Croatia – June 2018.

Booking our flight from Bristol to Pula during the Easy Jet sake was carried out in January, five months in advance of our trip. The flight times both ways were ideal, far better than most package holiday flights.

 

Pula airport is small compared to many but exceptionally efficient. Once through security and having collected our one case we were greeted by our taxi driver booked in advance who charged us 20€ to take us to our apartment in Pula. Our accommodation The Captain Emo Apartment is no more than 200m from the city’s coliseum and a short walk to the centre. It is spotlessly clean and I would no hesitation in recommending this as a place to stay and relax. The Coliseum, the sixth largest has a gory history in which battles to the death were carried out by gladiators and wild animals in front of baying crowds of as many as twenty-three thousand spectators. One can’t imagine the fear each gladiator must have had facing an opponent who had to display an equal amount of aggression as the only chance of survival.

 

We discovered on our first day that many restaurants do not accept card payments so extra cash had to be obtained from the cash point machines. A point worth considering before attempting to eat! Prices here in Croatia are marginally cheaper than the UK but one will not be harassed to buy goods by unwelcome street touts.

 

Our first day provided us with wall to wall blue skies and sunshine in which we wandered about the town taking in a baker’s shop to provide us with a lunch and shelter from the hot weather for a few hours. In the evening we travelled by boat around the archipelago of islands off the southern coast of Istria. Pula harbour itself is home to a shipbuilding industry that overlooks the sheltered estuary guarded by cranes and large towers straight out of a gigantic Meccano set. The islands are all part of a national park covered in woodlands and no doubt home to a variety of animals who roam freely. There are no perilous cliffs evident as those we see in Northern Europe but tides here are not as fierce as the Atlantic. Our promised meal consisted of either a burger and salad or mackerel and salad; this was accompanied by liquid refreshments of orange juice or water or white wine (not chilled) which only improved in taste directly proportional to the amount drunk. Dolphins skimmed the surface of the sea and passengers’ attempts to dispose of the remains of their meals overboard only attracted numerous annoying seagulls. Most passengers found this exceptionally entertaining but as one who was brought up by the sea, I began to wonder if a foolish gull would land on someone’s plate. Once we’d returned to port the short walk back to our apartment was a welcome exercise before enjoying a nightcap.

The dramatic beginning to our second day was a thunderstorm with sheet lightning illuminating the sky at frequent regular intervals as boulders were rolled across the heavens echoing around the town. Occasionally the sky was split in two as torrential rain flooded the streets only to wash away as soon as the storm was over. This had freshened the air and we took our opportunity to visit some of the landmarks namely the Amphitheatre where we were guided around the site to learn details of man’s inhumanity. Although the technology used by these giants of design impress us, their empathy towards others appears to have been non-existent. The area surrounding the hilltop castle built during its occupation by the Venetian Empire provided us with a panoramic view of the town. To the north of the town lies the railway station above which one can see hotels, designs of which date back to Croatia’s rule under the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

At night the restaurants come to life and we visited the town’s most famous Pizzeria, The Jupiter. As we sat here another storm erupted, sending rainfall to cascade over the edges of the canopy that protected us from the elements. The medium sized pizzas here are enormous and would feed two. What I do like is the complimentary glass of grappa served at the end of the meal.

The following morning we took the service bus to Rovinj, some 30 km up the Istrian coast. These efficient buses leave on time on a fairly regular basis and within forty minutes we’d reached our destination. A short taxi ride later we were able to leave our luggage at the Villa Dobravac as our room wasn’t ready; in fairness, we’d arrived at 10:30 am. The town has an attractive vista sitting on the edge of the Adriatic dominated by the old part situated on a promontory with cobbled streets that wind their way up to the church of St Euphemia. Looming over the church is a bell tower that resembles the tower of St Mark’s in Venice. On top of this is a statue of St Euphemia which served as a weather vane but is now immobile.

St Euphemia was a Christian martyr, arrested for not offering sacrifices to the god Ares, or Mars in Roman mythology, during the reign of Diocletian. His persecution of Christians was the last and most severe in the Roman Empire. The traditional tale describing how the tomb of St Euphemia arrived at Rovinj is as follows. During the iconoclast movement in Byzantium in the first millennia Christian worshipers, eager to preserve Euphemia’s tomb removed it from its first resting place in Constantinople and placed it on a ship to sail to the west. It came aground at the entrance to the port of Rovinj and due to its weight could not be moved until a boy, his two cows and divine intervention dragged the sarcophagus to the top of the town. The present church in which the tomb can be found was built in the eighteenth century.

