Thursday, July 7-Saturday, July 9: Dropping off Carol in Obrovac, Chilling in Opatija, On to Pazin
Thursday, July 7
We said goodbye to Trogir in the morning and drove north to a small village just outside Zadar, called Obrovac. We were dropping Carol off there to stay with a friend she knew from Zagreb when she was doing research for her dissertation in the mid-80s. Carol's husband Rick met him when they played together in a bluegrass band.
As we had a long drive ahead of us, we headed straight away back to the highway. I fully intended to take the scenic way up the coast, but just the thought of winding roads all the way there put me off. The toll road did not disappoint, however. Incredible panoramic views of the landscape as it transitioned from dry Mediterranean hills and mountains to a much more lush, Kvarner Gulf set amidst the Učka mountain range.
Before Steven's foot disaster, I fully intended for us to visit the city of Rijeka (Italian: Fiume), but sadly that was predicated on a lot of walking. Instead, we went straight to Opatija. Opatija was the Habsburg resort town in the nineteenth century with luxury hotels and villas all along the promenade. Like so many places in Croatia, it is set into the hillside--a very vertical place to navigate.
We met our host Slavko right after a brief lunch at a cheap grill place, Boćarija, opposite the municipal parking lot. Slavko jumped in our car and guided us a couple streets up to the apartment he owns in a grande dame building just above the main elegant street below. (I was kind of surprised that it was still named after Marshall Tito, but I guess since he ensured that it would not fall to the Italians, the Opatijans were still grateful for his efforts.)
The modest one-room apartment (not a studio) was, unfortunately, on the third floor. I have been trying to minimize the amount of walking Steven has been doing throughout this trip, so once we got to the top, Steven stayed there for the next two days while I went out for groceries.
We decided that we would make Opatija a chill destination: no site-seeing, no excursions, just lying around watching TV and Netflix so that Steven could recover as much as possible. Shinto Abe had just been assassinated and Boris Johnson announced he would step down as prime minister, so those two stories dominated the news cycle. (We couldn't get CNN because of satellite issues, but we did follow everything on the BBC and NHK (the Japanese English-language channel).
Friday, July 8
When I got up the next morning, I discovered that Slavko only had a stove-top espresso maker in the apartment. Not a big fan of espresso, I decided I would head out quickly to find a single-serve drip coffee apparatus. I'm not sure what that's even called in English so explaining it in Croatian was a real challenge. At the grocery store next to the apartment house, the teenage clerk looked at me as if I had two heads when I asked for a "non-electric filter holder drip coffee device," as well she should have. "You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?" I said in Croatian. She just shrugged and apologetically shook her head no.
I was on mission to find this damn thing. So I set off down Ulica Maršala Tita popping into at least five different places, each time to be told, nope, we don't carry it, but why don't you try X place. At least, I didn't have to launch into a half-assed explanation of what it was once I figured out I could just show the picture above.
It was at the hybrid department-grocery store "Tommy" where a truly kind and helpful clerk suggested I use a small coffee cooking pot (lončić) rigged with filters. I don't think she herself knew how that might work but at least she tried. She explained that Croats just don't drink that type of coffee, preferring instead turska (Turkish).
My failed mission did, however, get me to see a substantial chunk of Opatija along the way: a lot of just-below high-end jewelry and clothing stores and a beautiful promenade (the Longomare) set amidst the coastline.
Saturday, July 9
We bid farewell to Slavko around 10:00 am on Saturday and set off for Istrija. I purposely chose an AirBnB centrally located to the places I wanted us to visit here: Pula, Rovinj, and Poreč. Since our apartment in Pazin would not be available for check-in until 5:00 pm, we had quite a bit of time on our hands. I figured we should just get there first and come up with a game plan afterwards. As I have explained elsewhere, ALL our plans were turned upside down by Steven's unfortunate foot problems.
Once we got to Pazin, we parked near a small family park dedicated to "heroes of the antifascist struggle" (read: Partisans against the Italians during the Second World War). The park contained busts of local fighters, many of whom died during the war. Kids were playing in the fountain and on the jungle gyms as their parents chased after them to keep them in line. A bunch of pensioners were hanging out, gossiping on the fringes.
After Googling for about a half hour, we decided on a plan. At noon we would head out to a castle vineyard some 25 minutes away, but as it was only around 11:15, we had time to kill. Steven stayed in the park enjoying the weather (in the 70s at last), while I set off to find the castle in Pazin about 7 minutes by foot.
