Escape to Sardinia - At Any Age
In 2027, Delta and United will fly nonstop to Olbia, on Italy's escapist island of Sardinia. The flight is under nine hours, and Olbia is the gateway to the enchanting Costa Smeralda. Here's the schedule:
Delta flies nonstop JFK – Olbia, four times a week, May to October.
United opens Newark – Olbia on May 27, 2027, three times a week, same season.
As I embrace my middle age, I was delighted by this article below and see Sardinia made her list too.
Excerpt of 11/4/2025 Virtuoso article by Amy Tara Koch can be found here.
For this traveler, middle age is just another chapter in the adventure.
The sunbeams ricocheting off the sea begged for an audience, but my focus was on firm footing. The rocky, narrow trail I was ascending – a former mule path 420 feet above the Mediterranean – had no barriers to keep a minor stumble from turning into a death plunge.
My friend Marcey and I had come to the Italian island of Sardinia on a small-group adventure with on-site tour connection Dolomite Mountains - Italy to hike and bike the Supramonte range and the gnarled karst formations that ring its coastline. That day’s 5.8-mile outing followed the Golfo di Orosei over jagged cliffs and through juniper forests, with a slip-and-slide trek down a gorge to a motorboat that would ferry us and a small crew of other women to explore the island’s stalactite-rich sea caves. At 57, my estrogen may be dwindling, but I still light up at the prospect of tackling a new destination.
For me, fighting the instinct to slow down on the road (while overcoming any middle-aged physical woes) requires focus. Experience-packed getaways that come with a trove of pre-trip research, a love of adventure, and a willingness to get out of my comfort zone empower me.
My globe-trotting grandparents took me on my first big adventure at 15 – a two-week jaunt across Europe to escape the chaos of my parents’ messy divorce. As we wandered through Rome and shopped for costume jewelry in the Marais, they taught me that curiosity drives a fulfilling life. Predictability is boring, my grandma Hilda always said. At 16, I signed up for an exchange program in northern Spain on my own, and by 21, I was Eurorailing from Amsterdam to Venice and ferrying to the Greek Isles with my boyfriend. Hilda was delighted.
In recent years, I’ve convinced my closest friends that getting older doesn’t mean having to do away with new, challenging experiences. If anything, it only strengthens our connection: Nothing bonds you more than accidentally skiing into a crevasse in Saint Moritz, riding out a tropical storm while glamping on Eleuthera, or cannonballing into a freezing alpine lake in Aspen. We laugh, we reach new heights, we compare menopause symptoms, and we wander together. Gen-Z TikTok posts pale in comparison to our real-life antics.
It’s not all summits and schussing: In Sardinia, Marcey and I lingered over meals on beaches and in pine-fringed parks and shopped for ceramic pavoncella figurines symbolizing abundance in the rural village of Oliena. My friend Elycia and I sipped juicy tempranillos and settled into acclaimed restaurants in Spain’s Ribera del Duero in between off-roading through the Duero Valley and hiking in search of griffon vultures and peregrine falcons in the Hoces del Río Riaza Natural Reserve. Packing it all in can be exhausting, but it’s always worth it.
Marcey and I are heading to Argentina this winter. We’ll take pre-trip tango lessons so we’re ready to pivot like locals in the milongas of Buenos Aires, but then it’s off to Patagonia for a few days of ice trekking near the Perito Moreno Glacier. Though they’re long gone, I can sense my grandparents applauding my joie de vivre. There are aches and pains, sure, but until my body kneecaps my passion, I’m on to the next adventure.
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