The later excursion time at Olbia, Sardinia afforded us more sleep in theory. The continuing saga of sabotage and counter espionage continued, with a wakeup call mysteriously later than it should’ve been that was offset by room service earlier than we’d thought. Lisa took the win this time, but not by much.
We were scheduled for a beach day in Olbia, something I’d never do at home, but Lisa had begged for one day at a Mediterranean beach so I relented. We would be going out in our swimwear, so it was an officially sanctioned day of dishevelment. I donned a blue t-shirt along with my swimsuit, both faded by the chlorine of a dozen pools. The t-shirt goes with me in the water for, unlike the countless corpulent beasts I have seen wandering shirtless on the shore, I accept the fact that I have manboobs that no one else wants to see. I consider it a public service.
We met in the Promenade Lounge, a modest venue for a modest excursion, and were handed beach towels, which was great since nowhere in our rigorous packing exercises did we remember to bring some. We left the boat, greeted by giant pictures of the Looney Tunes characters, seemingly in defiance of the mouse, but what turned out to be a shuttle from Olbia to Naples and elsewhere on the mainland, which made the choice of giant cartoon characters all the more puzzling. In an incident that demonstrated how frighteningly aware today’s children are of licensing issues, a young boy who couldn’t have been over 10 years old told his mother that perhaps these boats were run by Six Flags, since they own the characters in America.
We boarded our bus and were greeted by our guide, a stout little Sardinian woman whose English was more stilted than our previous guides which only served to make her more charming. At one point she was explaining that there would be a buffet with drinks and snacks available at the beach and she pronounced snacks as “snakes”, leading to momentary fear of snakes at the beach before we realized what she meant.
Olbia is fairly undeveloped and its terrain seems as if it suffers from constant exposure to the sun, with more yellow than green covering the landscape. The short bus ride took us past a few charming hillside villages but otherwise there was not much to see apart from a few trees resembling the final shot of the opening credits of Six Feet Under and a large amount of Eucalyptus they imported in order to dry up the marshy parts of the land.
We reached our destination and promptly drove down the wrong path, coming head to head with a bulldozer that would not let us past while impatient Sardinian drivers snaked in between the two of us. We backed up for a while until a patient man in a Jeep led us the right way.
We were at the beach. Well, we were near the beach. We had been assured that every two people would be provided with two beach chairs, a beach umbrella and two beach towels reserved specially for them. We had all assumed that these beach things would be on the beach. They were not. They were on a cordoned off grassy area a couple hundred feet from the beach. Despite the non-beach part, the area was spacious enough that we didn’t feel on top of anyone and secluded enough that we could relax without being disturbed. It worked out as the beach was a bit crowded, not packed by any stretch of the imagination, but enough people were out that we would be walking quite a while before we found our own space to settle in.
It was around 10 am now and the day was fairly overcast at this point as you can see by the pictures. We wandered out into the water, which was chilly and colder as you went out, but not so much that it drove us away. We took our pictures and I wandered back to throw the camera in the bag. When I returned, the sun was coming out from behind the clouds. The water warmed up immediately although it still took a while to get accustomed to it.
The water was filled with people from our cruise but also with locals. There were the requisite fat guys in speedos: the fatter the guy, the smaller the speedo. The beach, as far as I know, was not a topless beach, but there was one elderly lady going topless. She was not discrete about it either, wandering up and down the shore showing her withered wares, arching her back with her hands on her hips. Thankfully I had left my glasses back at the beach chairs, but Lisa assured me the sight was horrifying.
We stayed in the water for an hour and change and then wandered back to the grass to lay out and relax. Lisa tanned (read: burned) while I read Miranda July’s new book. Eventually the table that was set out with drinks (flat and sparkling water, juices, sodas and red and white wine) also was set out with lunch. There were several types of sandwiches and Lisa chose the Prosciuto Bacon with Fontina Cheese and the Salami and Cheese for us to eat. I chose the former because it had bacon in the description and it was quite good. All the meats that I refrain from at home have been very tasty over here in Italy. We enjoyed the local red wine they served before, not wanting to be drunk on the beach, switching to Coke & Sprite.
As we neared the end of our stay (we were set to leave at 1:30 pm), a spritely old woman made the rounds with a tray full of cookies. She was quite nice and happy to see us all. It turned out that she was the owner of this land. The beach was public but the land surrounding it all belonged to her family. Very recently they opened it up to the public and to tourists, charging the locals for more convenient parking (previously you had to park out on the road which was way far out from the beach) and the tourists for the VIP treatment. She was in that honeymoon phase where the tourists are a blessing and not just something to take advantage of. We got this vibe from all of Olbia: it was just budding as a tourist destination and so its authenticity had not yet been compromised. It was a welcome relief from the other places we’ve stopped where you have to ignore the people selling trinkets in English in order to enjoy yourself.
We returned to the boat, refreshed, agreeing that we were better off stopping in Olbia than if we hadn’t. It felt like a sea day on land.
Once on the boat, we just relaxed. We went to a few adult offerings, such as the Adult Trivia Challenge which featured impossible questions so that the highest score was 9 out of 21. It was not our score, which will not be revealed here.
We attended our first show of the trip, the Art of the Story. We usually miss the shows, having only really seen the Golden Mickeys and possibly one or two others on our previous cruises. We’ve come to accept that we just aren’t show people, at least shows in the form that Disney is offering them. Art of the Story did nothing to change our mind. It seems like it was formed from shows they started on but never brought to completion: there were songs from Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mulan, Tarzan and the Lion King, all tenuously linked by things that make a story, such as Sound for Tarzan (there was 10 seconds of sound coming from the different speakers throughout the theater before the production number started). I haven’t seen Hunchback or Tarzan, although I do own the soundtrack to Tarzan (something I’m ashamed to admit, and even more ashamed to say that I like most of it) but none of the numbers did much for me. Bizarrely, after playing a few bars from “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King”, they went with the only song from the Lion King on Broadway that isn’t in the movie, “He Lives in You” (or something like that) leaving at least 3/4 of the theater disappointed and confused. At the end of that song, the show ended abruptly, not out of any misfire but because that’s just how it ends. It’s not a showstopper beyond the lead vocalist’s voice (she was definitely impressive) as there’s just three people onstage besides her. Those three people were doing silly things, the kind of things that make people like me say we’re not show people. I don’t think I can explain a gesture as complicated as they were making with mere words, but for every other syllable during one point of the number, which keep in mind was down tempo, they did a hand jive, followed by the up and down fist pump, followed by a folding one arm down over the other which was extended in front of them. It was entirely superfluous and had nothing at all to do with what they were singing, it just seems that they needed something to do at that very moment, so why not do something stupid? As you can see, it annoyed me. The cast gave it their all, though, and they were very good, but they weren’t given much good to work with.
Laura, who spent her time in high school singing and dancing on stage, confirmed that the show wasn’t very good and both her and Andy agreed that it was an odd mish-mash of lower quality material, especially when they consistently refused to perform what we considered the best songs from those movies. I forgot my camera in the room again, so I can’t tell you what we ate. Just know that it was good.
Laurel had left us a sting ray with Lisa’s sunglasses as our towel animal. We were almost too tired to move him, but we managed to crawl into bed to prepare for the biggest day of all:
Tomorrow we go to Rome.
