Croatian Roots 2014: June 16

Split to Rovinj with a stop in Pula.

We picked up a rental car this morning and will drive around Croatia for the rest of our trip. This morning, we headed up the coast to Pula (poo-la), after I finally found out how to put the car into reverse! Apparently you have to push the stick shift down to go into reverse. Nothing on the stick shift indicated that. So the guys at the rental car place probably had some good laughs about the American tourists who don’t know how to put a car in reverse.

We had tried to download a bunch of maps and directions for our trip – it is a little daunting to be driving in a new country without any knowledge of the language. Most of the maps didn’t load up when we were out of range of Wi-fi. We had saved some and could still read the directions, so we thought we’d be ok. But then we found out that Croatia doesn’t have many street signs. And many of the directions would name a road – say highway 20, and the highway was a different number when we got there. So we ended up taking a few wrong turns during our 5 hour trip to Pula, but we made it, and that’s all that matters, right?

On the way, we did get to buy some smoked cheese from a rural area. We munched on the cheese with some crackers on our way. It was delicious. As we moved up the coast, the climate became much drier. The landscape reminded me a lot of southern Utah and New Mexico. It was very fun to see so much of the countryside – where we got to go down some very steep mountainsides and also run along the coast.

We had chosen to visit Pula because of a large Roman Amphitheater that is still largely in-tact. It was much larger than I had expected and very fun to walk around. Pretty amazing to think about men fighting lions in the center of the amphitheater. Our guidebook pointed out a little moat that surrounded where the fighting took place, and noted that the moat protected the people from the animals that were fighting, while still allowing their robes to get splattered with blood. Gruesome! We were running a little late in Pula, so we race-walked from the ampitheather to go see a few other sites – the Temple of Augustus (for Augustus Ceasar) and a mosaic floor that was discovered under a few feet of dirt when a homeowner was trying to expand their house. Both very cool things we were glad to see, even if it meant race-walking around town. Don't worry, we were sure to race-walk with some style.

After Pula, we headed to Rovinj (ro-veen), which is described as the Venice of Croatia. So today we essentially visited Greece and Italy, while staying in Croatia.

The old part of Rovinj was an island long ago, and to protect the city from pirates and other invaders, they had fortified parts of the city with some walls. But many of the homes go right down to the water – very much like Venice. At one point the ocean between the island and the mainland was filled in, so old town Rovinj is now more of a peninsula. Rovinj is also heavily populated and visited by Germans. Since we are staying much closer to the old town than we did in Dubrovnik, it felt like we were immersed in a sea of tourists (mostly German). I think I preferred Dubrovnik where we left the old town and stayed 10 minutes away by bus. Most people we talked to were speaking German and the Croatians defaulted to German when they realized we weren’t native. This was a bit different from Dubrovnik and Korcula where English seemed to be the default language. The old town is much smaller than Dubrovnik; similar in size to Korcula. It was fun to walk around in the evening and see the city. Alleys between homes/shops would end at the water in some places. Very cool. We also had probably the tastiest dinner tonight that we’ve had while in Croatia – Jen had some homemade pasta with asparagus and prosciutto (a smoked/salted ham), and I had grilled squid. Yum! Looking forward to exploring the area more tomorrow.