MEDULIN (Tues 23 June)

Breakfast with Maltina. When we first got into the kitchen, we found Maltina at the kitchen table with an Italian-English dictionary writing out potential questions and answers for us, so we could make conversation. I don’t know how long she had been sitting there but it made me feel bad that she was so dedicated to being a good host that she was studying her English, and we hadn’t done the same for her. This was just another example of how hospitable she was.

Went for another walk, but the drizzle turned to heavy rain and so it wasn’t much fun. We did manage to have a look at the Roman Theatre, and an Orthodox Serbian church (that was quite interesting) but not the other things that we were wanting to see. A shame.

Getting out of Italy turned out to be a bit of a Merry-go-round. GPS Jenny kept putting us onto the toll road, but we wanted to follow the coast. It seems that Slovenia has a bit of a con going on here. To get to Croatia from Italy you need to pass very briefly (about 20 kms at a guess) through Slovenia. Every obvious, and not so obvious route directs you through the toll gates. What they do is, you have to pay 35 euro for a card that will give you free tolls for six months. But you can’t buy any less than that, that is the minimum. For someone who wants to go through this skinny piece of road once for a five minute journey, that’s extortion. Somehow, eventually we managed to get around it, but it took considerable determination, and not an insignificant amount of time. We set GPS Jenny to small village to small village, step by step, and when we finally realized we were in Slovenia it was because we had come to the border control to exit the other side. It was like Dorothy’s “I don’t think we are in Kansas anymore Toto” moments.

The border crossing itself was an anti climax. At the exit from Slovenia, we didn’t even get so much as a look, it was just a very curt “Go!” Then 100 metres further on at the entry to Croatia, it was a glance and a wave of the hand. They didn’t even look at the document that we had gone to such lengths to obtain. What had cost us a week of lost travel time, a complete change in itinerary and route, over three full days of driving time, kms, diesel, resulting accommodation, phone calls and sweat, … and they didn’t even want to look at it. It made me want to jump out and thrust it under their noses just as a matter of principle, … but that may have drawn attention to the illegal substances in the boot (just kidding). But at least we got to see some parts of Italy we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

OK, so now we are in Croatia, one of the places in the world with the most amazing beaches and sunshine. A resort that beacons the holidaymakers by the thousands every summer … and it’s raining. We can imagine it really is very beautiful … but it’s raining. And we have been told, that it should be fine by the end of the week.

We found a place to sleep for the next two nights, above a bar in Medulin, which is just past Pula. Fortunately it seems quiet so far, but although the rooms seem very new, they stink of ingrained cigarette smoke.

We had been told that Croatia is very cheap, but it hasn’t seemed that way so far. The food seems to be about the same cost if not more than Italy, but with the conversion rate it seems a lot worse. 7.20 Euro = 1 Kn. So when you see the price of a pizza at 45 Kn, it sounds really, really bad. The accommodation seems to be mostly placed through agents. There are agents dotted around who represent several hotels, and they take their cut of course. They have an arrangement here that if you book less than four nights it is more expensive. The per night cost of one night, is double the per night cost of four nights. So it is more economical to stay four nights in each place, but that means you get to less places.

On the plus side, it seems that they have amazing Roman ruins here, so we can’t wait to get out and see them. It has a nice feel with tree lined streets and lots of green spaces. We just hope the weather clears before Friday so we can enjoy it.