Wednesday Week 3 – Drive day – Off to Croatia

I’m sitting in a café in the square in Rovinj writing this blog – enjoying a beer with Anne, before we head to dinner shortly.

It was sad to leave Venice, as we’ve had a really fabulous time here. When we arrived, we had every intention of taking a gondola ride, but decided after watching the procession of gondolas coming out of the canals that it didn’t’ really interest us. We also thought that having been to Venice once that we’d come back again and that would be it, but having spent four day here, we really love the place, love the hotel and the location and would happily come back here again any time.

Compared to what it was like 13 years ago, Venice now seems much cleaner – both the buildings and the water in the canal, so we assume that they are doing a lot of restoration work around the city. The biggest issue Venice faces is the rising tide levels and the fact that the city is sinking. Water comes into St. Marks square 250 times a year and when we were there on Sunday night, the water was bubbling out of the storm water drains and into the square – not a flood, but still a sign of the problem they have. There are billboards advising what work is being done to combat all but the worst of the floods – hopefully they will succeed.

We arrived by public ferry and had to struggle on and off with our bags. We decided to leave by water taxi – a beautiful fully varnished affair – top of the line. Anne also thought the driver was pretty top of the range as well – she’d seen a few of them driving with there shirts off and decided they were a Venentian tourist attraction that more women should be made aware of.

We collected the car, paid the 80 Euro four day parking fee (the same as the fifteen minute water taxi fare) and got on the motorway to Trieste on the way to Croatia. Trieste was just a short stop off, with a walk in 35 degree heat. The most noteworthy thing being the lack of sign posting out of the town and the several circles we went in before we were on our way for the Slovenian border. No problems at any of the four border posts – Italian, Slovenian, then Slovenian and Croatian.

We had no idea what Croatia was going to be like, but given the war we expected a bit backward compared to the rest of Europe. After a day and a half we are amazed. The roads are brand new, the service station we stopped at is the best we’ve been to so far, all the locals speak English (thank god – we’ve got a Croatian phrase book, but it looks totally incomprehensible). Hello is Bog (pronounced bawg), but I haven’t heard anybody say it yet. We’ve taken up walking into a shop or restaurant talking to each other, so the owner knows that we’re English.

Anyway, we’re staying at Rovinj for 3 nights. Oh my god – check out the photos from our hotel window – it is absolutely amazing. We had some difficulty booking a hotel because they’re all 300 room monstrosities – the Star Ship Enterprise as Anne calls them. The one we found is 25 rooms in the historic centre of the old town. We are on the third floor, with spectacular views over the harbour and the promenade.

After a walk around the old town, then beer and pretzels in a café in the town square beside the harbour, we headed off to dinner at a local sea food restaurant looking out over a nearby island. We had a wonderful local specialty beef dish with a tomato sauce and then the fish platter for two. After dinner we went for another walk around the old town again. Because of the heat during the day, we hadn’t ventured up the hill, but in the cool of night we were able to and what a revelation. Around every corner were more street vendors, café’s and restaurants – it really was amazing and it had a real buzz about the place. The hike to the top of the hill nearly killed my calves, but was well worth the effort. Tomorrow we’re off sight seeing around the Istrian Peninsular.