Sleepless in Sardinia

It's siesta in the Sardinian town of Olbia. The rest of the town is behind closed doors. What do they do? Sleep? Eat? I recall a cheesy movie... "siesta is for making love... ". Whatever the case, I am doing none of it. It's the only free time we have so we prowl the streets, pressing sweaty faces to the glass of expensive clothes shops that won't open for hours. The bars and cafes are quietly empty, waiting staff sip on coloured bitters, aperol, campari, wiping their hands instinctively on their aprons before serving us fresh glasses of Spumante.

Down side streets, restaurant signs hang beckoning, geraniums cram window boxes, old Fiats line the street nose to bumper.

We find gelati and like children lick traditional chocolate, unknown Malaga, decadent stracciatella, and unusual Kinder cereal flavours. It runs down our hands, onto clothes, stains the corners of our lips. We don't care. There's no one here to see it.

Finding the closed shop doors too much to bear, we find solace from the heat in a restaurant offering baskets of pane carasau, a Sardinian flat bread that we drown in olive oil, fingers licked for the second time today. Pasta is served, and we bite into it, appreciating al dente distinct from foreign pasta so often overcooked. Stomachs loaded with food, legs heavy with Spumante, we stumble over the cobbled streets to home. Now we need siesta...