Rovinj, Croatia

Sunday afternoon...

I'm sitting on a rocky-pebbly shore in my swimsuit on Katarina Island, off of Rovinj ("rov-EEN-ye", but not all Croatians pronounce it the same way...), after my first swim in the Adriatic. I haven't checked email in many hours, I don't have a watch on, and I've had a cherry strudel for breakfast (thanks for the pastry fund, Aunt Jody and Uncle Tad!) and a pistachio ice cream cone for a late lunch while I waited for the 4:30 ferry for the island. I've been traveling for days like this, just mostly enjoying a nice dinner each evening. It's probably around 6 o'clock. I'm sharing this spot with six other people. When I asked a woman if there was a place to change, she laughed. "Nobody cares, you're not in America," she said. Lots of primary-age girls don't wear swim tops, and here and there is a woman sunning topless. (By the little river I swam in in Slovenia, a man changed from his speedo, just facing a tree.) Everything is so low-key. Even the broken glass on the beach--worn and smooth and dusty--is not a threat. The water is crystal clear.

(Katarina Island, as seen from the top of a precarious staircase, which will make an appearance later)

island companions

I'm loving Rovinj, and immediately decided to spend an extra day here after roaming the town last night. I'm staying in a sweet one-bedroom apartment about a 10-minute walk from the main area. Rovinj has a Venetian feel, buildings rising straight up from the narrow stone streets. Pasta, mussels, olive oil, good cheap wine. Lots of tourists, but mostly in a way that adds to the vibe. People in swimming suits, people riding bikes, people gazing at the sites, people walking with ice cream cones. And honestly, not to be undervalued, a city that thrives on tourism means it's no problem to walk up to an ice cream stand and speak English. (All the menus are in at least four languages.)

(My car, with my apartment in the background.)

Later... 

Now it's a dry white wine, caprese salad, cheese ravioli with truffles (and wow, we're talking the type of cheese ravioli worthy of truffles), sitting off the marina watching a setting sun, with kind and attentive waitstaff. (I wandered up on this restaurant, Bar Rio, but later discovered this was the number-one rated restaurant in Rovinj on Trip Advisor, which is quite a feat, but I'm not surprised.)

There is something so moving to me about a stranger reaching out his or her hand, literally, to help someone. I've had that happen at least three times today and watched it many more, as men helped passengers step off boats. (After my trip back from Katarina Island on the ferry, the man helping people off was delighting kids by lifting them high in the air and setting them down to get them off the boat. Without fail, they paused afterward and looked up at him with awe and delight. A man followed a string of kids, and he and the boat man joked, the boat man lifting the passenger, too, prompting laughter in adults and confusion in kids.) Earlier in the day, when I first began to work my way back down the many scary stairs of the Saint Euphemia Cathedral tower this afternoon, a man reached his hand up to help me down to his tiny platform. Holding hands is somewhat an intimate act, so different from shaking someone's hand. 

(scary stairs, looking back up--after the first flight or so many were only 4-5 inches deep, and they weren't very flat!)

Rovinj: dusty streets that indicate a coast, squawking seagulls, roads far too narrow for two cars to pass, but that doesn't stop them from being two-way streets (quite typical in the whole region). Just lots of yielding. Of course many of the stone roads between buildings rising straight up are narrow enough that in America we would only consider them sidewalks, but motorcycles, little cafe tables with people drinking coffee and wine, and shop stalls all manage to fit.

Later later...

My last afternoon in Rovinj was spent on the coast, at Punta Corrente, a large point at the end of town. I settled into a spot and bobbed up and down quite contentedly for a while--the temperature of the water could keep you there for hours, and by the looks of things, that's just what most people were doing. The winding shore was perfect--big blocks of rock, easy to climb around on and sun on, and with no sand the water was very clear--I could see the bottom well past where I couldn't touch anymore. What delighted me even more was that the vegetation was mostly pine trees, so if you weren't sunning on a block of rock, you were snoozing in the shade on a bed of pine needles. Of course plenty of topless bathers, and some nude. My eye very accidentally landed on a very tanned penis at one point. I'll just end there. 

(This first picture was my spot.)

Slovenia

After a late, swelteringly hot 8-hour train ride some nights ago from Budapest, a very kind couple drove me to the rental car office in Ljubljana, Slovenia's capital. I drove to Skofja Loka, a small town about 25 minutes away. Igor, my strapping host at Hotel Garni Paleta, welcomed with me at 11 p.m. with a smile and "medici," "alcoholic Red Bull," an "energy drink with alcohol that goes straight to your blood, with honey for energy." (Imagine that with a Slavic accent, if you can.)

