Advertisement
We set off early as we were not really sure how long it would take us. Once again we avoided the toll roads and went up the coast road to Trieste. What a lovely trip. Northern Italy is packed with industry and farms. Not an inch of land is left uncultivated. Once more you could see our all the little family farms had gone to be taken over by industry or larger farming operations. The place is littered with abandoned farm buildings. The Italian farmers no longer keep animals. In fact apart from one small housed diary farmed I didn't see a single animal anywhere. And for that matter no cats. The Italian, like that French are mad on their dogs. I think dogs come before children.
That has been one of the hardest things to get use to is having dogs in shops and restaurants. Oh yes and the smoking. You just have to put up with it if you want to eat outside. In Italy they are extremely heavy smokers especially the young, however you don't see them drinking. The lesser of two evils perhaps?
Moving on we travelled to a large city right on the border of Slovenia.
It is a large industrial city that has a very eastern European feel about it. The main square is quite beautiful but it reminds you of Austria. Apparently it is a world heritage square built by the Austrians (We have come across so many world heritage sites and places.)
Weaving our way through the traffic again we climbed high into the hills behind the city to enter Slovenia. To get to Croatia by car you need to drive through a small corner of Slovenia. Slovenia is very clean and tidy and very much a wilderness. Well the very small part that we saw anyway.
To get into Croatia we needed to go through three check points as Croatia is not a member of the European union.
Our first night in Croatia was spent at the most beautuful town of Opatija. It is a small very clean and tidy and geared up for tourist. The town itself is filled with very grand buildings. Once part of the Austrian Empire, rich Austrians came to take their holidays here and built themselves large mansions. During the time of Tito the town had fallen into the hands of the wealthy communists so many of
the buildings one of them being our hotel had fallen on hard times. However since independence the place really looks great the hotels now are all 3 to 5 star (not ours) Our hotel had very high ceilings, lots of wrought iron and beautiful stairways, chandeliers and fancy doors. I think we were in the maid's quarters. I certainly haven't used a loo with a pull chain in a while. At breakfast while we eat the piped music was Elvis singing christmas carols!
Heading on down the coast road we drove through the large industrial city of Rijeka. It is a very busy port. We kept going. The coast of Croatia is very, very rocky with just scrubby vegetation. At one point we came across some major road works where they are clearly going for some ambitious road. However it wasn't finished and the viaduct just stopped. Actually we came across a few roads like that. Clearly there are plans for the future so they have built roads that at the moment go no where. It is also very steep. Sometimes the road was very high. Often little fishing villages seem to cling to the rock. The sea is so
calm. There is very little swell and they don't have tides, so little boats just sit and rock gently in the water.
We were headed for the city of Zadar. A very busy and lively town with a major university. The students seem to be up to high jinks when we got there as there had been a lot of egg and flour throwing. The city council were out in force in the evening with water blasters cleaning up after them. Once again a city with a very long and checkered history. We had dinner outside as it was yet another beautiful evening and the sun was the most amazing hot red colour. Everyone at the restaurant was dashing over the road to the beach to take photos. the next day we headed off to Dubrovnik. Once again staying off the toll road, (though I think when we head back to Split we might take it). We arrived in the city of Spilt. It is the second largest city in Croatia. One one side it is just filled with rows of tower flats and industry. You drive over the hill and down to the harbour and it just beautiful. the
waterfront is geared up for tourist so there are plenty of shops and restaurants. The sea was flat calm and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Croatia like Italy make fabulous ice cream, and its very cheap. We spent some time having a wander around and sorting out a place to park the car while we are doing our biking cruise around the islands.
Back on the road again we wound our way along the coast road. It gets very high in some places. To get to Dubrovnik you have to pass through a corner of Serbia. The very small part of Serbia doesn't look any different apart from the road which clearly neither side feels they are responsible for. the young guard at the checkpoint was rather suspicious t
Advertisement
Tot: 0.078s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 11; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0428s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb