Istria
and travels homeward
We left Plitvice Lakes and drove in a light rain, that eventually became a very heavy downpour, towards Istria. Because of the rain, we decided to tour the city of Pula. But also because of the rain, every other tourist in the area went to Pula rather than the beach, and the traffic was very bad! Since we wasted so much time getting there, we cut our planned walking tour short, and only visited two Roman ruins—the Temple of Juneau and the Amphitheater.
The 1st century amphitheater, above, and Roman temple, below, in Pula.
We then drove just under an hour to the nearby coastal town of Rovinj, where we will spend our last two nights in Croatia. After a harrowing drive into the old town to get to our hotel, we walked around on the hilly, cobbled streets and enjoyed the ambiance. Rovinj was definitely full of tourists, but its setting is lovely. The photo at top of the page is the view from our hotel room.
June 6, 2023
We got a later start than usual, because it was raining. When the rain stopped, we took a short walk around our hotel in Rovinj, and then decided to head out a bit early for our excursion for the day.
The hotel took us to our car, parked just outside the pedestrian zone, and from there we drove about an hour to the hilltop town of Motovun, photo below. Like many places on the trip, if you didn’t know where you were, you would have thought it was Italy. Of course, Istria was part of Italy until 1947. The town is in an agricultural area specializing in olive oil, honey and wine, plus Istrian truffles. Not long after we arrived, a big thunderstorm came in! We walked a bit up a street to a cafe and sat and drank coffee until the rain stopped, about 45 minutes.
When the rain let up, we strolled for a few more minutes. Then we had a truffle–centric lunch overlooking the moody valley below the town. We then returned to Rovinj, making a short picture stop at the Lim Canal/fjord. When we got back to Rovinj, it was bright and sunny but you could see the large clouds just inland. After a short rest, we walked the circumference of the old town peninsula, where we saw people swimming off the big rock beach. One fellow leaped from the top of the rocks about 20 feet into the water!
Rovinj beach to the right and funny tour boat, below.
Look at the clouds in the next photo! Our guess it was still raining in the
interior of Istria.
We strolled a bit more, enjoying the bright sunshine, the boats on the water and the colorful buildings. Despite being hyper focused on tourism, we enjoyed the ambiance of Rovinj. We ended our trip with one last cocktail-hour look at the harbor (about one hundred feet from our hotel). Here’s one final Rovinj photo.
June 7, 2023
We left Rovinj at 6:45 am and drove due east, back across Istria to the airport at Zagreb. Most of the nearly three hour drive was on the motorway. Some of the route retraced steps we had taken. It was nice and green. We turned in the rental car and waited at the airport for our one o’clock flight to London. Now, we figured out we could have left a little later, since Apple Maps suggested a longer route and we just stuck to the motorway. We should have believed Google Maps that said the trip took 45 minutes less than Apple Maps did.
Our original flight was to leave at 8 pm and we had planned to leave Rovinj after breakfast to spend the afternoon touring Zagreb. Instead, our flight time changed, and we did not get to visit Zagreb. We got to our London airport hotel at four o’clock and took the tube to dinner in London.
We took the Piccadilly Line towards Cockfosters (a word you can only find in England) for dinner at a Thai restaurant. Walking back to the Tube station after dinner, we walked by the “Red Lion and Pineapple,” a quintessential English pub, full of people having a good time.
Tomorrow, we board a non-stop flight for San Francisco.
Here is the map of our travels from Plitvice, in Istria and to Zagreb.
Here’s the routing for our flights home, more than 6,000 miles.
We thoroughly enjoyed our 2-plus week trip to Croatia and its neighbors despite the crowds. The country-side was surprisingly beautiful, and much of the area we visited felt and looked like Italy, one of our favorite places, with its stone buildings and Venetian architecture. The people were very friendly, service was quite good and English was universally well-spoken. We were glad to make the short detours into Bosnia (which offered a different experience) and Montenegro, with its beautiful bay. This was our first major international trip since Covid, and we abandoned our masks (other than for flights) and did not miss them. Apparently we were not alone in jumping back into travel, as everywhere we went was pretty to very crowded, but not to the point of dismay. All in all, this was a really fun trip with lots of ice cream cones!
