November 13, 2023
Olbia
A day off the bike
Gaias Rooms in Olbia is one of those places with independent check-in. Instructions were sent via WhatsApp. It’s in a great location and we had a comfortable small room with skylight as only window. The downside is lack of bike storage. My bike got carried upstairs at stayed beside my bed.
This is our first place that didn’t serve breakfast. We went in search of coffee and found a great shop. We were in no rush, since we have the whole day to kill before getting on our overnight ferry. Too bad the archeological museum here is closed on Mondays.
Sue realized that she’d forgotten to return her bike lock. That gave us a reason to walk through town to drop it off at a bike shop associated with the rental company. The store had some expensive road saddles that looked inappropriate for my bike and my butt. So I’ll live with the creaking on my old saddle a while longer.
It was a sunny and warm morning, feeling like summer again after a few cooler days. Yesterday’s winds have died down.
We walked through a really nice park with a walking track. Lots of people were out enjoying the weather. And there was a big turtle hanging out on a rock in a pond.
We visited the simple and beautiful 11th century Basilica of San Simplicio. He was reportedly martyred on the exact site of the church - murdered by the Romans in 304 CE.
Walking near the main tourist street, a nice little old man stopped us on the street. He chatted away to us in Italian, with us understanding less than half of what he said. He was excited to hear that we were from Canada and that we were riding bikes. He hugged both of us before departing. We definitely have the feeling that grandma-aged women don’t ride their bikes here.
We walked down towards the waterfront in search of gelato for our lunch. We must have passed five closed gelaterias. And we ended back up at our cafe from this morning. It was delicious! Definitely worth the walk back uphill. It’s been a long wait since we last saw a gelateria.
We walked back down to the water and across an overpass to get to an area of the shoreline reported to have resident flamingoes. At times, the route seemed a bit dodgy, but we got there. And there WERE flamingoes. 17 of them wading, napping, and preening. Being on the water‘s edge gave us a good view of the beautiful setting of Olbia. It’s definitely a bigger and more prosperous centre than we’ve seen over the past week.
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We also got a look at the ferries in port. We’ll be on the Batman-themed ferry returning to Civitavecchia.
Then we returned to our lodging for a bit of quiet time before late checkout of 3 pm. After gathering our bags and my bike, we spent the rest of the afternoon doing the NYT spelling bee and sipping on Aperol spritz’s near the waterfront. Then we had an early supper of curlugione pasta (filled with potatoes, pecorino, and a hint of mint). Delicious. Kind of like a minty pierogy with tomato basil sauce. I might have to make these at home, but shaped as ravioli because I don’t think I’m capable of creating the complicated twisted edging. It was lovely to sit outdoors for dinner in mid November. The majority of the restaurants are closed for the season. Apparently some will open for the Christmas season, then close again until spring.
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We made the long walk out to the marine terminal. Unlike Civitavecchia, the pedestrian route here is a nice sidewalk. There’s even a bike path. Ferry boarding wasn’t til 7:30, so we had a bit of time to wait at the terminal. They split us up at the terminal because I had a bike, and needed to access the ferry with the cars and transport trucks. Yikes. Sue got bussed the few hundred metres to the ferry with other walk-ons. And then there was a minor catastrophe when the car ticket taker noticed that I’d booked the ferry in the wrong direction. Oops. But it was an easy swap of directions inside the terminal, and the stupidity fee was only 10 euros. Sue and I met up just in front of the ferry, and we were in our cabin before 8 pm for our 10:30 pm ferry. We were planning to watch a movie that I had downloaded from Netflix, but it had expired. Argh. So we each read for a while and had an early night.
I have booked a train from Rome to Bari on Wednesday. It’ll take all day to get there. I have to take the slow train because of my bike. Oh well, it’ll be an adventure. I appreciate the good intel I’ve received from Susan Carpenter and Anne Mathers, and from the Anderson’s blog too. Everyone seems to agree on the highlights. My time in Puglia will be short, but better than being at home in the rain. And I’m eager to continue my cornetto and gelato research.
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