Istria 2011, Rovinj

It was time for a coffee and a beer and there were plenty of busy harbour side bars to choose from so as we looked for empty spaces Micky reminded me of his theory that if we (the men) made a selection then this would be automatically overruled by Kim who has a curious habit of always walking to the next one perhaps in some sort of belief that it will always be better, or perhaps she just thinks we can’t make a good choice? Micky stopped by an empty table at a perfectly acceptable café and sure enough Kim rejected it and led us instead to the one next door. It was almost identical and the coffee and the beer would be exactly the same so there really was no explanation. Micky smirked!

It was really hot in the midday sun and we sat and watched the harbour activity, the tour groups being led around the town and the children playing in the square. Rovinj was certainly very different to Pula with a chic Italianate ambiance that oozed style and disposable income. Whereas in Pula the tourist part of the city rubs shoulders with the noise and sweat of its industry Rovinj felt exclusively like a pleasure zone for holiday makers, yachtsmen and tourists with no hint of a scruffy industrial area. People in smart clothes parading along the promenade stopping every so often to stop for a sociable drink or to gaze into a shop window with overpriced souvenirs or to buy a couple of scoops of Italian ice cream from the parlours all along the front.

After our refreshment break we walked through the main square and melted into the side streets with the twisting cobbled streets flanked by pastel coloured buildings rising steeply from the pavements with washing lines strung between them and brightly painted shutters on the windows. The route to the top took us a maze of streets until we emerged at the top and in the cathedral square. All but Micky went in for a look around and then we took an alternative path and descended down to the square. On the way we passed a shop selling shell costume jewellery and as Kim examined the necklaces the shop keeper rather sharply said that if we were just looking then we should do it with our eyes not our fingers. We didn’t think this was a very friendly sales technique and if we might have been tempted to purchase something then we certainly wouldn’t be after that.

It was lunch time so we stopped at a water side restaurant advertising a reasonably priced menu of the day so we choose a table ordered some drinks and made our selections. Surprisingly Christine choose fish and I say surprisingly because although she is not so anti-sea food as Sue this was most unusual. And then unsurprisingly she didn’t like it and gave most of it away to Micky in exchange for his meat selection. Over lunch we agreed to take the boat excursion so we phoned Alex and told him that we liked his five for four deal and that we would meet him tomorrow at twelve o’clock.

After lunch we passed from one side of the old town to the other and walked through a market selling local produce and vegetables and then, except for some excitable seagulls, to the quieter side of town, which was less picturesque and home to a large stone monument to Croatian heroes built in the monolithic style much loved by the previous communist regime of Yugoslavia and which looked rather foolishly out of place but very, very permanent.

On the way back to the car the girls stopped for some ice cream and we retraced our steps to the car park. There was no wheel clamp and so we left the delightful town of Rovinj and ignoring the coast road took the direct route back to Fažana.

After a drink at the Konoba Ferral we let the rest of the day just quietly slip away. First we walked south out of the village along a stony beach that arched away in a crescent shape from the village and it was so warm and the sea looked so nice that I went for a paddle in the water but everyone else declined to join me and I have to say that it was a bit cool. Later we enjoyed another spectacular sunset and then being creatures of habit dined once again at the Konoba Ferral and we all enjoyed an excellent second meal where Kim and I shared a special fish plate and Micky, Sue and Christine had beef steak and we all declared our meals to be perfect.

Croatia, Dubrovnik

The water taxi took about thirty minutes to make the short journey from Mlini to Dubrovnik and even though large cruisers anchored up outside the harbour spoiled the approach the old town fortifications looked spectacular as we sailed into the harbour and once off the boat we transported into an alternative world of narrow medieval streets, magnificent buildings constructed of white Dalmatian stone and a riot of red tiled roofs. We knew that we had all day to explore the city but we were impatient so purchased our tickets and climbed to the top of the walls for the two-kilometre walk around the magnificent tenth century guard’s walkway.

It was extremely hot and It took a couple of hours to complete the walk around the city stopping frequently to admire the breathtaking views of the cathedrals and churches, the battlement and towers and the busy streets bustling with activity at the base of the walls and through the city to the other side. The route took us first alongside the Adriatic and then at the Fort of St John into the old city port past fishing boats, yachts, pleasure craft and water taxis all floating gently on the placid sea within the protective walls of the harbour’s medieval defences. Then we were on the land side where there were there were the best views of the tiled roofs and on to the highest point at the Minceta Tower where there was a steep climb rewarded with an expansive panorama of the city and the vivid blue sea behind it.

The medieval city of Dubrovnik was founded in late antiquity and grew first under Byzantine and then later under Venetian rule before becoming an independent republic in 1358. It developed into a maritime and trading power that rivaled the Venetian Republic and reached its zenith in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It even managed to keep its political independence under Ottoman rule, which began in 1526 but it was sacked in 1806 during the Napoleonic wars, and lost its status as a city-state two years later. It came under French rule and was ceded to Austria in 1815. A century later, it became part of Yugoslavia.

When we had completed the circumnavigation of the walls we returned to street level and walked first along the polished white paving stones of the main street occasionally taking detours into intriguing little side streets and alleys. We admired the reconstructed Rector’s House and the Cathedral, wandered through a street market and then to some of the quieter little streets underneath the walls for a different perspective. The old city dates from the thirteenth century, when the imposing fortifications began to be built and the elegance and charm of the historic centre is a perfect blend of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architecture. Not surprisingly the place had an Italianate feel with pizzerias and waiters pestering for business in that unique Italian sort of way but we didn’t mind this and just politely said no thank you in an English sort of way and walked on.

