Croatia: From Zagreb to Rovinj

21st June – 1st July 2024

We had another ‘long’ day on the road (ie, nearer four hours than the usual two) and moved out of Hungary and into Croatia. Our border crossing felt the weirdest of them all so far. In most of the Schengen Area the formal border posts are so long abandoned that they have either been fully dismantled or are boarded up and covered with graffitti. Croatia is the newest member of the EU and Schengen Area, only having formally joined on the 1st of Jan 2023. The border infrastructure is all still in place and looks pristine, but it is entirely unmanned. The signs say “Free Passage” and there are no barriers but it was as if all the staff were having a simultaneous tea-break and would be back any moment. Driving through without stopping felt somehow naughty. Croatia also took on the Euro when it joined the big European club and so we put away our remaining Forints and got the Euros out again. We were back to sensible money again. The day was destined to be the hottest of the summer so far as we headed to our next stop, Zagreb.

Given that this is a major European capital city, most of the campsites are on the outskirts of the metro area and seeing as this is a major European capital city there are great public transport links so that is not a problem. Our place was about 14km from the centre with a train station a short bike ride away. As the thermometer climbed up towards a high of 37 deg C we were grateful for the large shade tree nearby. It was busy and we were also glad to have pre-booked. This was not a day to be serching for somewhere to stay. Up until now we have not had to do much planning ahead with regards to booking places to stay, but we realise that the summer season is in full flow and if we want to go to popular places we have to be organised. I don’t like it as much as ‘winging it’. The campsite was on a small lake but not the swimming kind. That was a shame as it got unbearably hot and humid in the afternoon. We did very little, drank gallons, ate a cold dinner, had cold showers and sat outside until about 11pm, when finally we could even consider going to bed. As I said at the beginning of this trip, weather matters when you are camping. Cold and wet: bad. Cold and dry: OK. Wet and warm: OK. Warm and dry: excellent. Searing hot and humid: not good. Apparently the whole area was suffering and there were widespread powercuts at the coast and in the nearby Balkan nations as the simmultaneous firing up of air conditionners broke the electricity grid.

Three nights here gave us two full days in the city and the next day being fractionally cooler, only 32 deg, we could consider peeling ourselves off our chairs and going to see some sights. We unleashed the bikes and whizzed down to the local station to get the train into the city. The station was a bit shabby and apart from a small group of daytime drinkers, fairly deserted.. The only other bikes left here seemed to be old and rusty and definitely not electric, so as we chained ours to a railing we weren’t entirely sure that they would be here when we returned. We took a photo of them in situ to aid any potential insurance claim/police report and caught the train. It was a Saturday, but we soon discovered that the day was a public holiday: Anti-Facist Struggle Day. (‘Observed on the 22nd of June in rememberance of the formation of the First Sisak Partisan Detachment, a Communist-led guerrilla unit during World War II in Yugoslavia on 22 June 1941, and in general the uprising of the anti-fascist Croatian wing of the Yugoslav Partisans against the forces of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and their puppet state―Independent State of Croatia’. Thanks, Wikipedia) What this meant practically was that most of the shops would be shut.

The train took about 20 minutes, cost peanuts and soon we were in downtown Zagreb. It is a bit discombobulating to visit so many epic places in such a compressed time frame. The names of these big cities are so familiar to us, yet we know very little about the places themselves. If I didn’t keep a daily journal and write this blog there would definitely be a blurring and overlapping of the memories of all the ‘fine, historic, European cities’ that we were seeing. So Zagreb? Capital city of Croatia, about 1 million population in metro area. Very old. There has been a settlement here since those blimin’ Romans were all over Europe like a rash. Made up from from the almagamation of two separate original neighbouring settlements of Kaptol (est. 1094)and Gradec (est. 1242) the City of Zagreb was only formally established in 1850, thus bringing to an end many centuries of conflict, squabbling, frequent looting and the occasional massacre. Fire and the plague caused devastation in the 17th and 18th centuries, It became an important transport hub in this part of the world in the late 19th century, as well as suffering a large earthquake in Nov 1880. This destroyed many buildings but apparently only one person was killed. The, now rebuilt, old town is divided into the upper and lower areas, linked by a funicular which of course we only discovered after walking up the hill and steps to get to the upper old town. We saw the main square, site of the city’s main football Fanzone for the Euros, and which sports a statue of a chap on a horse.

