Our last day in Sardinia

Our final day with our friends started off with breakfast at Sandy and Mikes Hotel in Porto Rotondo, a lovely little hotel right on the water. After the typical Italian breakfast of meats, cheeses, croissants, buns, juices and cake we strolled along the boardwalk admiring all the moored yachts. Many millions of dollars in boats lined up, cafes, and little shops selling yachting clothes, bags and anything else you may have need of.
After an hour of walking the waterfront we said goodbye to Sandy and Mike and went back to our condo to pack up.
Our wonderful friends and hosts for the past week, Joanie and Graeme drove us into Olbia for our 2pm ferry to Livorno.
The Moby Ferries are the size of cruise ships.....the one we were on was decorated with large paintings of cartoon characters...tweety and Sylvester . We walked on to the lower car deck and took the elevator up......I think the ship was 10 stories high....huge😀. We went to the information desk to get the key to our stateroom.  The room had 2 beds, either an additional 2 that could be pulled down from the walls above, a bathroom complete with shower, a desk, and a closet. We deposited our suitcase and backpacks and set off to explore the ship.
As we pulled out of port it was extremely windy on deck, it was interesting to see Olbia from the sea.
We walked all over the ship, it amazed us to see so many people with dogs, big and little all up on deck, inside the seating areas as well......having been used to ferries at home keeping dogs below decks. People were obviously old hands at this type of  ferry travel, they had foamys to sit on, blankets to wrap themselves from the wind, shopping bags with drinks, sandwiches etc. Many were already curled up sleeping. Seemed like sleeping was a good idea and I slept for at least an hour.....in the stateroom, .....not the deck.
We were back and forth to our stateroom and the bar where we had a jd and coffee (me). Then  decided to go to the dining room for dinner when it opened at 7pm. We ordered Bruschetta which came with prosecco, Jeff had a pasta dish and I had an appetizer which was zucchini wrapped around eggplant topped with buffaletta cheese....delish.
Soon it was time to disembark.....and the fun began......trying to get directions from staff re where to actually do this! Our room key was to be returned to the info desk....where Jeff asked about where to disembark.....he was told deck 8. Okay, this is different, we had entered on the car deck (at sea level). We are patiently waiting on deck 8 and a staff member sweeping the floor is waving his arm at us to move forward.....we ignore him! I am now asking other passengers where we get off, making a walking motion with two fingers! A passenger tells us the opposite direction from what the crew had said. We find ourselves back at info desk on deck 6 with a short line of people, I ask the last person in line, using my walking fingers!!!! If this is the walk off line. It is. Soon the door opens and the line starts to move......at the top of the escalator the staff member is letting 4 or 5 people advance at a time. We are finally back at sea level where we had originally boarded the ship. Now to get a cab to our hotel, Hotel Gran Duca. There appeared to be two cabs at the taxi area but no drivers in them. We enlisted the aid of one of the many staff who seemed  to be watching the cars coming off the ship. He phoned a cab and said one would be there in 5 minutes.  Our cab driver was very pleasant, could speak quite good English, enough to give us some advice re sights and towns to visit for the next 3 days. Our hotel is very nice as well.....so all is well in the world today!
We decided if we again were to travel by ferry, which is a 7 hour trip we would take the overnight ferry departing at 10pm and arriving at 7 am the next day............note to ourselves.....learn mor Italian for next visit.
Bonne Serra xo