Croatia

Our visit with family in Zagreb was a puddle of love. We so enjoy spending time with Jean, Ed and Eleanor. We cooked homemade pasta, fabulous fish and artichokes together while catching up on all the details of each others’ lives. For sightseeing we took the cable car to the top of a mountain overlooking Zagreb and walked the trails there. A lovely long weekend shared.

Then we rented a car for our 20 day road trip and headed to Pula where we spent days touring the local sites including their aquarium, Roman ruins and small surrounding villages on the coast. Rovinj with its wonderful narrow medieval cobblestoned alleyways and Poreč with its 6th century basilica and mosaics were the most interesting..

Next we drove an hour inland for a more rural experience, staying four days in the tiny hilltop village of Oprtalj-Portole⁩. This is a part of the Istrian peninsula that has been Croatian then Italian and back again, depending on who won what war most recently. It is also only five miles south of the Slovenian border. The villa where we are staying is a beautiful Italian style home that looks out over the surrounding countryside and we are the only guests.

The first day we wandered through the enchanting little hilltop village of Grožnjan and fell in love with its charm. vistas and fritules, little powder sugared fried dough. Yesterday we hiked from the valley floor to the top of the next charming hillside town, Motovun. It was quite the workout as this was the area’s most defensible fortress village. We marveled at surrounding vineyards, olive groves, wildflowers and castle ruins on the way. Also encountered were an unexpected amount of mosquitoes along the river but the hike was still well worth it. Today we were going to put our feet up and read but, on a wild hair, decided to toodle over to the Slovenian seaside town of Piran for lunch and then on to the UNESCO world heritage site complex of Skocjan Caves. It was spellbinding as we descended some 650 feet underground through some of the largest caverns anywhere that then joined a raging underground river for 3 km. The only drawback was the hour climb out with over 400 steps.

Croatia is a country of contrasts. Breathtaking natural beauty around every corner and then, in many parts, post communist architecture that invites tagging. Vistas that go on for miles of olive groves and vineyards that are so welcoming but expressions on peoples faces that make you stop and take a step back to give them space. They aren’t a dour people so much but Croats do give you a feeling of distance and perhaps disapproval… or maybe that is our judgment of them? Smiling is not their natural state. And their language comes from the back of the throat with all consonants and few vowels with little inflection.

Four more days in this region to explore then off to The Dolomites in Northern Italy.