We arrived Olbia on the 8th flight ever from JFK to Olbia. S and I are here en route for a conference she’s attending in Sassari. Olbia hosts Sardinia’s largest airport and our jet-lag day, while we poke around the city between naps and cappuccino.
We arrived our hotel at the same time the cruise ships unloaded. The streets were flooded with silver-haired couples tottering over the cobblestones in the heat. We grabbed cappuccino and shared a pistachio croissant at a side-street cafe to people watch.
After elevensies, we visited the Basilica di San Simplicio and the necropoli underneath, where than 400 ancient graves were excavated to make the parking garage. San Simplicio was the supposed first bishop of Olbia, then Terranova in the 3rd century. The basilica isn’t nearly that old, but shows layers and layers of construction.
We sheltered from the heat with a nap at our hotel, the Grand Hotel President Olbia, also known as Hotiday Olbia Porto, but not by cab drivers. Wandering back, I conflated the L’Associazione Quattro Mori and its flag with the flag of Sardinia — which are similar and the former makes many appearances around the island.
Early evening tasked us with buying socks stemming from my rushed packing. We wandered up and down Corso Umberto I, the main tourist shopping attraction, with the cruisers being replaced with sunburned tourists returning to their hotels. We picked a bar to have aperitivi — costa smeralda and cardinale spritzes — and perused a bookstore ahead of our reservation at Essenza Bistrot.
We dined on the sidewalk at Essenza Bistro, where S had presciently reserved a table with WhatsApp 90 minutes prior. The hostess turned away a half dozen other groups, one of which whined that they hadn’t been told to make a reservation when they visited during the afternoon.
The menu is creative, featuring Italian-themed small plates. We had among many other places artichoke and cauliflower cappuccino (no coffee), monk-fish carpaccio, poached egg in sea-urchin sauce, and la mela del peccato — whose chief sin was replacing the apple under the candy coating with panna cotta.
Today’s insights
- Compare taxi and ride-app rates. Uber listed fares from OLB to our hotel at over €50. We took a taxi for €11.
- Take guidance with a grain of salt. Our overly confident cab driver wouldn’t accept that our hotel existed, but presented with the possibility of AirBnB and VRBO said, “puoi avere una Ferrari o una Panda!”
- Olbia is an excellent place to learn Italian. Almost everyone we ran into spoke clearly.
