It is a 10 kilometre drive into the heart of Poreč– like beach towns everywhere, this one is spread up and down the coast, narrow and long. Everyone else is trying to get there early too, to beat the heat, and traffic is heavy on the drive in. But parking is easy – there are huge parking lots all around the old city, ready and waiting for the tourists. The old town itself is a peninsula, maybe ½ kilometre wide and 1 ½ kilometre long – surrounded by the sparkling blue of the Adriatic.

Lining the street from the parking lot is a wonderful fruit and vegetable market – lunch today will be luscious peaches, apricots, nectarines and tomatoes.

Although Poreè was also a Roman settlement, there is not much left from the Roman days, except the layout of the streets, which are, as always, full of shops for the tourists. What is left is the beautiful Basilica of Euphrasius, a Byzantine religious complex established in 543. The Basilica is famed for its mosaics, and the museum displays large segments of them, many dating back to the 6th and 7th century.



And then it is back to the beach for the rest of the day.

N 45
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Pula to Poreč: 68 kilometres

Yesterday in Pula, Greg updated the website while I did research on various things, such as where the airport in Trieste is (it isn’t – it’s actually around the bay) and airport parking. As a result of our hotel experiences in Opatija and Pula, at Greg’s suggestion I also researched hotels farther up the coast, in Rovinj and Poreè. I discovered that the Croatian Riviera has over 100,000 hotel rooms, and that in contrast to both Opatija and Pula, a room in a 3 star hotel could be had for a last minute price of 54 Euros, including breakfast and dinner. I made the reservation, and printed the map.

We arrive shortly after 12, the smell of our hotel in Pula still lingering in my nostrils. We drive through the 1st gate, telling the guard we are checking in. He points left (there are 3 big Riviera Hotels here – 1 left, 1 right, and 1 straight ahead. This is a big complex). We arrive at a 2nd gate, and this time the guard tells us to park and walk the few metres to the check-in. It feels a bit like we are trying to visit friends in some ubiquitous American gated community.

I hand over our passports and my credit card, and get back a key, a map on which our building and the restaurant are circled, a pass for the car and a card to show in the restaurant. Off we drive, passing through the 2nd gate.

Greg reads the map, then flips it over, and asks with surprise if I knew that we were staying in a “naturist” resort. What? I ask. He says it again – we have checked into what used to be called a nudist colony. I am indeed surprised – Riviera Hotels, which operates about 10 hotels in Poreè, has a great website. I guess I clicked the specials link too quickly, because when I check back on the website after we arrive, I do indeed discover that 1 of the hotels, the hotel offering the last minute special, is indeed a “naturist” hotel. I guess they assume you will check out the specific hotels before you take them up on any last minute deals. But at $16/hour in the internet café, I wasn’t too worried about the fine print.

We decide to make the best of it, and after unpacking, we shed our clothes and head to the beach – heavy duty sunscreen already applied!

I have absolutely no idea what to expect. I try to think about what I know of naturism and come up with 2 sources. First, David Sedaris’ very funny book Naked – but I sure hope it’s exaggerated for comic effect. (It is!) Second, those 50s magazines that some neighbourhood kid was always finding in his or her parent’s room, and sharing with the rest of us – magazines that always had a somewhat clinical tone, like National Geographic talking about the African natives – to describe the rituals of the Happy European Nudists Playing Volleyball. As we walk past the (oh no – it’s true!) – volleyball court, we discover that everyone playing volleyball this afternoon is dressed as though they were competing in the Olympics Beach Volleyball Competition; speaking of which – Go Canada!

We get to the beach, which is not clothing optional. After only a minute or 2 of self-consciousness and surreptitious gawking, we relax into the sunshine. I didn’t sleep well last night (the smell at the Hotel Omir kept punching through the sleep and waking me) and in no time at all I am conked out on the beach.

When I recover consciousness and hit the water, I am surprised at how much warmer it is than the water was in Primošten – there is no need to slowly work my way in, it is warm enough to jump in without shock. And best of all, we discover as we walk around that this beach has a Blue Flag – the international symbol awarded to pristine beaches.

