Day 12 (Tuesday) Croatia

Cetingrad, Croatia to Rovinj, Croatia

Said goodbye to Maja after packing up, and gave Rocco (i.e. “Rocky”), the little one-eyed dog of the compound, goodbye scritches before hitting the road.

In-auspicious start to our long drive: the “you need to add more oil” light came on in our rental car.

Drove really bad twisty turny (bad) roads. Croatian backroads are not as well maintained as any in Austria or Germany. Still, the surrounding landscape was beautiful in general (bombed-out houses aside). I don’t want to give the wrong impression of Croatia. It is an incredible place with some of the most genuine and warm people we met along the entire trip. Also incredible food! I cannot recommend visiting Croatia enough. Weird that I grew up with maps of a country called Yugoslavia that I only really identified with a car they produced called a Yugo, who’s reputation was… not great and now we are traveling through several different countries that were all once a part of it (as far as I can tell, seven nations were carved out of the breakup as of today).

Somewhere along the drive, we stopped at a gas station to get oil and snacks. Like the Audi we used to own, the engine compartment is aggressively non-intuitive. I could not find the dipstick to save my life (I don’t think they have manual oil checkers anymore, relying on electronic sensors, which seems idiotic to me), so I just poured the entire bottle into the oil tank. It’s a 6 liter tank, so if it was reporting low (~1 liter remaining), I was far from overfilling it and/or oxygenating it. As an aside, Sylvia bought road snacks, including this peanut butter puffs and popcorn mix

Drove over the Krk Bridge, which looks incredible from photos, but the problem with cool looking bridges is that the view you get of them while driving over them is just more road. Still, we did it. Stopped breifly to use the WC and then made an illegal U-turn to go back as the legal turnaround would have taken us several miles of wasted time. We don’t have time for your precious laws! (note: a maintenance vehicle did the same thing right in front of us, so I felt better about it)

Stopped in Opatija and walked the promenade shortly (it’s an oppressively humid 86f/30c), so we ducked just to a waterside restaurant called Molo. Sylvia ordered a seafood platter for one and I ordered Fuźi pasta with ham and truffles. I had an Aperol Spritz as it is the most common drink on the trip. Needed a cappuccino to wake up a little.

One peculiar feature in Opatija is a “wall of fame”, featuring a seeming random list of celebrity portraits. At first I thought it was famous Croatians, or people of Croatian descent, but later read that it features, “These people were either born in Opatija or at least once in their lives visited Opatija”, which seems a little thirsty. Something akin to Denny’s putting up photos of famous people who, “were either born at Denny’s or at least once in their lives visited a Denny’s”…

For unclear reasons, the parking garage we parked in had an “exclusive” section that had chandeliers for lighting!

Drive from Opatija to our hotel in Rovinj was around an hour and twenty minutes and largely uneventful. We got turned around once while trying to follow the hotel’s instructions, but figured it out fairly quickly. We found our designated parking spot at an old monastery easy enough and set out on what was described as a “ten minute walk” to the hotel Casa Amando. The first obstacle was the cobblestone roads, which meant we had to carry all our luggage. The second obstacle was (and they warned us of this) Google maps is incorrect here. What looks like a direct route doesn’t actually exist. This meant we walked way too long through tight, crowded “streets” while lugging our luggage. In the heat. We were dying, but all part of the adventure.
Finally got in and had to figure out the weird door lock on the automated entry and room door.

We immediately stripped off sweat soaked clothes to hang and showered and started the A/C.

Had a video chat with Vix. Always great seeing her face. She had a day at a swimming pool place a bus ride away (see below).

We then took a walk around, anxious to revisit some of the sites we’d passed while sweating and cursing while carrying all our luggage.

Walked over to the seashore and made our way to Mediterraneo Cocktail Bar, sitting on the steps facing the water and having incredible cocktails.

After imbibing, we wandered around. Dinners here start late- one seafood restaurant we had been eyeing didn’t open until 8pm and seemed rather standard. Eventually came across a restaurant called Artičoka. It was small, quaint and featured an extremely friendly staff. We ordered two smaller plates- a beetroot risotto and a sausage pasta in brown butter. The risotto was one of the best foods we’ve had. Very unique. Also had two desserts (CHECK INFO FROM PICTURES) and a cappuccino.