Istria

The Croatian coast is the landscape of my dreams. This, for me, is the most beautiful of type of climate and topography: dry, rocky with lavender and brush and pine along the sea. And such a sea! The Adriatic here displays the most dramatic pallette of marine colors, from turquoise green to indigo blue. The water is clear all the way to the bottom and is teaming with fish, crabs and other sea life. There is nothing more exciting to me than swimming off of white rocks into a deep ocean, as we did these days in Rovinj, traveling by bike to various coves and tiny bays south of the town. We explored tide pools and mysterious rock sculptures and I watched all my other plans--traveling to Pula to see Roman ruins, going to mountain towns to see medieval architecture--vanish. The lure of the sea was too much for us. Not coincidentally, it was on this very sea, some hours south of here, that Odysseus drifted off track and ended up a captive of Calypso on the island of Mjlet (Ogygia) for seven years. For us, just a few blissful days.

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Part of trip: Semester in Venezia

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