Sunday, August 14, 2016 - Planes, trains, and automobiles

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Car rental companies do now allow you to rent an automobile in Italy and take it into the former Eastern Bloc countries, such as the countries that formerly formed Yugoslavia. Therefore, we had to take a bus from Trieste to Rijeka in Croatia and pick up the rental cars there, which turned out to be somewhat of an adventure. We got off the bus in town, and took taxis out to the airport, about 30 minutes away. When we got there, the rental office was closed, and while we were working through options the only person in the airport came over and told us we would have to leave since he was closing the airport. We managed to get through to the rental company and after some delay of a little over half an hour were able to get on our way. As you might surmise, the Rijeka airport is not large and modern.



Rather than stay in Rijeka, we elected to drive a few miles to the seaside resort town of Opatija, where we spent the night. We began to see the error of our ways in coming in August, since everyone single person in Europe is on vacation in August and almost all of them are coming to where we plan to visit. The place we stayed in Opatija is apparently a big family resort area, and there were all sorts of areas for children to play etc. There was also a real youth vibe about the place. But other than some mild inconveniences of layout, it was fine for a night's stay, and gave us a little head start on the next day.

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