Rovinj, Croatia
/(May 22nd - May 25th, 2015)
We almost wish we missed the ferry from Venice… The ferry takes about 4 hours and is usually a smooth ride even though the boat is traveling pretty fast. Unfortunately for us the water was extremely rough… I mean EXTREMELY rough. It was like a rollercoaster ride on the sea that we didn’t sign up for. The crew on board was passing out barf bags to almost every passenger about an hour into the ride (and multiple to some passengers). The boat was rocking in every direction and occasionally slamming into the water…for three straight hours. The air conditioning wasn’t on so it was pretty warm and stuffy which definitely didn’t help everyone’s seasickness. I spent over an hour with my head in a barf bag literally on the verge of getting sick as Allen was fanning both of us with an emergency evacuation card. We really didn't think we would make it…
Luckily, Rovinj was worth it. Even though the boat ride had wrecked us physically we could still appreciate how beautiful the city was when we stumbled off the boat. We were met at the dock by our Airbnb host and he showed us back to our apartment while telling us about himself and giving us some history on the city. When Allen saw an advertisement for the Red Bull Air Races he got really excited, but our host told us we were a week too early to see the races. Our apartment was just a few blocks from the water in Old Town and in a building that was hundreds of years old. The building was extremely narrow and the staircase that went up to our apartment was steep with low ceilings. It was probably very entertaining to watch the two of us struggle up the stairs with all of our luggage, hunched over, and constantly bumping into the walls.
Even though we still weren’t feeling well after the boat ride, we hadn’t eaten in several hours so we decided to go find a place for dinner and try to stomach some food. We went to a restaurant down on the water that was recommended by our host, and while the food smelled and looked delicious, we really struggled to eat it. The waitress kept asking if the food was alright so we had to explain that we were still seasick from our boat ride. At the end of our meal instead of brining us complimentary olive grappa, she brought us some tea with lemon to help ease our stomachs. We headed to bed right after dinner hoping that we would feel better in the morning.
The next morning we woke up feeling much better. We still weren't quite 100% but we were close enough. We grabbed breakfast and then walked around the town. We were intrigued by an advertisement for fish pedicures and decided to give it a try. At first the fish loved Allen’s feet, but slowly made their way over to mine. It was the strangest feeling to have several fish eating at my feet and it was very ticklish! It was a fun and unique experience but we're not 100% convinced all the claimed benefits are real. Afterwards we kept wandering around Old Town, got some gelato, and ended up at the church on top of the hill. We walked through the church and got some great photos of the view. Not long after, it started to rain so we popped into Piazza Granda to have some wine and an afternoon snack. We enjoyed a cheese plate, bruschetta, caprese salad, chocolate tart and a couple different wines from Croatia. Our favorite was the Veralda sparkling rosé that was recommended by some good friends of ours. We ended up looking for the Veralda rosé at every other meal for the rest of our time in Rovinj. Unfortunately by this point the rain had turned into a torrential downpour so we ran back to our apartment and spent some time working on the blog and researching restaurants and potential activities for the next day. We ended our day with dinner at ------ where we split a caprese salad (#2 for the day!), I had homemade pasta with shrimp and vegetables and Allen had lightly breaded sea bream. We thoroughly enjoyed everything and Allen even sort of liked the complimentary olive grappa we got at the end. He hates olives and strongly dislikes grappa, but somehow the combination of the two wasn’t terrible :)
On our last full day in Rovinj we took advantage of great weather (finally!) and rode bikes around the national park. It was a beautiful ride along the coastline with many incredible views. We kept going and the scenery just kept getting better. We finally stopped and used the gps on our phone to find out that we had actually gone well past the national park and now we were just on a trail along the coast. On our way back we noticed a few really nice beach areas, so we quickly rode back to our apartment, changed into our swimsuits and rode back to the beach to enjoy our most relaxing afternoon yet. After a nice nap in the sun we decided to go back to Piazza Granda to have another cheese plate, caprese salda, and more Veralda rosé.
After our relaxing lunch we began the 25 minute walk to pick up our rental car for our drive down the coast of Croatia. We got lost at first due to outdated Google Maps information, but finally arrived at the office almost an hour later than our scheduled pick up time. We thought the pick time was only a suggestion…but it wasn't. The Enterprise rental associate had been waiting for us and was just about to hop in his car and go home for the day when we walked up. Another very lucky break for us! After finishing all the paperwork he told us that we could have called him with an address and he would have brought the car to us…whoops! After getting the car back into the Rovinj city center and dealing with limited parking and trying to understand parking signs with warnings all in Croatian, we finally found a place to store our car for the night. Normally parking wouldn’t have been such an issue, but because of the Red Bull Air Races happening the following weekend, they had already blocked off several of the main city center parking lots. With our car all set for the night, we set off to have dinner at Balbi. Again we split a caprese salad, I had the sea bream, and Allen had the seafood risotto. Everything was decent, but nothing was memorable (we’ve become quite the food critics on our trip). We headed back to our apartment to pack up and get some sleep before heading out early the next morning for the Plitvice Lakes.
Rovinj had a unique charm that we hadn’t experienced on our trip. The people were extremely kind and helpful, the scenery was breathtaking, and we enjoyed a lot of delicious food and wine. There was something extremely calming and peaceful about the town and it’s definitely on our list of places to return.
