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By Christi
We started the day with a wonderful breakfast spread of bread, local honey, cream cheese, prosciutto and fresh cherries. It was Nicola's turn to drive and after breakfast we headed south on the highway. The highways are a bit easier to manage than the small village roads, as long as you remember that the fast lane is on the left, and can manage to stop close enough to the ticket machine at the highway onramp to reach the button to collect your toll gate ticket!
Our first stop was the small town of Rovinj, on the coast. The old town area used to be an island, but it was connected to the mainland in 1763 and now it is a peninsula. The Italian influence is obvious, with most signs written in both Croatian and Italian. Not surprisingly, as Venice is just about 100km away across the Adriatic sea. We admired the pretty harbour, did some curio shopping (olive oil, truffles and rakija everywhere of course) and visited the church of St Euphemia. We had pre-paid for our parking, and having a set time that we needed to move the car helped a bit with time management!
Our next stop was a small town called Bale. The lady in the tourist office had recommended a visit, and our guide books described it as "lively"... not really our experience! The only interesting part of our visit was seeing a little jazz room where Cassanova had spent time in the 1740's, when he frequently visited the small stone village (and a few lovely ladies, of course!). The rest of the village was near empty.
We moved on to Pula, at the southern tip of Istria. The drive down was fine, but finding parking in a busy town with narrow streets while driving on the wrong side of the road was really stressful! We ended up parking relatively far from the main attractions, but it was a normal parking lot and not parallel parking on a busy street, so it was worth it! First on the agenda was lunch. I tried the octopus, and Riana had bream, which she said might have been her favourite meal of the trip. Then we walked up to and around the castle, but we were short on time so we didn't go in. Instead we headed to the Roman amphitheatre. Dating from the
first century and built entirely from local limestone, the Romans built it to host gladiator games. All the outer walls are still standing, but much of the stone from the inside structures had been removed and repurposed for other buildings. It was fascinating to see, but it was incredibly hot! Again we had to speedwalk back to our car to avoid over-staying our prepaid parking, only stopping for some very necessary cold cokes on the way. We had considered another stop or two at other villages, but by this time we were all tired and happy to head home.
Quick stop in Pazin to see the local castle. There was also a group of tourists enjoying the zip line across the gorge next to the castle.
Back at our airbnb home (with the car still perfect but our nerves starting to wear out!), we had a relaxing evening with a home cooked meal of cevapcici, ajvar, baby marrow and tomatoe salad. Tomorrow we return to Zagreb.
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