Sitting on our balcony after we get back from the beach we start to see people heading to dinner. Gee, what do you wear to dinner at a naturist camp? It’s a good thing we weren’t the 1st ones to head to the dining room, for dinner is not naturist – indeed, some take the dressing very seriously, and are seriously dressed up. Dinner is a nice change from the norm – a buffet with lots of different salads, 6 or 7 mains (none of them pizza or pasta) and sides, and fresh fruit and ice cream for dessert.

N 44
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Opatija to Pula: 87 kilometres

We have no set travel strategy for the next few days other than a very rough plan that brings us to Trieste, Italy and our flight to London on August 18th. I realize that this puts some additional and undue stress on our relationship. As desirable as it may seem, it is hard travelling on a whim and without direction. You have to be entirely open and extremely flexible and compromising in order to make it work. Many times during a standard 1 or 2 week vacation, one always feels obligated to stretch and see everything that a vacation destination has to offer. We have said from the beginning that we would try not to feel obligated to see everything; rather to try and live as the locals do, gaining a sense of day-to-day life where they live, where they shop, where they grab their coffee.

Opatija is a lovely town but over a morning cappuccino in one of the distinctly Italian cafés on the esplanade, we decide to accelerate our plans and head to our next un-booked stop on our tour of Istria, the small coastal town of Pula. Duscha from Stara Vila has recommended this town to us not only for its interest and history but also because this is where she was born. We check out of the Hotel Dubrava and continue down the coast, heading inland and through the breadbasket of central and southern Istria.

The drive takes us through sparse corn fields and gourd patches. We see locally produced olive oil and wine being sold in small batches, the rickety roadside stalls being manned by uninterested and mopey teenage boys. We don’t see mass acreages of grape vine or olive tree, and wonder how the locals survive on this very dry and dusty landscape. This seems to be a hot, dry summer.

Pula welcomes us in the early afternoon with an intensely blue sky. The sun beats down, the occasional billowing cloud blocking its strength. Pula is known as a unique and very well-preserved Romanesque town, one of the only such towns in Croatia and its Centar is dominated by a well preserved Roman Amphitheatre right on its harbour. Not only was Pula the 2nd most important olive oil and wine centre of the ancient Roman empire, it was also the most important naval base of the Austro-Hungarian empire – what a history!

Again, we go to the tourist bureau and are referred to a hotel very close to the Centar and quite cheap at 60 Euros. We drive several blocks and are able to park right in front of the Hotel Omir, our home for an undecided amount of time. If I thought the Hotel Dubrava was a letdown, then the Omir is twice that, although a much cheaper letdown. And the room stinks, to boot (and like a boot).

We dump our bags and start to discover the town. On first viewing, the town seems dominated by an industrial harbour but its real charms can be found in its winding and narrow streets. The main town square boasts an original temple to Augustus, and has been in continuous use as the town’s main gathering place for over 2,000 years. There are several Roman sites a short walking distance and we begin our tour with the biggest of them, the Roman Amphitheatre, the 6th largest built in the Roman Empire, and the best-preserved of any. Currently used predominately as a concert venue, the Amphitheatre was host to many gladiator and wild animal games.


The Roman Amphitheatre

We do a tour of the Centar, all the sites conveniently situated within a short walking distance of each other, and then proceed to the hotel for a nap and some respite from the sun.


From left: The Romanesque Church; the Temple of Augustus; The Triumphal Arch of the Sergians

On our way to our naps we discover an internet café that will allow us to connect the laptop. Post-nap we take the computer and all of our homework to the café-cum-art gallery and stay until after eight o’clock updating, researching and doing email. We have decided that, quaint and picturesque as Pula is, its sites and sounds have been fully experienced and John does some research on our next location, Poreè and its hotel offerings.

We join the townspeople and the tourists on the main square and have the typical Croatian meal accompanied by some excellent busking entertainment by a fire-breathing juggler, performing just in front of the town hall. The young Italian couple eating next to us reminds of Italy: they start with pasta, then carne, with assorted vegetable dishes on the side, followed by some sea food, then salad, wine, of course, a sweet, some fruit and then coffee. After seven months of travelling the world we are still surprisingly stuck in our North American ways: we have assorted salad (which in Croatia is shredded cabbage, some cucumber slices, tomato sections, and three pieces of lettuce) and tonight, lasagne. The young couple eyes us conspicuously: “Such cakes!” Ahhhhh, the Italians.

