Hotels on San Pietro island, Italy

First time visitors to Carloforte need to know that the Delcomar ferry tickets do not guarantee you a spot on the ferry for the time you booked. Instead, the company encourages travelers to show up at least one hour before departure. When I learned this – only after I had booked our Calasetta to Carloforte and Carloforte to Portovesme tickets for the same day – I realized that an afternoon on the island would be too short if 2 hours of that time was spent in a ferry queue. So I rearranged our itinerary and booked a lovely vacation home for one night in Carloforte, as I also learned that we could use our departure ferry ticket the next morning. It turned out that we needed to arrive no more than 30 minutes prior to departure, due to the slower season of when we were visiting, but one night was still far too short to spend on the island. For our afternoon and evening on the island, we got to do a quick stop-off by the Saline Di Carloforte to look for flamingos (we saw some!); an incomplete, 45-minute hike along a cliffside trail from Sentiero Verde (near the upper parking for Cala Fico); a brief stop at the Belvedere di Capo Sandalo; a partial walking tour of Carloforte, preceeded by a much-needed break for gelato; and finally dinner. All of those activities could have used much more time and I would have been happy to spend several days on the island. I wish we had time to stop off at the southern end of the Saline where we might have gotten closer to the flamingos. I wish we had driven down to Cala Fico rather than just peaking down at it from the upper road. I wish there were restrooms at Capo Sandalo so we could have stayed longer. I wish we could have visited more shops and restaurants in Carloforte. And I wish we could have stayed some extra days to visit a beach or two. And that is just the basics. As a nature lover, I’d love to return to this island when the Eleonora’s falcons are nesting in the cliffs of the LIPU Nature Reserve.

Carloforte is such a charming and authentic small town! I feel like a little bit longer stay would be better for us (we stayed only 1 night), cause you can explore the island with rented electro-bikes. The walk around the town in the morning was refreshing and it gave us such a unique feeling about the serenity of the place! The whole family loved it!

Carloforte is a very pretty town on San Pietro. It is very easy to find your way around and the tourist information is very helpful when it is open (not open from October to March.) People are very friendly and will do anything to help you. 2 Beaches we would recommend - La Bobba and La Caletta. Also the Boat trip around the island run by Andrea and Luca is a must. 2 Restaurants highly recommended are La Oasi and La Lanterna. A very clean town as well. There are lots of activities and the ferries run hourly. If flying in to Caglieri use De Bi Poma tours shuttle bus to Portovesme to catch the Ferry.