Breakfast each morning consisted of breads with many topping options and a hard-boiled egg ready at my seat, along with offers of yogurt and muesli. Igor also brought a slice of a different "cake" each morning, "cake" in parentheses because they were not dessert cakes, but swirled sweet cakes with nuts, in one, "potica orehova," and tarragon in the other, "potica pehtranova." After my first breakfast and time with Igor and maps planning my time in Slovenia, he took me on a tour of part of his home. Skofja Loka ("SKOFE-yuh LOKE-a") is a small, old town. 

Igor's home, originally his grandfather's, backs up to the small river. The basement, which is the only part of the house that survived a fire many years ago, is 600 years old, and the rest of the house is 300. Igor took me down to his garden, on a terrace above the river (you can see it below center in the first photo, below), and he picked a couple of tomatoes for me. 

In addition to my delicious energy shot and breakfasts with Igor chatting with me from the small kitchenette, one of my favorite moments in the town was swimming in the river on a hot afternoon, before heading into Ljubljana ("LYOU-blee-YAH-na") for the evening. 

In Ljubljana I enjoyed a hike up to the castle, a handful of distinctive bridges (including the cobbler's bridge, the triple bridge, the butcher's bridge, and the dragon bridge), and the happy vibe of the city. I ended up having dinner with an Italian man, Roberto, who was in town on business, and we picked each other's brains for travel suggestions in Europe and America. Following are a variety of photos--graffiti, bridges, castle, etc.--from Ljubljana.

You know when you're driving almost exclusively in first and second gears you're either in heavy traffic or going somewhere really cool. I've done both on this trip, but one of the highlights of my journey thus far was driving over Vrsic ("vir-SEH-chee," if I've got it right) Pass, 1611 meters high (or more than 50 hairpin turns, however you prefer to measure), in the Julian Alps, and then hiking for a couple of hours to get some stunning views. While on one of the hikes I shared an interesting moment. As I walked around one bend with a majestic, but very close, view, there were five people, spread out a bit, silently staring at the view. I joined them. No one moved, and no one broke the silence for perhaps 10 minutes. Twice I wiped a tear from my eye, taken by the beauty, but also taken by this shared moment. In fact I became as much focused on them as I was on the view--one man broke into a silent sob, and two others also wiped tears. A couple with a babbling child walked around the bend and broke the silence, and finally a couple of us stepped away and moved on.

Notice the people on the path in this next one...

After Vrsic, I drove down through the Soca River Valley. The Soca ("SO-cha") River is a beautiful, very clear, light turquoise (I can't seem to find a straightforward and consistent explanation for the color with a short search). I've read that it is among only a few rivers in the world that holds this color through its journey. (I'm including a photo I found online of the river farther downstream, so you can see the color.) One of the Chronicles of Narnia movies was filmed in this area because of its beauty. I stayed the night in a lovely apartment in Kobarid, a small town toward the base of the mountains with a focus on outdoor sports, particularly whitewater rafting, and ties to Ernest Hemingway, who collected wounded in an ambulance during a 1917 battle between Austro-Hungarians and Italians. Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms is based on that battle. On a much lighter side, I was treated to a delicious dinner by a Danish couple, Niels and Birgitte, who are a photojournalist and a project director at LEGO, respectively. 

It was pouring rain as I got farther down the valley the next morning, but it's worth Googling the Soca River to see photos further on down.

I headed south to Skocjan ("SHKOHTS-yahn") Caves. I opted for the shorter, self-guided tour through the "small" caves. I can't imagine what the big caves are like (which travel writer Rick Steves describes like a sci-fi movie with a "mighty river crashing through the bottom"). 

To give you a sense of scale in the photo below, there are a few people on a trail just below center, whom even with a strain you might not be able to spot.

Then down to Piran ("peer-ON"), a small city on Slovenia's very small patch of coastline between Italy and Croatia, with a view of the Italian city of Trieste on the drive along the coast. I braved narrow wooden stairs up and up to a church tower to get a view of the city. There were quite a few Muslims touring in Piran, women in various types of hijab. It was a bizarre contrast to men walking through the streets in speedos and a woman here and there sunning topless. A hazelnut ice cream cone in Piran tided me over before inching, in first gear, toward the Croatian border.

The rest of the photos were taken in Piran.