Here we happened to be in the right place at the right time to witness a small parade of historically garbed soldier types which I presume was a re-enactment of something to do with the Anti-Facism Struggle Day. They looked hot. We were entertained by watching the ‘selfie brigade’ jostling at the front of the rapidly amassing crowd, trying to get themselves, pouting and posing, into photos with the parade in the background. I’ve never understood the school of thought that dictates that EVERY SINGLE ONE of your holiday snaps of something worth taking a photo of needs yourself in the foreground, sucking your cheeks in, pulling the V-fingers, or looking whistfully off into the distance, but perhaps that’s just me being excessively Gen-X.

Next we saw the ‘colourful and bustling historic daily open air market’…. Obviously not trading on Anti-Facism Struggle Day.

We opted not to visit the Hangover Museum, The Museum of Broken Relationships or the New Wave Rock’n’Roll Museum, but it seems there is something here for everyone.

We took in the cathedral, apparently its twin spires make it the tallest building in Croatia, but currently it is shrouded in scaffolding as the spires are being rebuilt, the recent 2020 earthquake having damaged them, and many other heritage buildings in the city.

Old town meanderings past towers, decorated churches and bits of old city wall continued but the heat and resulting thirst prompted a mid-afternoon pitstop for a re-hydrating beer/water/Coke Zero in a shady bar/cafe slightly removed from the madding crowd. We descended from the upper town to the lower town and scouted out a restaurant for late lunch the next day. Although town was quiet from a retail point of view as all the shops were shut, the eateries all seemed open and busy and we booked one that looked good and had good reviews. The heat was sapping so we called it a day and headed back to the station, a 1km slow stroll. Perhaps we should have checked the train times, perhaps we should have walked just a little bit faster, but we missed our train by about 30 seconds. We killed the hour until the next one with a cold beer at another shady bar just next to the station, so perhaps it didn’t matter after all. Our fears that the bikes would have been purloined were unfounded and we headed home.

Back at the ranch Nick talked me into cutting his hair for the first time ever. I have resisted his requests to shear his tresses with his beard trimmers for years. Even in the long, shaggy-haired months of lockdown I didn’t cave. My worry was that I would stuff it up and that he would hold it against me. But for some reason I acquiesced this time. Perhaps it was the heat that addled my brain. I prepared the salon and set his expectations low. The final result was suprisingly acceptable. He has definitely had better haircuts in the past, but by the same store, he has had worse too. Apparently I am now his personal travelling hairdresser.

We repeated our voyage into the city centre the next day and started with another trip to the ‘ vibrant and bustling open market’ that surely would be a feast for the eyes on a Sunday, having had a day off for the struggle against facism, or is it the struggle against anti-facism? That would be a matter of emphasis and punctuation. Alas, not. There were only about seven stall holders, so no eye-feasting for us. Having seen most of the main sights yesterday we decided to head a little way out of town to see the Mirogoj Cemetery. Given the heat, and the fact it was 2km up a hill, we opted to get the tram. This was the princely sum of 53c each, our tiny paper tickets bought from a stern looking lady in a tiny kiosk next to the tram stop. The tickets needed validating on board the tram, but we could not for the life of us work out how to do that. There were only machines to validate modern travel cards and we had arrived by the time we had decided to stop worrying about it.