The walk through the streets was predictably charming: cute cafes, small tourist shops, interesting graffiti. At the castle itself I heard heavy metal music coming out of a vent in the wall--not the sort of thing I was expecting in a medieval castle! I wonder if they were practicing for a concert or a gig at the castle. I didn't have enough time to check out the ethnological museum inside the castle, but I did take in the magnificent views of the valley and cliffs surrounding us. Weirdly, there's a zipline from behind the castle to the other side of the town, so I watched several people whiz by over the course of the next half hour.
On the way back, I noticed a street called 25. rujna (25th September Street). Evidently, Pazin was the town where in 1943 (still during the Second World War) representatives from throughout Istria resolved to unite with Yugoslavia rather than Italy. Huh! Didn't know that (but then again, why would I....)
Once I got back to the park, we headed out to Dvorac Belaj. I'm glad we decided to visit this off-the-beaten-path vineyard and castle. From the highway it was a good 15 minutes down tiny, winding roads that supported just one vehicle at a time. I kept on praying we wouldn't run into any oncoming traffic or get stuck behind a tractor heading out to the fields.
Dvorac Belaj was absolutely charming! Set amidst two separate vineyards, the views around the castle were stunning. We opted for a degustacija (wine tasting of several of their products). The sommelière was a delightful young woman in her mid-20s who spoke excellent English with an impressive command of wine vocabulary. She herself was born in Croatia, but raised in Italy. She had gotten a job in a hotel where she first became acquainted with wines. From there on out, she studied for several degrees in wine culture. One funny moment: when she poured the sparkling water we ordered along with the cheese and meat plate, the thick water glass suddenly split into two, spilling water all over the table. I don't think I have EVER experienced anything like that in my life, and I would bet very few people ever have!
We spent a good three hours there downing glass after glass. Ultimately, we drove away with their 2017 Chardonnay and 2019 Merlot.
[Update 7/11/2022: I forgot to mention something our sommelière explained about the barrels in which several of their wines are aged. Evidently, most of the barrels are constructed from oak in Slavonija--you remember, the flat, most northeastern part of Croatia Steven and I visited on July 2. They also use barrels from the US and other countries I've already forgotten.]
As we still had a couple hours to kill before check-in at the AirBnB, we decided to drive to a couple hilltop villages, Motovun and Grožnjan. The former has a film festival in August that I'd like to attend someday, the latter is an artists' community setup in the 1960s-70s to repopulate the village after the Italians were essentially driven out after the Second World War. Istria, by the way, still has a substantial Italian population. It's the only place in Croatia where I have seen bilingual signs--here in Croatian and Italian. Lydia Bastianich, who has a long-time cooking show on PBS ("Lydia's Italian Table") hails from Istria, specifically Pula (Pola).
We didn't stop and walk around in either of these two places, just executed a kind of drive-by. But nonetheless, it was worth the trip. It's almost impossible to describe how magical these villages look in the distance. We drove up the hill right next to Grožnjan, but that's about it. I did take a picture of the surrounding valley though.
As we STILL had time to kill before check-in down in Pazin, Steven and I stopped off in a huge, very modern grocery store called Plodine [Crops]. I was enormously impressed by the offerings. It could have been any major grocery store chain in the US like Hannaford, Wegman's, or Price Chopper. I was amused to see a teenager there wearing a "Hellfire Club" t-shirt, a reference to the Netflix series Stranger Things, which Steven and I have been watching at night during this vacation. The globalization of culture throughout the world....
I was getting pissed that we still hadn't heard from Sonja, the host of our AirBnB, as it was already past 5:00 pm, our check-in time. We had lost our mobile internet connection, so I couldn't get Google Maps to work. Fortunately, we were close enough to town that it didn't matter. We just followed the signs back to the city center and eventually to the park we stopped at hours earlier. Finally, Sonja's text came through, Google Maps found the GPS connection, and we were in business.
Sonja greeted us at her driveway. Her home is really quite lovely, with a huge garden in the back. Ours is the downstairs apartment; she lives upstairs, though you can't really hear anything above us. The place is modestly furnished and rivals the Trogir apartment in size. Her cute terrier mix Max greeted us in the garden.
Steven and I settled in for the night and finished off Stranger Things, wine and beer in hand.
Next post: Sunday, July 10: From Pazin to Pula
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