Rovinj

Though this post is going to cover our time in Rovinj, Croatia, I want to start off by giving a clothing update.  Those of you who have been following since the beginning know that clothing was a difficult endeavor for me.  Well, it's been interesting.  I only brought 1 strictly short sleeved shirt.  It is a wicking, quick dry, merino wool by Patagonia.  Strait away I didn't like it.  I wore it one of the first days traveling and it was too much coverage.  I ended up purchasing 2 tank tops from Lefties (a European store) in Madrid.  So, I've been wearing those two tops and my jean shorts (something which was a last minute decision).  When I'm waiting for my shorts to dry I end up wearing a lightweight cotton dress (also, a last minute decision).  So, the majority of the clothing I have been wearing is not technical or quick dry whatsoever.  Interesting...

Rovinj! (Pronounced ROH-vin)  Before the ferry ride was over, Sloane's friend had found us an apartment to rent in the center of the old city.  It worked out really well, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms.  It's nice to have your own space like that.  Marina, Sloane's friend, has been so wonderful.  Part of it is because she works in hospitality at the moment, but I think it is just her nature to be extremely friendly and helpful.  She has been a wealth of information, and a fun person to get to know.  I wish we had a Marina for every place we visit!

The first night, Marina picked us up from the ferry, brought us to our apartment, then we went on a mini tour of the town of Rovinj.  It's very small.  It has a real cozy feeling.  Even as we were approaching in the ferry, our attitudes began to change.  The coastline is spectacular, with pine forests, sheer cliffs of white rock plunging into the crystal blue sea, and picturesque buildings scattered here and there.  Upon exiting our spirits were high.  The weather was warm with a bit of wind.  What a romantic  town.  Marina took us  around the town, and we ended up at a little bar between the coast and Saint Euphemia's Church.  The bar was settled in the graveyard, but it wasn't creepy.  It was quite relaxing with the breeze and the ability to see the stars, and a few bats.  We tried our first Croatian beer, Favorit, which turned out to be a favorite.

The next morning we woke and ventured out to find coffee.  We ended up at the Cinema Cafe where we enjoyed wonderful Illy expressos and what they call brioche.  Their brioche is our croissant with a marmalade filling.  It was very nice.  We then went in search of a place to swim.  It wasn't much of a search, really.  Just a decision of where we wanted to hop in.  After choosing a spot, we cooled off in the water.  The temperature was wonderful.  It was pretty hot out and the water was refreshing, but not cold.  Already Croatia has an up on Madrid and Venice.  We were extremely hot in those cities, but had no way to remedy the exhaustion.  Here, we just hop into the water.  

We found a place to grab some lunch.  Once again, Sloane ended up the winner of the meal.  She ordered the grilled calamari and it was delicious.  I ordered a plate of assorted mussels, and though it was good, I was not blown away.  Seth's was pretty good, a dish of pasta, scampi, and red sauce, but Sloane's was the best.

Then, Seth and I went in search of internet.  Though Marina was going to give us the internet info for the hotel she works in, she didn't start work until 3.  So we sat down at one of the restaurants near the water.  Seth ordered a beer and I opted for an iced coffee.  Surprise!! Iced coffee in Croatia is not the light, low calorie drink we know in the states.  The waiter brought me a sundae cup with something that looked like a milkshake, topped off with a scoop of iced cream, whipped cream, chocolate syrup, and a cookie.  Oops!  Though I graciously accepted the dessert, I asked the waiter about the difference.  He seemed confused as to why I would want a double espresso and a cup of ice.

While Seth and I were on our beverage adventure, Sloane had been exploring more of the town.  She found a daily open air market where the vendors push you to try all of their fare.  We went to explore and to to taste the different types of fruit and their locally harvested truffles.  Yum!  We bought these fruit that look like pears, but taste like a mix between a pear and an apple, perhaps.  But, not like an asian pear like we have in the states.  Closer to a crabapple, maybe.  Really tasty.  Then we sampled a bunch of truffle products.  Yum! We bought some white truffles in truffle oil.  We ended up making a mini feast of bread with a slice of really good tomato from Marina's garden, truffle, then sea salt.  Wow.  

It was still hot, so we followed Sloane to the graveyard beach.  We scrambled down the rocks and, with some direction from a local, we hopped in at the right spot.  The water felt amazing.  We watched some children being taught by their father how to flip off the rocks into the water, before trying it ourselves.  Well, not the flip part, but jumping off the rocks into the water.

