Poreĉ–Istria Part II

Further up the coast is a small Roman town with a large Euprasian Basicila. The old part of Poreĉ is still structured as the original Roman plans, and a few Roman ruins are dotted around. I took very few photos, mainly because Nana bought me the BIGGEST gelati ever, and so I was a little preoccupied. There were lots of straight, flagged streets and colourfully-plastered buildings with souvenir shops galore.

  

The Basicila was gorgeous, and I guess it’s still a working church. It’s on UNESCO’s World Heritage list, and has been rebuilt and repaired in various centuries due to earthquake and fire damage.

Rovinj–Istria Part 1

So once we picked up our little green car and got thoroughly lost trying to navigate the one-way, tram-filled, streets of Zagreb, and then more lost discussing where we were on the map in relation to the motorway that we were on, we travelled the 200or so kilometres to the coast of Istria with no particular plan except that it might be a good place to go. The weather packed in and we didn’t see the sea until we were practically on top of it! Tested my driving skills to the max with fog so thick you couldn’t see 5 metres in front, torrential rain and nowhere to pull over, and I didn’t realise how stressed I was until I got to bed that night and fell promptly asleep. So in reply to your message Dad – No, driving in Croatia was not encouraging for the US road trip!

But I can drive on the left-hand side now.

Rovinj is a very pretty little fishing town with strong ties to Venice. We stayed here for 4 nights in total, and made day trips to Venice, Pula and Porec. We didn’t actually do much here other than wander around, and I seem to have a dozen photos of the church on the hill surrounding the old town, so will have to do a proper cull when I get home and have my computer. (I’m up to 1000 photos and counting – it’s making it difficult to choose what photos to put up on here!)