Wednesday, August 2, 2007

We were at Olbia, Sardinia today.

Wednesday, August 2, 2007
Today, I managed to awake at 7:30 and got up to see if I could wash. I was in luck. I managed to snag 3 washers and eventually 2 dryers. I didn’t plan on doing it but decided that if it was open, might as well. Everyone else was asleep and so we (Megan, Yesenia and myself) washed, dried and folded 3 loads.
At about 11 am we managed to venture out and we wanted to go to the beach but this port, Olbia, Sardinia is NOTHING like the other ports. To me, and this is only too me, my opinion – not a port worth visiting unless you have something planned. I had cancelled an excursion as it ran about $50 and I had been reading that it wasn’t really worth it. Nothing big here, no major church, statue or monument so to say. And again, nothing really here that I saw. The beaches we heard so much about are about ½ or more away. They have a local beach about 10 minutes away but the taxis only hold a max of 4 and to take 6 people to the beach would have been about 120 roundtrip and when we tried later at the terminal to get a taxi – they quoted us $160. Remember folks, this is NOT DOLLARS – THIS IS EUROS!!!
We passed. I was so pissed by the time we got back to the ship I decided to say something. I know we are in Italy, but really DCL, you could have posted someone to help guide since once we got bussed into the center of town – there was nothing – and I mean NOTHING to do but “tourist” shop and those shops were meager and few and far between. ALSO, let me state – that come 1 pm – this town became a ghost town. We trotted around for about 45 minutes trying to find a post office, ending up going into what we now suspect was a bank through the emergency exit but that is for another time and too embarrassing for me to think about.
We got back to the ship, had buffet at Topsiders which turned out to be Asian theme. Steve and I did not like it so we ended up ditching it and going to Pinnochio’s Pizzeria and I got a hamburger from Pluto’s Playhouse.
Afterwards, we decided to go back into town and look for some shot glasses which we ended up finding right off the bat. We should have saved ourselves a big walk and just returned to the ship right then. The rest of the town was almost deserted there. We ran into Don from Donioc on the DIS boards. It is funny, I have rarely seen any other DISser since the Dismeet but I keep running into Don and his wife Anna.
OK here is my disclaimer, Olbia was boring. If you did not have a Disney excursion or other plans, you were SOL. I could have done without this port and therefore it is not my favorite stop. However, I suspect that if Rome and Olbia were reversed, then I would have enjoyed it more. I spoke with an employee at Guest Services that said that they have had NO bad responses to this port and they all quite enjoyed it. I wanted to throw some Disney BS at her too. But she came through by hunting down a taxi number for us to attempt a late going to the beach.
When we go into town, we decided to forego the beach as we were really weary about being left out there and the bus service seemed spotty. So we just walked. That was about all we did in Olbia and I suspect that maybe it was planned this way as tomorrow is Thursday, and Cittevecchia ! WOO HOO!