Day 3: Rovinj

Our destination for today was the town of Rovinj, approximately 25 miles north of Pula. There was a bus scheduled for 10am, with the journey due to take around 40 minutes, so we made sure we were at the bus station in plenty of time to buy our tickets. We needn't have bothered The bus driver evidentally had a rather relaxed approach to the timetable and arrived around 10 past 10. The bus, which looked like it had just come from picking people up from the airport, eventually arrived around 10.15. Good job we weren't in a particular hurry!

It was around 11am when we eventually arrived in Rovinj and began strolling from the bus station towards the old town. Rovinj is renowned for being one of the prettiest towns in Croatia, and it didn't take long for us to see why as we got our first glimpse of the old town.

We walked around the sea front for a while, successfully avoiding people trying to sell us over-priced excursions in boats. There definitely seemed to be a lot of (mainly German) tourists in Rovinj.

The town is only small and before long we had walked around to the far side, where we were able to look back on this wonderful view of the old town.

It was amazing how the houses were built straight up against the sea.

In some ways it was quite reminiscent of Venice, which perhaps shouldn't be a surprise because Rovinj was governed by Venice for 500 years.

What did surprise us was that the town actually used to be on an island, but the channel which separated it from the mainland was filled in in 1763.

Having admired the old town from a distance, it was time to start exploring it from within. This proved to be surprisingly problematic, as the narrow streets were paved with a peculiarly slippery type of stone. It was okay when walking on the flat, but when the paths were on a slope it was quite tricky!

There were some beautiful views back down to the sea from the gaps in between the houses.

After a while we came out at a viewpoint with what seemed like a small lighthouse looking out over the sea.

The sea was a gorgeous shade of blue and sparkling in the sunshine.

We climbed higher towards the church of St Euphemia.

It's an enormous church which can be seen from all over Rovinj.

From there the only way was down (on the slippery stones!)

Eventually we made it and passed through the old town gate, complete with Venetian lion on the top.

The gate led out into the new town, which is very attractive too.

The clock tower of the town hall also has a Venetian lion.

We were fairly hot by this point so we found a cafe where we could sit outside and have a drink to cool down.

It was one of those cafes where you get served very quickly and then it takes a very long time before you are able to pay. With views like this it didn't really matter though.

We had another stroll around the town to make the most of the views...

...before finding a nice restaurant where we could have a late lunch. Luckily they aren't as rigid about serving times in Croatia as they are in Italy, because we'd had a rather large meat burek for breakfast and so it had take us until nearly 3pm to work up an appetite for lunch!

The journey back to Pula was uneventful, although it did take us a while to buy the bus tickets because of a confusing system where you have to buy the ticket from the counter of the company which is operating the bus, but the timetable doesn't indicate which company is operating the bus at which time.

Rovinj is a beautiful town though and definitely worth a day trip from Pula