N 45
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Primošten to Opatija: 338 kilometres

We are travelling along the Croatian coast line in the area known as Istria. This is a beautiful peninsula that reaches south from the Slovenian and Italian borders into the Adriatic and you can certainly feel the Italian influence here. In fact, since we left Primošten, the Italians have definitely been making their presence known.

We are not covering huge distances but the drive today takes over 5 hours, winding us around rugged coastal roads, up and down through mountain passes and hair-raising turns that remind us of the Coastal Highway 1 in California and also of traversing the Apennines with John’s mom Lois in Italy 3 years ago. We wind our way down into the quaint but definitely tourist-oriented town of Opatija. It has beautiful Italianate red and yellow villas and hotels on the water’s edge. Some are in need of some love and attention but mostly the town has a glossy, picturesque café/beach town ambience on its surface. In many ways, Opatija reminds us of Santa Margherita Ligure in Italy where we spent a night 4 years ago.

We don’t have a hotel reservation and it is Friday evening, the 13th and it is full-on tourist season in a very busy beach town. I am also demanding that any accommodation we find have a TV so that we can watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. We try a couple of tourist bureaus and quickly realize that we aren’t going to get a room for less than $150 CDN. We decide on a hotel that the tourist bureau tells us is an historic hotel, newly renovated but still retaining all its original charm and distinction. We bite the bullet and agree to the very promising Hotel Dubrava at $170 CDN per night (no parking!!!). We fortunately find a parking spot very close to the hotel and check in. Our room is not very quaint and certainly doesn’t “retain any of its original charm and distinction” unless the original room was in a 1960’s prison movie. It is very small and full of very utilitarian brown plastic laminated furniture and trim; but it is only for one night. As always, we promise ourselves that we will never again drive into a tourist town with no reservations on a weekend or a major holiday.


Our Hotel. Looks nice from the outside, huh?

We unearth the internet café and check some email and as always it seems they will not allow us to connect our laptop. It has now been eight or nine days since we updated and when it gets to this point it unusually takes us over an hour to update and upload all the pictures. We will keep trying.

We buy the International Herald Tribune, mostly for the news but also for the crossword, pick up some supplies for our evening in front of the TV and are offered yet another example of the lack of restaurant service available in Croatia. The first language spoken here seems to be Italian, followed by Croatian and then - a distant third - German. We are starting to get confused when we say thank you in all three languages: hvala (Croatian), grazie (Italian) and dunke (German). We are tired of the so-called “Croatian Cuisine” of pizza and spaghetti bolognese and fish, and look forward to some wonderful Indian food when we travel to London next week.

Settling into our small room with our beers and our TV, we cheer on the Canadians as they enter the Athens Stadium in their flashy Roots uniforms. A huge thunder and lightning storm starts to gather and eventually crashes into Opatija and blows the TV. This happens off and on all night, always at a particularly poignant or interesting moment in the ceremonies. Unfortunately, we have full power and reception during Bjork’s entire “I-am-mother-earth-enveloping-you” song. What was that all about?!

Here you go, Jacqueline, at long last a posting!!!!

Greg's brother Jeffrey is back home safe and sound from his tour of duty in Afghanistan. Welcome home, Jeff!

Happy Birthday to Neil Vickers on August 16th.

Like the pension in Forster’s “A Room with a View” our little villa keeps changing personalities. We all meet over breakfast and exchange our pleasantries. I find that it is either John or I that make the initial attempt at introductions. Perhaps it is so easy for us to make the first introductions because we have become so used to our journey and always meeting new people.

Today there is Klaus, Edith and Hans, and Renate and her daughter Sabrina, all coincidentally from Frankfurt and environs. We are certainly a different bunch from our first group at Stara Vila.

This is our last full day in Primošten. It has been a restful and largely uneventful holiday. We have our tan lines back that were gained in Australia and lost somewhere between Thailand and Turkey.

