Day 34 19 June 2023 Opatija

No tours, no plans for our day. We travel to Slovenia tomorrow so we had a relaxing day today.
Before breakfast we took a walk over to see the statue of The Maiden and the Seagull, Deb wanted a photo of her in the morning light. The statue was put there to replace a statue of the Virgin Mary during the Tito years. Catholicism didn’t sit well with the Tito communist manifesto.
After breakfast, we face-timed our mums, was lovely to chat to them both.
Then we went for a walk along the foreshore heading south from our hotel.
It was a leisurely stroll along the coast for about 2.5km. The foreshore is dotted with restaurants, gelato bars, sun lounge enclosures and swimming areas. The are the occasional small marina but not many. It seems Opatija isn’t on the Super Yacht trail just yet. There has been one cruise liner anchored offshore everyday we have been here, I’m not sure if it has been the same boat or a new one daily.
With the lack of beaches, pebbles or sand, the locals and tourists take to sunlounge areas, or to small platforms on the rocky coast. The rocky platforms usually have either stairs cut into the rock or a stainless steel step ladder to help everyone get into and out of the water.
Sunbaking seems to be the drawcard for this town, there isn’t a lot more to do, although there are water taxi’s and boat charters offering cruises to nearby islands. There are a couple of waterparks, where you pay to play on inflatable courses, a bit like ninja warriors on water. We even saw two submarines at the marinas here, one was much more serious than the other.
I went out for a walk north of our hotel just after lunch. I called into the small church near us, it has had lots of weddings there while we have been here. And it has a very enthusiastic bell ringer!!! I walked through the Angiolina Gardens, past the Yacht Club and along the coast path. It is much more winding with small coves. Each cove is a small boat harbour with a swimming area attached to it. It seems there are more of the bigger resort style hotels down the northern side of town.
We had dinner at the restaurant we tried to get into on our first night here. It was really nice. Deb has a Seafood pizza with lots of fresh seafood on it and I had an Istrian Pasta. Deb finished with a super rich dark chocolate ice-cream. The atmosphere and staff were great. Even the dog at the next table was good, checked out another tables food, but good.
And that was our day