Our last day in Croatia.

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Wednesday October 10th
We felt surprisingly good this morning and after negotiating with our landlady to leave our bags in the unit we set off to further explore the quaint little town of Rovinj. We took another route to the church of St Euphemia, enjoying the ramble up the narrow streets reminiscent of Venice. After once again enjoying the views from the churchyard we took an alternate route down that took us past the fishing boats unloading their night's catch. We then visited the aquarium, supposedly the oldest scientific aquarium on the Mediterranean coast. This was interesting and as we were the only visitors this morning we enjoyed the view of all the local sea creatures.

Arriving at the bus station after collecting our packs we were in plenty of time for the midday bus to Pula. This bus meandered through several quaint villages on the way picking up and dropping off passengers.

Pula is not a quaint village, it is a sprawling combination of working port, antiquities and business centre. Having walked from the bus station into the old town we expected to see some signs advertising rooms but couldn't find any. We walked around for quite some time looking and asked several people. We stopped to try to work out where a tourist office was and a lady approached us. Her name was Christina, and when told we were looking for a room said that her friend had an apartment to let. It was only about 100 metres away but she rang the doorbell and there was no answer. Not to be deterred she took us to a tourist office and made a call. She said her friend would be home by 3pm so we left our packs in the office and went off to have some lunch.
Lunch somehow ended up in a cafeteria which seemed to cater mainly for students. We had a couple of dishes which consisted of a stodgy ham pudding, chips, and several battered strips of paprika. Even with a couple of cans of beer it still cost less than one normal cafe meal, but the quality was proportional to the price!

Christina met us again at 3 and took us back to the apartment. It was up 3 flights of stairs (75 steps) but it was great - modern with its own kitchen and lounge and separate toilet and bathroom - all for the princely sum of 250 kunas. (about $A55)

The main sight here is the majestic coliseum dating from the second century, the sixth largest in the world and this is where we headed. It has space for 22,000 spectators, no-one is sure why it was built so big when the population at the time was only 5,000.
After about 30 min there we both felt that enough was enough and so we headed back to the apartment for a rest before going out for dinner at a nearby cafe. Here we shared a pizza and a small carafe of wine before walking up to the end of the street to see the ancient Roman Forum and the Temple of Augustus built between 2BC and 14AD. These were beautifully lit in the evening. From here we headed back to pack and somehow lighten our packs for tomorrow's flight to Britain.

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