We have had the opportunity to sample pretty well all the major restaurants and bars in this tiny town and have found one common thread: there is a lack of the basics of customer service and how to attract and keep customers; it is worse than in most tourist areas, where normally they know at least to keep the drinks flowing. Many restaurants here keep you waiting for service, then bring your starter at the same time as your main. One restaurant took our order and then left us there to fend for ourselves for over 90 minutes. They had two items on the menu: Pizza and Spaghetti. We ordered pizza. After waiting so long, I proceed into the restaurant to inquire. Our food comes out minutes later. We then had to track down our waitress to pay the bill. This seems to be the shared complaint of all the visitors to Primošten and probably all of Croatia – one guidebook noted that Croatian restaurants have not yet recovered from the long period of isolation during the last war. Judging from all the yachts and pleasure boats lining the harbour, there is some respectable business to be done here. We have only found 1 restaurant that was worth a 2nd trip – owned by a Frenchman, with a Gallic flair to both the service and the food. We had our last meal with John and François there, and we will visit it tonight for our farewell-to-Primošten-meal.

Duscha seems to have it all figured out. Stara Vila is the nicest place to stay in Primošten, especially in the old town, and it has no real competition; every thing else seems to be winter family dwellings, brothers and sisters, grandmothers and grandfathers tossed into the one room off the kitchen for the summer, their own rooms given a fresh coat of white paint and made tourist-ready for the foreign holiday-makers, their squawking, crying children in tow, who are happy to rent these four walls for their week-long vacation. Duscha’s lovely garden, the only one on the whole island that we would want to spend time in, is the envy of everyone who walks by. All the tourists stop and stare at us over breakfast or in our early evening get-togethers. Her classy yet informal and unrushed breakfasts invite her guests to linger and get to know each other.

We slowly start to move some things over to the car, which is parked across the island. We had been running back and forth to the parking lot and retrieving what we needed when we needed it. Now we begin the same process in reverse. I remember packing up from our summer cottage at Orford Lake in Quebec, filling the big wooden wheel barrow with our luggage, games, books, sleeping bags and whatever groceries were left over and rolling it past the other cottages to the railroad tracks, where we could roll no further. Dad would back the car down the hill and we would pack up the first load and this process would repeat itself for as long as it took to fill the car and head for home. We only have one small load to transport to the car today. We do some re-packing and head back to the villa for our bathing suits and some beach time.

Yesterday we agreed that today’s the day – we are going scuba diving. There are dive centres up and down the coast, and one is within walking distance of Stara Vila. We have been promising ourselves a dive here in Croatia, but so far have not made it. We arrange with Duscha to have our breakfast early so that we can be there by 10.

The day is perfect for diving – clear blue sky, not too much wind. We will do a wreck dive today – an Italian ship, the Murano, that was carrying coal for the Germans during WWII and that was sunk just off Primošten by a cannon on the mainland hill that rises above town. After 30 minutes on the boat, we are in position, and in we go. This is our 1st dive since Turkey and I am surprised at how comfortable I feel immediately on entering the water.

The visibility is amazing – we can see forever down here the water is so clear. We go to the 30 metre depth, and it is so clear that looking up you can see the ripples on the surface – amazing. There are some fish – not like in Bali or Thailand, but certainly more fish than we saw when we dove in Turkey. This is not a coral area – the water is too cold for that.

The wreck is interesting – more for the fish than the wreck itself, as most of the coal, the propeller, and the anchor have been salvaged. We see scorpion fish, lobster and shark eggs (but no sharks) today.

After 35 minutes or so, Greg signals that he is going up and rises to the top, and I can see him getting onto the boat while the rest of us are hovering at about 5 metres in depth, using the rest of our air. When I go up, exhilarated from the dive, I find that he has not enjoyed his dive nearly as much as I – he didn’t take enough weight on his belt, and so has had to fight to keep from rising the entire time, using his air more quickly than the rest of us. Too bad – diving is so magical when you can relax and enjoy it.