Our hotel sits on the brow of a hill overlooking the town, a twenty-minute walk away. Natalina our host guided us to our room on our return and we were able to unpack our cases as our stay here was for seven days. Several restaurants were recommended and on our first evening, we ate at Restaurant Bošket, a few minutes’ walk from our hotel. Upon the advice of the waitress, we ordered a fish platter and vegetables. The fish arrived on a large plate containing the most wonderful selection of sea creatures of which the most succulent was the dorado or sea bream. This was accompanied by octopus, cuttlefish, squid and an array of shellfish, shrimps and prawns. Full and satisfied, we returned to our hotel for the night. We ate out every evening and were served well each time. The meal we ate at the Puntulino Restaurant on the edge of the old town overlooking the bay was an especially enjoyable one.

A short distance across the bay lies the island of St Katarina’s which we visited twice. It is the ideal location on which to escape for several hours which houses its own hotel of the same name. Here can be found a couple of man-made beaches from which we swam in the glorious Adriatic. Sun loungers are placed in various locations and for the time we spent lying on them no-one bothered us for payment. Seagulls gather round to look for a mixed diet but these do not appear as aggressive as most we’ve encountered. A possible reason may be there are no other predators on the island. St Katarina is well preserved and its multitude of trees, mainly conifer, grow in abundance providing ample shelter.

Rovinj has a plethora of restaurants situated along its many streets and sea-front overlooking the harbour to the south of the old town, all providing excellent meals. Bars selling cocktails can be found here as well and indulgence in these provided a delightful distraction on more than one occasion. Wandering about the town one can find artisan styled shops and apartments all wonderfully cared for to attract the growing number of tourists. Here, one will not find any Western European chain of shops which is a relief. Independent shops selling anything from baby clothes to truffle oils can be found are plentiful, as are shoe shops. Oils and lavender potpourris are also sold in the open air marketplace. Croatian, the native tongue, can be heard alongside Italian, the second official language of the area. German is also widely heard as the area attracts many Austrian as well as German tourists.

A water taxi transports bathers to Amarin, a purpose-built beach, but as the day on which we visited was windy swimming was not a good choice of activities due to the rough sea. Clambering over submerged rocks to reach a suitable depth proved hazardous. On the harbour one can purchase a variety of sea trips; one we joined took us to the Lim Fjord, an inland stretch of the sea a distance of 13 km.

After an enjoyable week in Rovinj, we took a taxi to our next destination Poreč via the Istrian interior. Our driver Ivona was eager to tell us about her homeland and informed us a variety of facts ranging from the soils found in the area to its history. The scenery can only be described as a Croatian version of Tuscany. We visited two hilltop villages, Motovun and Grožjan, both of which were spectacular with views across their walls to match. The first was a walled town of cobbled streets, small shops, bars and a hotel and the second was a town providing a home for artists and musicians during Tito’s reign.

Once we’d arrived in Poreč and said our farewells to Ivona at the Valamar Rubin Hotel. The complex of Valamar hotels (Rubin, Crystal and Diamant) lie a twenty-minute walk through woodlands to the south of the city and is an ideal centre for tourism. Its multiple play areas with cycling, jet-skiing and swimming, to name but a few activities, are a magnet for visitors from a variety of nations.

Like most beaches in Croatia access to the sea over rocks is for the fit and healthy, however, a slipway and series of ladders provide gentler methods of entry to the Adriatic where the swimming is a refreshing interlude from lying in the hot sunshine. A leisurely walk along a coast path in the shade of trees is a pleasant approach to the port and the old town. This again contains shops, bars and small hotels much the same as Rovinj but at the northern end of the promontory, one will find the Basilica. An earlier basilica dating back to the fourth century was dedicated to St Maurus but the present one is dedicated to Mary and was built in the sixth century.

This region of Croatia has been the strategic part of several empires for over two thousand years. Much evidence of Roman presence can be found especially the amphitheatre at Pula. Although it had its own identity it paid homage to the Habsburg Empire of Austria/Hungary for protection against the Ottoman expansion through Europe. Istria was also governed by the Venetian empire from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. Both the Austrian/Hungarian and the Ottoman Empires ceased to exist after WW1 and the region became part of a greater Yugoslavia until 1941 when it was annexed by Nazi Germany. Once WW2 finished it resumed membership of Yugoslavia and a violent purge was carried out on the Nazi collaborators. With the fall of the Soviet block and removal of the ‘Iron Curtain’ took place both Croatia and its neighbouring Slovenia declared independence. The country is now an integral part of the EU although it is not in the Schengen group of countries, neither has it adopted the Euro yet.