Lóránd Somogyi

This is the second part about our holiday at Istria, Croatia.

While we were at Rabac, we made few excursion to the vicinity. We visited Pazin. An old town with lots of sightseeings. The town was nice, but you could sense the duality between the old town, old culture and a somewhat newer industrial city. You can still catch the smell of old Jugoslavia, the communist (or if you prefer socialist) one. As if the time stoped. This was not nearly what we saw at the seaside. Even people were different.

The other big excursion were a ship voyage to Cres. If you never tried one of those on-street-selling, fish-eating, dolphin watching, … ship courses, try it and you wont regret it. We took the fish eating one. Sailing with an “old-school” ship, on a nice sunny day, make you feel like an old pirate. Taking a swim on an “arcane beach” or rambling around it: priceless. – Just a short note on this: few years back we were in Tunisia, and we took a pirate-ship-voyage, and it was great too. Of course if you rent a boat you could go where ever you want, but this is different, this is show and entertainment, (and yeah narration, but I never care about it).

So we visited the town of Cres at the Island of Cres. We had some nice time there, eating ice creme cup and drinking coffee. The town has a long and interesting history, lots of old buildings, and we could catch a real great light for some shots too.

Roaming around Rabac, we found Rovinj. And it was love at first sight. So we packed and moved to Rovinj, were we spent the rest of our holiday. Rovinj would deserve a whole article. (But as my time is limited, I have to stuff it here.)

Rovinj. A town with narrow corridors, amazing lights, tasteful food, nice people. Here everybody speaks at least Croatian and Italian. We had a feeling that the locals are Italian in their heart, and that gives a strange special mood to the town. We were lucky to find an accommodation in the old town, so we were close to everything we wanted to see. Three days, that was the our time window, so we were about to rush. But there is no rush. The atmosphere, high humidity and heat slows you down. Life is active between 9 to 11 and from about 16 till midnight. Between, it’s a time for siesta. Find a shady corner, take a newspaper or a book, order a tea or beer. Or if you are a brave tourist take a swim with at least 3cm of suncream.

There aren’t much “sightseeings” as everything in the old town is a story of itself. Of course you would go to see the church and the harbor. But the marketplace, small corridors, shops, restaurants are exciting as well. Bakeries are quite good, and the food in all of the restaurants we ware was delicious. Make sure you eat as much seafood as you can, or your wallet allows, as it is not cheep. – In Croatia they usually distinguish predator and herbivore fishes and called them respectively blue and white fish. Usually blue fish costs at least twice as much as white fish, but – in my opinion – it is at least three times more tasty.

There is one bitter thing about Rovinj. There are no great beaches. But every half an hour or so, you could catch a boat to “Red Island”. Travel to the island lasts less then half an hour, and there you could find a beach of your taste almost for sure. Sea cliffs, shingle, stony and sandy beaches all at one island. There is even a nudist beach.

Rovinj at night is also beautiful. Polished stones that cover streets reflects lights: like a dark foggy mirror.

To summarize… we’ll be back.

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