Marina recommended a pizza place, so we found our way there for dinner.  This turned out to be the best pizza we've had so far.  Sorry Italy.  We started off with salads, and Seth was the winner there.  His  was an arugula salad with this mysterious 'cream' on top.  Though we made the conjecture that it was sour cream at the time, we decided that it was nearly impossible that our sour cream could be so far off from this.  We found out later that it was sour cream.  Apparently, without pasteurization and preservatives sour cream can have a completely different, and amazing, flavor.  Dumb US rules.  They kill so much flavor!  Anyhow, when it came to pizzas, I was the winner, with Seth as a close second.  My pizza had sheep cheese, mozzarella, Istrian ham, and salami, and parmesan sprinkled on top.  So, so good.  Seth's pizza had Istrian ham, arugula, and fresh tomatoes.  Sloane's was good, but not like ours.  Wow, that was amazing.

We went to visit Marina at the hotel and to use the internet.  It turned out that there was a Croatian folk festival going on in the town center, and we had front row seats!  It was amazing to see the tradition of the culture.  We saw dancing and heard music.  We had no idea what they were saying between numbers, but we think it was traditional stories.  There's no connection between English and Croatian, so we were in the dark.

The next morning we picked up our laundry (Marina had found us a place to drop it the day before), picked up a kebab for lunch, and headed over to Red Island for a bit of snorkeling.  Though the island wasn't much more than a bunch of resort hotels, it was a nice change of scenery.  We snorkeled and saw little fish, some sea urchins, and a sea cucumber.  We, also, saw an enormous bee.

we decided to treat Marina for dinner, so we headed back to Sergios, the amazing pizza place.  This time we all ordered the Sergio salad, which is the one Seth had ordered the night before.  The plan was to get less pizza and share, but our eyes were too big! I think either my pizza or Marina's pizza were the winners.  I ordered a pizza with mozzarella, soft cheese, eggplant, arugula, fresh tomatoes, and salami.  It was wonderful.  Marina got a 4 cheese pizza and added salami.  The gorgonzola on her's was really tasty.  We, then, went to stuff ourselves on ice cream.  We have to start watching our weight if we're going to be laying around in bathing suits!  Or at least I do!  We did a few more laps around the town before calling it a night.

Today we are going to head off to Pula, mostly to pick up a car.  After many phone calls, it was decided there were no cars to rent in Rovinj.  So we will pick up a car in Pula and drive to Plitvice Lakes National Park.  The pictures look amazing, so I'm excited.  We then make our way down the coast, stopping at places here and there to see neat things like caves and waterfalls.  It's going to be a fast paced week, but hopefully it will be worth it!  I think it will.

Hostel Swap

Hostel Swap. It's kinda like Wife swap, but less entertaining.  We packed up all of our things and headed toward the islands of Venice.  We were off to find a lady with sardines.  What I mean by that, is we had to make it to a meeting point by 10am to find Mrs. Di Cicco, our cooking class instructor.  This sounds simple, right? You plan enough time to get from point A (our hostel on the mainland) to point B (an obscure vaporetto stop).  And, it would be simple if we had a map that included all of Venice's windy streets, or if all of the windy streets were labeled with names.  Honestly, I don't think all of the 'streets' have names.  So, what you do is you look at the map, walk in the general direction you think you are supposed to go, then ask someone who looks like a local where this point B is, then turn around because you've been going the wrong way.  Eventually we seem to get to all the places we need.  If it weren't so darn hot, or if we weren't carrying all of our possessions, it wouldn't be that big of a deal.  My strategy with directions, so far, is to take off my sunglasses, place a semi-vapid look upon my face, and walk up to an Italian man while butchering their romantic language, pointing to a dot on a map.  Then I smile real big, with a bit of confusion in my eyebrows.  This seems to be working relatively well, met with smiles, laughs and very helpful directions.  

We made it to our destination with 5 minutes to spare, and met Mrs. Di Cicco.  She led us through the labyrinth to her apartment on the top floor of a building.  It was a beautiful space with air conditioning and a serene balcony view.  Sadly the weather didn't permit lunch on the terrace.  With the guidance of Mrs. Di Cicco, and Seth's expertise, we created a delectable meal of Sarde di Saor (marinated sardines in an onion, pine nut, and raisin mix), zucchini and prawn  risotto, baked sea bass in tomatoes, olives, and capers, and Zabaglione (a marsala wine custard).  It was all so delicious.  I really, really liked the sardines.  I was impressed that Sloane liked them too.  She even had seconds! The risotto was cooked in an amazing broth that we made with the prawn heads and a variation of a mir poux.  I could have sipped that from a cup, it was so good.  The dessert was surprisingly good.  I don't normally like custards, or custard-like consistencies (aka Jell-O [which is the devil so don't even go there]), but this was so good.  She said it could be served warm, but due to the heat we popped them into the fridge, so they were cold when we ate them.  We dunked thin, little Venetian cookies into the cream and it was oh so good.