The cemetry park is built on a huge swathe of land that was purchased by the city in 1872 from the estate of linguist Ljudevit Gaj after his death. Because it was city owned, not church owned, it permitted interrment of people from all faiths and is the final resting place of many noteable Croats from all religions. The orignal design features a chapel and a majestic 500m long expanse neo-renaissance arcades topped with 20 domes. These were also damaged in the 2020 earthquake and were sadly cordoned off. There are over 300,ooo graves here ranging from grand family mausoleums to simple headstones. There are several war memmorials, sculptures, beautiful mature trees and a maze of paths and avenues. It would be very easy to get disorientated here but I can think of worse places to get lost. We finally found our way back to the main entrance and ( I having braved a porta-loo in the 32 deg C heat) we set off on foot back down the hill towards the city centre again. We took our time, hunted out shady sides of the street and arrived slightly hot and thirsty a good hour before our restaurant booking. This time vacuum was filled quite admirably by another trip to our well situated, shady bar of yesterday and imbibing some rehydrating fluids.

Our lunch was at a small, but perfectly formed, blissfully airconditioned restaurant called Ficlek which served a small-plate menu of Croatian classics. The unexpected standout dish was a bowl of the local delicacy, cottage cheese, served with some very delicious bread and sliced pickled onions. Yum. Stomachs full we rolled back to the station, successfully caught a train, happily retrieved our intact bikes and returned to base for another slothful evening.

The next day we moved to the beach. I’ve heard a lot of good things about the Croatian coast and it seemed the obvious place to go. The drive was a bit arduous as the traffic was bad, mainly due to roadworks and a couple of ‘ghost hold-ups’ where nothing seemed to be the cause. We finally made it to the Istrian peninsua and a campsite just south of a town called Rovinj -prounced Rovin-y(a). This was a Lonely Planet recommendation and turned out to ba a perfect little spot. Our camp was a small, family-owned place about 150m from the ‘beach’ at Vesta Bay. Anyone that has been to this part of the world will know that there are no wide, sandy beaches here. A 3m strip of sharp pebbles is the closest approximation to one, and many places just have a rocky coastline. Sunbathing involves padded matressess, or finding a flat rock, or floating around in the sea on something inflatable. The bay was also the site of a much larger campsite that had loads of amenities, seemed well run and tidy but was very, very busy. A review of number plates showed that most people here were either Slovenian or German. In fact we were wondering if there were any Germans left in Germany currently because they are by far and away the predominant nationality of travellers that we have come across on our travels. We were glad to have found our little oasis of peace and calm even if it meant a short walk to the sea. There was also this nice little beach bar.

It was about a 6km cycle along a well used coastal path from Vesta Bay up to the town of Rovinj. This ran alongside some beautiful shoreline, rocky coves dotted with shade trees, beachgoers cycling to their well distributed, favourite spots, haphazardly parked bikes replacing acres of parked cars. There were the occasional beach clubs, food huts, beach bars, porta-loos and simple changing booths. It felt like a masterclass in understated, low impact tourism.

The old town and fishing harbour of Rovinj itself are gorgeous. Apparently voted in the past as ‘the Meditarranean’s second most beautiful port town’, the old town was built on what was originally an island, a hilly rabbit warren of narrow, criss-crossing lanes and steps with the church of St Euphima sitting atop it.

The perimeter is punctuated by waterside bar terraces and rocky swimming platforms and around every corner there was either a tiny restaurant, a clothes shop selling floaty linen dresses or an artisan craft shop. It was charming, and although reasonably busy, easy to lose the crowds. The fishing harbour is now mostly given over to pleasure craft and tour boats, but still had the essence of its past life.

We had a couple of forays into Rovinj on the bikes, passing the swanky new superyacht marina overlooked by the very James Bond-esque Grand Park Hotel – a black, plant-bedecked delight of low impact modern commercial architecture. During our wanderings we had to go barefoot as we nearly killed ourselves exploring the streets which were surfaced with large ancient cobblestones, hightly polished from centuries of wear and deadly slippy in a pair of flip-flops. I’m suprised that there weren’t piles of broken people at the bottom of each street. We had a lunch at a waterside bistro where Nick might have declared the star of the meal was the the large salad of tomato, cucumber and feta, not the shellfish medley. It apparently looks amazing at sunset, but after a sunset comes darkness and that makes a coastal path bike ride (after wine) a bit of a liability, so we just had to imagine it!

