This week I returned from Sardinia with my girlfriend Bianca. We went there on holiday for 5 days. It was magical.

Planning

In February this year Bianca came to me with the idea of going to Sardinia. She found tickets online with Easyjet (€90 return flights pp) and she wondered if I wanted to go. I’m always reluctant with these things, because normally I don’t like the stress of leaving. But to her surprise I said yes immediately and we booked straight away. We would leave by the end of August. 7 Months later!

She found a nice Airbnb in a city called Siniscola which we rented for around 45 euro a day. A car we would rent at the airport.

Siniscola

Travel and renting a car

We left Amsterdam on august 27 at 17:10 and arrived around 2 hours later in Olbia, Sardinia. With Easyjet you have to pay extra for anything and everything (including a suitcase) so we travelled lights with just hand luggage.

Packed like a sardine on my way to sardinia, being tall is great but not in a plane.

We went straight to the car rental area, just to find out that the place was packed full with people! O no!

It then hit me. I realised that we were on an Island and probably everybody will need a car here. The following hour we tried to rent a car with several agencies but they were all sold out. August is the time when all the Italians have holidays apparently. It’s high season.

Hertz was one of the last we tried and we are getting really restless by now. We going to end up with No CAR!

The guy behind the Hertz counter was very nice. But he also immediately told us there were no cars for rent. I started to plead with him a bit. ‘It’s only for 4 days sir, help us out’. So he went back inside his computer terminal. Looking in his systems he suddenly brightened up and said: ‘O sir, we do have one car left, but it’s a red convertible.'

The dreaded feeling of this is going to cost me a fortune fell over me. My wallet was already crying in my pocket. Everything made extra worse by my girlfriend speaking the iconic words: ‘I told you that you should have booked online, but you never want to plan anything’ (if you are a girl and you do this, please don’t do this, at that moment I also knew I should have booked online.).

Pro travel tip: Safe money and book a rental car online.

Best Price

The man saw my face and ensured me he was going to give me Best Price! When he told me the number I was shocked but less shocked than I thought I would be, but shocked enough to have a small think about it. I didn’t have that much time to decide though because the place was filling up again and there was a huge line behind us already.

No choice. We take the car!

After the necessary paper work (I took every insurance they had). We walked outside to the parking lot. And there she was. Most beautiful. Our Fiat Spider 124 Convertible. We forgot about the money straight away. We were going to enjoy this!

I was so over the moon with the car that I forgot all about logic. The logic anybody can piece together by looking at the picture below. It never occured to me at the time until Bianca spoke.

She said: 'Do you think you will fit in?'

End of part 1.

Mark