Sardinia- not as planned

We have been in France for over a month, and our feet haven’t set foot in a swimming pool or on a beach. We knew would be ready for a beach week and set aside 5 days in Olbia, Sardinia for some beach relaxation time. We took a ferry from Corsica and found a bus to get us to Olbia on a very rainy windy day. Olbia was supposed to be our home base for a week eating Italian food on beachside cafes while cooling off in the Med every hour or so. The weather improved but our expectation of Olbia being a cute little Mediterranean beach town was never realized. It did have a pedestrian only street with a few restaurants and you could take a cheap city bus to the beaches but we never found the cute beach resort town that we had hoped for. While waiting for the weather to improve, we made it to a very underwhelming archaeology museum on the first day and then walked to a 80’s style mall for lunch another day. Not what we were anticipating.

OK, I am being a little too harsh on Olbia. In our research, we knew that the city bus could get us to 5 different beaches that each had beachside restaurants for only a Euro ride. This was actually 1 long beach that we were able to walk to all of the restaurants on our first beach day. The wind was a little harsh for swimming that day but we came back a couple days later and finally got some swimming and sand sitting in. We got drinks and Italian seafood and everyone was happy. The October Italian water was a bit colder than August Lake Washington water but we went in anyway. We confirmed that the Med water was super crystal clear and worked just fine to cool us down from the 80 degree heat!

We had planned a week on Sardinia; 5 days on the beach in Olbia and then 2 days in the biggest town on Sardinia, Cagliari. We probably should have switched that up a bit, and spend more time in Cagliari and less on the beach. It was a beautiful old town on the hill with lots of history and great architecture. We loved our small Airbnb built into the cave like rooms of an old building right in the hillside old town. We have been a little negligent the past few weeks, and haven’t done history walking tours that we really enjoy. In our limited time in Cagliari, we made that the priority, and were able to see all the big sites in just a few hours and got the history we needed and lots of great pictures.

The small mazes of alleys along with some great pasta, left us wanting more time in Cagliari. We had a fine week in Sardinia but we understand we missed a lot of stuff. Just like Corsica, we would have seen a lot more if we had rented a car and got to the places that the buses didn’t go. Cars are tough for budget travelers but sometimes that are just needed to see what we want. We will be renting a car for the next 3 weeks in our next location- GREECE!!!