Greg and Deb's Travel Blog

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. Continue reading →

We left at 8:30am, and headed into the centre of the Istrian peninsula to Hum, smallest city in the world. We were told that in Croatian terms, based on Grad, the Croat word for city, which is derived from the word fence, a city is everything inside an encompassing fence/wall. But the sign outside the settlement describes it as a town, where legend has it, that was made from the leftover stone after giants had finished building all surrounding towns. Continue reading →

Our day got under way when our driver, Daniel – an Opatija local, picked us up at 8 :30am and we headed off to Pula at the southern end of the Istria peninsula.
Along the way Daniel gave us a running commentary of the history of the area; from a hotel across the road from us that has had 4 name changes according to the government in power at the time over the last 150 years, to the date sometime in the 1860’s when Austria brought the railway to Opatija and that Istria for the locals begins on the western side of the local mountains. Also, Opatija had a Golden Era from 1890 to 1910, when many of the grand old buildings of the town were built.
Our trip to Istria began with us passing through a tunnel (about 4.5km long that took 8 years to build) that passes through the near mountains. Once on the other side the landscape flattened and farmland began. Istria, we are told, is divided into four distinct areas based on the colour of the soil. White Istria, Grey Istria, Red Istria (where the soils are more suited to agriculture) and Black Istria.

The hills of Istria are heavily wooded with forests, with farmland down on the valley Plains. The main income producing crops are Olives, for olive oil, and grapes for wine. Truffles are “farmed” in Istria, both Black and White Truffles, and are harvested using cross-bred dogs, unlike France where pigs are used.
There are many myths and legends intertwined with historical fact in the region. There are Neolithic grave mounds, stone circles, and many myths that are hard to believe.
We arrived in Pula at around 9:45am, Pula used to be a major ship building city, but WWII put an end to that. In the early days it was “blessed” with malaria, this meant the Venetians gave it a pass and left the city alone for another further up the coast. The Romans occupied and expanded the city, building many large infrastructure, in the city. We started at the old Roman Amphitheatre, built around the 1st century AD and modified many times since then. Continue reading →

We were picked up a bit before 9am by our driver, Mario, for our transfer from Plitvice to Opatija. He loves to chat thankfully that stopped after a while, we enjoy our peace.

But I get ahead of myself, yesterday I swapped our SIM cards over to our 2nd set for our trip (I got two 30 day SIMs each for the trip) and found Deb’s didn’t work. I got onto the issuing company and they got onto it. This morning I found out from them that both our new SIMs were faulty! Hopefully all will be resolved by the end of today.

The countryside is very green up this way, still high peaks and deep flat valleys, just very green. We are in bear country. There aren’t that many and they tend to come out late in the day.
Along the way there were many abandoned houses. Apparently when the 1990’s war broke out many people fled overseas and have never returned. So the houses have gone to ruin and they cant be repaired without the owners consent and mostly, the owners can’t be found, so they sit and rot. Continue reading →

We were on the “Train” bus

Plitvice Train Bus

to the Western end of the Upper Lakes and the start of our walk at 8:15am. We had an early start to try and beat the crowds. It mostly worked. Continue reading →

Who would have guessed it, a quiet, slow start to our day, well maybe not that slow. We were picked up at about 9am and headed out to Plitvice Lakes, and our commune with nature.
From our understanding the Plitvice Lakes system contains many, many waterfalls and but we have been cautioned not to draw comparisons with Niagara Falls and Iguazu Falls.
Left at 9am with our driver Borna in a Mercedes E200. He said it would take between 2:30 & 2:45 to get there. The ride was very comfortable. The highway speed “limit” is 130kph, but our drivers from Split have done around 20kph over this, one said it was common for police to allow up to 20 or 30kph over limit on freeways.
A lot of our trip seemed to be on the plateaus of the mountains. There are many lakes and rivers and deep ravines, but not a lot of agriculture. We saw some sheep farming, shearing shed and all, just after we turned off the highway towards Plitvice. Continue reading →

You guessed it, another slow start and an equally easy day.
We headed off this morning to see the Green Market and the Fish Market. The Green Market is 5 minutes from our hotel and is an area filled by small stall holders, each selling a small variety of fresh produce. And their produce looked incredible, so fresh and vibrant. We walked around for a while looking at what was on offer, got an idea of prices and just took it all in. Deb wanted to look for cheeses, we were told this was the spot to check out the best local cheeses. It all looked good, as we passed one stall, the woman running it saw we were interested and offered us a tasting, fresh off the rounds. It was very good. Continue reading →