After lunch we promptly hauled our junk over towards the hostel.  It wasn't far at all, and if my memory serves me correctly, we didn't ask for directions.  Well, maybe we did.  There definitely wasn't a street name.  We had to go to the 'alley' behind the street name.  We had a bit of trouble with the guy who checked us in because he didn't want to allow us to only stay one night.  And the rules surrounding this situation were quite ridiculous, but we decided to wait until the morning when we could speak with the manager.

After doing some planning and relaxing in the AC, we made our way to Vaporetto 1.  Ok, a little info about Venice for those of you who don't know.  Before I came to Venice the first time, I was unaware that it was a series of islands.  In the city center there are no cars.  It's a walking city.  I don't even think I saw bikes.  This is because to get to places you want to go you usually have to cross several bridges, and many of the streets are barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side.  But, there is a lot of water.  The canals are the lifeblood of Venice.  So, any and all transportation happens upon them.  Mail, police, deliveries, you name it, it happens on the water.  A vaporetto is public transportation, or Venice's version of a bus or subway.  Something to know about the vaporettos, and public transportation in general in Venice (and perhaps Italy), is that they hardly check for tickets.  At our bus stop on the mainland there wasn't a place to buy a ticket, and when we asked the driver he waved us along.  Silly us, we got on Vaporetto 1 and asked the boat guy where we could buy a ticket.  So we paid 7 euro each.  As we were on the little boat we watched the hoards of people waltz onto the boat without mention of tickets or the like.  Gah!  Oh well.  Anyhow, Vaporetto 1 makes its way down the Grand Canal and you get to see Venice how it's meant to be seen.  I finally was able to see some of the magic of Venice.  Getting lost in the stale, humid heat while trekking through the maze of streets is not a pleasurable experience, while losing yourself with the wind blowing through your hair making your way down the Grand Canal with the magnificent architecture of the old masters passing by can leave a lasting impression.

Finding our way back to our stop at the Rialto Fish Market, we set off in search of dinner.  We found a spot that looked decent and didn't try to steal too much of our money.  We then traipsed back to our hostel, only a few turns away, and settled in for the evening.

This morning we abandoned our hostel on time, as the manager begrudgingly agreed to not charge us for an extra night.  It was still cool when we left the hostel.  Wait, wait.  Cool is the wrong word.  Maybe I should say that it was cooler than painfully hot.  So, maybe we didn't start sweating until we walked a few yards.  That's a more accurate description of the weather.  Anyhow, we left in search for the docks to buy tickets to Croatia.  We found the docks, left our big bags at the station, and caught a Vaporetto to the island of Murano.  Murano is known for it's blown glass.  I was hoping to find a hands on class to take while in Venice, but that was not in our cards for the day.  We had about three hours until we had to get back to the station.  

Remember my schtick about public transportation and not really having to pay the fare?  Well, I'm going to have to say that that rule does not apply when taking a vaporetto to a super touristy island.  We took a few vaporettos without purchasing tickets, but on this boat they checked.  There went another 7 euros each!  I bet they never actually fine you for not paying for a ticket (it's 57 euros if they do), that they just make you buy a ticket. 

As we exited the boat someone was kindly there to tell us that there was a glass blowing demonstration, free of charge, all the way down the path to the left.  We watched the demonstration, which was just a lure to get us to shop, then we shopped.  LOL  But I think glass blowing is really cool, so I thought the demonstration, no matter how mundane they made it, was interesting to me.  One day I will take a course.  Anyhow, it was neat to walk through the shops and see all the glass.  We wanted to buy a really interesting Christmas ornament, but didn't want to babysit a glass orb through Africa. 

After finding a cheap lunch (which included the best pizza we had in Venice) we returned to the docks, bought our ferry tickets to Rovinj and we are on our way.  We don't have a place to stay for the night, but Sloane has a friend in Rovinj who is, supposedly, finding us a place to stay.  I hope this works.  Either way, we are pretty excited for Croatia.  We're hoping it includes relaxation, beaches, outdoor activities, good food, and a stronger dollar