It was a familiar start to the day as we departed another city. We packed and cleaned up our underused accommodation, and left the keys in the box outside as instructed. John unclipped the chain allowing me to reverse out, and replaced it before he jumped in the passenger seat. I was confident enough to drive out of the city, as it was a straight-line west from the apartment and out of the city to the nearby motorway.
It was a lovely, sunny day, and just as we were leaving the city limits, we hit upon some intense traffic. Unbeknownst to us, we were embarking on the well-tread route of central European holiday makers to the Dalmatian coast - in the middle of August! Looking around in the traffic, I noticed a smattering of licence plates from Slovakia and even Poland, a handful from Hungary and Serbia, but a sizeable volume from Austria and Germany. I did note that there were few from Croatia itself. The reason for the queue was the motorway toll booth up ahead. It took about 20 minutes to reach, as we inched our way forward.
Once we paid our fee, the motorway was freed up before us as the mass of cars reduced to a moderate trickle. The journey from Zagreb to the outskirts of Karlovac was uninteresting, but the scenery was luscious. Agricultural land interspersed with large rolling green hills of grass and forest accompanied us on our route southwest. It became slightly more rugged and mountainous after Karlovac, and the traffic loosened as cars and campervans left our motorway to turn south, and eventually south east, towards Split and Dubrovnik.
For a good hour or so we just carried on meandering between hills and mountains, but then slowly we noticed we began to descend somewhat. It was also at this point that we began to notice the scenery change to a more dry and rocky terrain. We had now reached the Dalmatian Littoral, the slice of land between the Adriatic Sea and Mountainous Croatia, stretching north-west from Istria south-east to traditional Dalmatia. Our descent towards the city of Rijeka accelerated once we passed what looked like an abandoned airfield on the hilltop outside of the city. And the descent was even more winding than our previous meandering. We soon hit the outer suburbs, and felt close to the city centre itself, until we plunged into a tunnel, and emerged on a by-pass behind the city travelling west again.
The crystal blue waters of the Adriatic were enticing, but we could only see dashes of them between the high-rise apartments that were dug into the hillside. As we drove through, I did ponder why I didn’t think to make a pitstop here, as it had an attractiveness I would have loved to have explored on foot. It also had Tito’s yacht, the Galeb, in residence. But as we neared an elbow of coast, our sat nav told us to turn off the by-pass, heading to Slovenia, and onto the Istrian Peninsula. It was also here that we now noticed the roads signs had become bilingual, with Italian hinting at Istria’s Venetian past.
We crossed Istria from east to west, and the environment was almost arid, but still held the ability to cultivate certain crops. Our pace had slowed a little as we passed through rural settlements and wide expanses of fields.
As we approached the western side of the peninsula, we paid a toll for using the main road. We were now on a country road with a slower speed limit. We then saw signs of urban build up, with the odd hotel or restaurant built for passing trade, or tourists from the nearby coastal towns, pop up along the road. But this was sparse until we hit the city limits of Rovinj.
One of the reasons why I was keen to come to Rovinj was because I met a Croatian woman, who was a former MP, at a Labour event the previous year. She said that the Istrian peninsula was one of two counties in Croatia to vote against the constitutional amendment to limit marriage to a man and a woman. I was told of Istria’s liberal mindedness, and that is what initially attracted me to visit.
We reached the city and made our way to the southern suburb where a number of holidays homes and pansions were located. For the pricey sum we paid, the 3-star accommodation was as basic as it could get. Keen to not be sat down for much longer, we just grabbed some beach essentials and went straight out. We went to a nearby Koznum store and bought picnic supplies. John said he would drive back from the beach, so I bought a bottle of rosé to keep me refreshed as we sunbathed.
We drove through the compact town centre, and round to the north where a stretch of land jutted out into the sea. You had to get to this part of the coast via a drive in a forest that stopped literally at the water’s edge. As we got closer to the parking area, it was evident that the area was popular. But we managed to find a spot to park in the woods, the fresh smell of pine warmed up by the days sun was something to savour.
We walked past a beach bar and walked along the now familiar rocky Adriatic coast. We hurriedly made our way through a popular beach and on to a more remote beach. Here, we settled on the rocks, and then sunbathed and picnicked. An impromptu airbed was inflated by one group nearby, for added comfort on the rocks, I understood.
We must have spent a good couple of hours there because, as it was in the latter part of the day, the lowering sun brought a golden sheen to the rocks, followed by fellow sunbathers beginning to pack up for the day and return to their cars. I did a good job on that bottle of rosé, so I may have stumbled a little on our return to the car. Plumes of dust wafted up from car wheels as we left the car park and made our way to the concrete road and back to our apartment.
A shower soon freshened me up before our first proper trip into the city, which was a good 20-minute walk. The crisp and dry evening was a pleasure to walk in, as we commented on all the villas and apartment blocks we walked past. We began to notice the bilingual road signs again as we entered what was obviously the outskirts of the old town. The streets narrowed, and the buildings began to reflect a Venetian form. The number of people around us began to rise rather quickly too.
At a small square, where the city’s bus station was situated, we joined what on appearance looked like a pedestrian street, but turned out to be used by a considerable number of cars despite it being packed with tourists. There was a real hive of activity here. Gelato and pizzerias seemed to dominate this stretch - and as it turned out, most of the city - so we carried on in search of further options.
We ended up at another small square, but sort of turned back on ourselves to reach the small harbour of the city. Small and medium sized boats were tightly packed in, and were sometime three or four deep. The now dark sky was lit up beautifully by the moon, which radiated onto the marble quayside and brought out the pastel colours of the nearby harbour side buildings. A slow yet pleasantly warm breeze brought with it a fresh smell of the crisp, salty sea waters.
Where we had walked through seemed to have been the ‘mainland’ of the town, and where we stood now seemed to have been built up to connect the mainland with, what I presumed to be, a former island of the old town. That part of town was packed tightly in ahead of us, spiralling up to the point where a church spire dominated its peak.
We made a small adventure of going up one of the first lanes that wound around and up the old town, but decided to retreat back to the quayside and eat at what looked like one of the first and finest hotels of the city.
The aptly named Hotel Adriatic did not disappoint. We sat out on the quayside in order to both continue our people watching, and to really take in the wonder of our surroundings. Cocktails were ordered, and for my main I had a lovely steak with parmesan and greens. We ordered a bottle of Croatian red to prolong our stay.
It was getting late, and the quayside began to slowly quieten down. We paid our bill and walked to the north part of the town to sit outside a bar that formed the centre of a fork of two roads going into the city. We noticed a taxi rank, and located a gay club just outside of the town that would take 5 minutes by car. Its unique selling point was that it was the only gay venue on the Dalmatian coast. Interesting.
We travelled along the same road to the beach we visited earlier in the day, but turned on to a country road that was pitch black. Here we got out and in the near distance there seemed to be a villa that was lit up but with few people around it.
We gingerly walked up the path and heard voices, and then muffled music. It did seem it was a converted country house that was the gay club. We walked past a couple of people smoking outside and went in. There weren’t many more people inside, but we walked over to the bar and ordered two beers. Contemporary Euro-pop was being played yet no-one was dancing. Clearly, Sundays are not the busiest.
After another round of beers, and a little disappointment, we spent 30 minutes trying to get a taxi home. We eventually did do, and collapsed on the bed after a tiring day.
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