Week 5 – Tuesday July 27 – Olbia

As I write this, I'm sitting on the ferry going from Olbia to Civitavecchia, the port to the west of Rome. We spent Tuesday in Olbia, which was a town that appears to only be alive when the sun goes down, or when the boat comes in – and when the boats come in, they come in massive bursts. Arriving at the port to catch our ferry, there were already four boats in port and while we were waiting to board, another 4 large ferries arrived. It's great watching the marshalls directing all the cars that are coming and going. If you're not quick enough, you get a blast.

We checked out of the Hotel Monti Di Mola in Porto Cervo late in the morning and drove the short distance to Olbia to stay the night at the imaginatively named “Hotel For You”, which is right in the centre of Olbia and only a minute from the Ferry Terminal. We went for a walk around the centre of Olbia in the early afternoon, and while it appeared nice enough, there was virtually nobody around, it was the same at 6pm when we went out for a snack and even at 8:30 when we went out for dinner, it was still very quiet.

We did manage to find a very nice restaurant at the side of a square and had a really nice meal. They did have an interesting surpise to add interest to the evening. When we were seated the waitress came out with two small plates, each with a little pill on it that looked like a big asprin with the restaurants initials on it, which she offered firstly to Anne. “What is it?”. The waitress poured water on in it and the large pill expanded to about twice its width and four times its height to reveal that it was infact a face towell. OK, so the result isn't that that interesting, but the way that it was presented was.

After dinner, we sat in the square listening to a guitar duo playing some Dire Straits, Eric Clapton and Pink Floyd songs. The guitar work was really good, even if the singing wasn't quite so good. Walking back to the hotel via the same quiet streets we'd walked along to get to the restaurant, we were amazed at the transformation. All the cobbled streets had been closed off and a large night market had started up, about 20 restaurants had stretched out into the mall area and there were people everywhere – it was great and we wandered around amongst the throng for about an hour before retiring to the hotel to prepare our stuff for an early departure in the morning.