By the time we had walked underneath the walls of St John’s Tower and into the old harbour I was beginning to understand why in 1929 George Bernard Shaw described Dubrovnik as ‘Paradise on Earth’ and thankfully the post war reconstruction has restored the old town to its former splendour.

At the beginning of the bombardment, the city was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger and quickly after it was over UNESCO launched an action plan to save Dubrovnik and the reconstruction work began. To rebuild the roofs the original sixteenth century rafters had to be strengthened and almost half a million tiles had to be replaced. The original tiles had been made in the village of Kupari, about fifteen kilometres from the city, and dated from the time of the Dubrovnik republic but the workshops had closed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and specialists faced the task of finding a kind of tile which could as far as possible be made using the original materials and methods of construction. Eventually French and Croatian specialists managed to recreate the original technique and the famous roofline was perfectly restored.

The cost of the restoration was estimated at $20 for the old city within the walls and $30 million for the urban area as a whole. Much of the funding came from the new Croatian government and the Dubrovnik Reconstruction Office but also with aid from private Croatian sources and from UNESCO itself. Croatian and international teams of architects, sculptors, restorers and other experts managed to complete the bulk of the work within seven years and in December 1998 Dubrovnik was taken off of the danger list.

It was midday and hot so we returned to a waterside bar that we had used the previous year and thought about lunch. Last year we seriously over ordered here and ended up sending food back so this year we were mindful of that and ordered accordingly – just one plate of small fish and a salad. We were in a perfect spot next to the girls trying to sell thirty minute tours on glass bottomed boats and watching the guided tour parties trying to make decisions about who was going on and who wasn’t. Eventually we tired of watching the people parading back and forth, left the harbour and went back into the city.

It was now almost unbearably hot and Kim had acquired a headache but we had seen mostly everything we wanted to see in Dubrovnik so we walked to the bus stop, I bought the wrong tickets in a shop, and then waited in the shade for the Mlini bus for the fifteen minute ride back along an elevated road with great views over the city, the harbour and the sea.

Croatia, Cavtat

As usual the Easyjet flight was late taking off and also arriving so added to its statistic on late or delayed flights that Michael O’Leary delights in gloating over when he provides benchmark statistics in the Ryanair in-flight magazine each month. Easyjet are frustratingly relaxed about flight times and I think on the whole I prefer the Ryanair approach.

There wasn’t a great deal to see for the first part of the flight because of cloud but we saw the snow capped peaks of the Alps poking through the mist and shortly after crossing Venice the vapours cleared and we had a clear view of the coast of Croatia and the string of islands separated from the main land by a vivid blue Adriatic Sea. As the plane flew south we picked out familiar places, Trogir, Primosten, Split and islands that we recognised, Hvar and Korcula, but this time from an unfamiliar perspective because for the last two years these were places that we had only seen from ground level as we had driven south from Zadar. This time we could appreciate the islands with their halos of golden sand, the blue sea and the salt and pepper grey mountains that rise dramatically behind the narrow coastal strip. As the plane descended we flew low over the old town of Dubrovnik and picked out the iconic red roofs, the city walls and the boats in the harbour.

Within seconds the plane was touching down and after a short wait we were in welcome sunshine as we walked to the terminal building to be processed at the passport control desk. It was a nice modern airport, clean and airy and after we passed through we found the car hire desk where we were upgraded from a small to a medium car for no additional cost. We were planning to drive to Montenegro and the Government Foreign Office website warns that driving can be difficult there with poor roads and temperamental drivers so on this occasion I agreed to pay the additional €6 a day for the fully comprehensive insurance.

After we had completed the paperwork and signed up we maneuvered out of the impossibly tight parking space in the parking lot and drove the short distance to the resort of Cavtat. I paid careful attention to the road and Kim worked out the air conditioning controls and air flow combinations because it was very, very hot indeed. It only took a few minutes to arrive in the small town and find a car park and then, after a quick change of clothes into something more appropriate for 28º of sunshine rather than a chilly morning in Stansted we walked around the harbour and slipped immediately into holiday mode.

Cavtat was delightful and because Croatia insists on a compressed holiday season of two months in July and August, and except for being directly below the flight path of landing planes, it was quiet and peaceful. In the harbour there were a pot-pourri of working boats, pleasure cruisers and some very expensive sailing boats and yachts so we picked a restaurant with a good view and enjoyed a simple lunch and a first Croatian beer called Ožujsko. It was good.

After lunch we walked around the little town through narrow leafy lanes and cobbled streets flanked with traditional red-roofed brownstone houses climbing back from the blue of the waterfront up narrow stairways smothered in clouds of white, mauve and pink blossom and every now and then a private shaded courtyard to investigate. Along the front there were busy cafés and tourist shops and the waiters and the shopkeepers allowed us to browse slowly without pestering for custom as they do in other parts of Europe.

It was early afternoon and getting hotter so it was time to leave and continue our journey towards the nearby village of Mlini where we would be staying for a couple of nights. I got us tangled up in the one way system and took the long route out of town that twisted along the coast and then climbed through green hills with contrasting yellow broom and scarlet poppies back to the main road and headed north.