any little stretch of shore as a beach. Loie and I, having spent many weeks on the barrier beaches of the East Coast, and time on those of California, Hawaii and Mexico as well, are kind of spoiled. If we don't find fifty or seventyfive feet of fine sand from dune to water, stretching for miles along the shore, with no rocks in sight, we don't think of it as a "beach!" We didn't find anything like that on Sardinia, but we did find plenty of beautiful coves and bays with SOME sandy shore, more than enough to satisfy anyone's ray catching and, in the summer, people watching needs.
One very famous aspect of modern Sardinian culture are its crafts. Weaving, lacemaking, pottery and goldsmithing are all known in galleries from San Francisco to New York, and you can see a lot of that in stores called ISOLAs (EE-so-las). The crafts are very, very expensive but you will find small pieces of, say, lace that you might, if you're careful with your money, be able to bring back as a gift for your folks and whoever has helped organize your trip.
Lovely place, Sardinia, packed with history from the Stone Age right straight through: Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Medieval and modern; fantastic coastal scenery, wonderful food, world reknowned crafts and best of all, friendly people. Have a great time!
Thanks!
Bucky "Trying To Slow Down" Edgett
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