Otherwise most of our time was spent paddle boarding. Having spent nearly two months driving the blessed things around we finally had chance blow them up and use them. They are entering the twighlight phase of their existance, having given us years of good service in NZ, but are still a fabulous way to get out onto the water and loaf about. There were lots of boats and moorings in the bay and a small island a few hundred meters off shore, so plenty to see and somewhere to head to. A mooring bouy is a great place to tie up to and watch the world go by whilst catching some rays and keeping cool by swimming. Highly recommended. The combination of age and the heat is causing the glue on our boards fail, and by the end of this week, Nick’s was in need of some serious remedial work.

Our campsite was amazing. Run by a local couple who live on-site and were on duty for 13 hours a day, seven days a week for the whole 5 month season, it was friendly, sociable, had a central bar area, live music at the weekends and felt a million miles removed from the gargantuan campsite down the road. Our host, Zoran, definitely ran his business on his terms, valuing quality over quantity when it came to accepting guests. He had no interest in accepting single night stays and anyone that turned up without a booking was instantly vetted and he would make a decision on the spot whether or not there was a free space. Got to admire that. We had a week here, pre-booked, happily acceptable to the management. Zoran was also a polyglot, switching between Croatian, English, German and Italian. Very humbling.

One of the highlights of our stay here was a(nother) evening meal out at a local ‘restaurant’ recommended to us by Zoran. Arka was a 2-3km cycle inland, down a dusty gravel road and I use the inverted commas because it wasn’t so much a restaurant as it was a collection of picnic tables under a pergola in the garden of an older Croatian couple’s garden at which they mainly served only fresh fish, fries made from home grown potatoes and salad from the garden. Bookings can only be made within 24 hours of the meal when they know if there is fish available from the fishermen, A small hand painted sign gave us a clue that we had arrived and we hesitantly made our way into the garden area, being the first to arrive for dinner, calling out our hellos to make sure we were in the right place. We were. Madam was a delightful tall, thin, wryly stern lady of somewhere north of seventy who spoke excellent German and Italian, but no English. Luckily for us she did have some functional French, so that is how we communicated and the evening unfolded to be one of the most memorable moments of our travels to date.

The menu was another (badly) handwritten sign hanging from a bush. Wine, red or white, was sold in 500ml carafes. We were presented a selection of fresh Dorade fish on a plate by Madam and chose our specimens to be grilled up by Monsieur, whom we never saw. She then disappeared into the vegetable patch and emerged brandishing a courgette and we agreed that we would have some of that too. Chips- pomfrits- of course. A simple salad. And why not some salty anchovies with fresh baked bread to start? They will make you drink more, she joked.

By the time we were tucking into our dinner two other groups had arrived. Italians, with whom Madam spoke fluent Italian, and Dutch, with whom she spoke in German, but with whom we spoke with in English, their menu explanations with Madam definitely requiring less sign language than ours had. The food was simple, fresh and delicious and at the end of the meal we were ‘forced’ to try some shots of the local schnapps and a shot each of a honey based liqueur that was sweet and sticky and ‘for the children’, Madam advised us, with a glint in her eye. After settling our bill (that did not feature any charges for shots) and saying our goodbyes, to her and our co-diners, we headed back along the rural gravel lane towards camp in the fading light. This only involved one missed turn and a 1km back track, but who cared? This evening had epitomised all that is great about international travel.

This is a magical part of the world, although we only saw a very small slice of it (because we are lazy travellers and don’t need to do lots of daytripping to enjoy somewhere). It is definitely on the short list of places we would come back to, perhaps to stay in that big swanky hotel next time!