Greg: I had been struggling since we got in the water, adjusting the air in my BCD to make me more buoyant, dealing with the cold water, generally feeling rushed. I realize how important it is to trust your dive master and the group you are diving with. The two other divers in our group were somewhat maverick – kicking up and standing on the bottom, letting their second stages and gauges drag on the bottom, disturbing the sea life and our visibility. They seemed completely unaware of us or anything else that was going on. Our dive master, Goran, never confirmed my air levels during the dive and when I ran out of air, which I did, he was far too ahead of me to give me any direction what to do. I panic slightly, my breaths becoming shorter and shorter. It is rather frightening being suddenly aware that you can’t breathe completely and even those short breaths of air are running out. I make a couple of kick strokes towards John and signal that I am out of air and heading up. I don’t wait for his reaction. I don’t have far to go, 4 or 5 meters at most and I try not to think about the rest period I should have had before coming up. I break through the surface and quickly realize that I have to manually blow up my own BCD to keep me afloat. Five or six big breaths later I am buoyant and start to swim towards the boat. I am a little angry and get angrier later as Goran avoids bringing up any concerns with me. As he surfaces, he pulls his off mask and still in the water, asks “How was the dive?” Biting my lip, I sarcastically answer, “I’ve had better”.

The rest of the day is back to normal – relax in the sun, nap in the room, dinner by the sea and early to bed. New guests have arrived at Stara Vila and replaced the friends that we have made here. We will have to wait until breakfast tomorrow to meet them.

Irina and Davor leave very early tomorrow morning so tonight they have invited us all for cake and coffee to celebrate Davor’s birthday. Two different types of cheese cake are served and we all linger over coffee before John and I head to Francois and John’s room for some home made pasta salad (A Home Cooked Meal! Wow!) and a glass of wine. An hour earlier we watch from the patio as sweeping washes of lightning began to bathe the twilight sky in white; now we begin to hear the far-off rumblings of thunder as well. Our “dessert-before” dinner progresses as does the lightning and thunder grow more and more assertive and energetic. We gobble down our last bite, say quick goodnights and head around the corner and up the hill to our room just as the rain starts to pelt down. Tourists are running down the slick pavers leading from the summit of this small island, their panoramic rooftop restaurant dinners interrupted by the blowing storm.


The Blue Adriatic

The storm blows in, the thunder and lightning crashing just above our heads. At the height of the tempest and over the din of the rain and blowing, I hear church bells. Someone or something is ringing all the church bells in the old town. It is an eerie sound coming through the storm – strangely comforting yet somewhat unsettling at the same time. The bells are ringing with a frantic urgency that is usually associated with fire or disaster, calling the local fire brigade or ringing for some other help. We discover in the morning that the locals ring the bells every time an electrical storm blows up - to draw the lightning and its potential devastating effects away from their lightning "rod-less" houses and instead, up to the pealing bells, high in the belfry. We somehow don’t think that the ringing, swinging bells will attract the lightning away, but this local superstition must give the residents peace of mind during major thunderstorms. And just like that the storm is over, leaving only the sound of the dripping eves to ease us to sleep.

We decide to drive to Split today to see the city, and if we can, to try and update our website. It has been 8 or 9 days since we updated and I am feeling a little guilty. We have been able to pickup and send email, but nothing else. We ask François and John to join us for the drive and we head south along the coast for the hour drive to Split. My brother Jeffrey has been to Split before and had sent us some email about what to do and see. We head into Split via the suburbs and frankly are less than impressed. Industrial and unattended, they are not a very welcoming sight to first time visitors. We negotiate the car to the “Centar” and find some parking that is metered, but the meters aren’t working. Parking all along the Dalmatian coast is somewhat of a problem – too many cars, not enough spaces. We have already been towed from our initial parking spot in Primošten and now park on the other side of town in a pay lot, 15 minutes walk from Stara Vila. (As best we can figure, given the cars that are continually parked in the spot we were towed from, we were towed because of the French plates on the car.) Here in Split, we watch all the Croats park, try to put money in the meter, realize it is broken and walk away. We decide to take our chances, and head into the walled old city.

Once we get into the old town, we find a crazy mishmash of styles: Venetian Palazzo beside Roman ruin, beside Napoleonic Empire – reflecting the long history of Split, and the many countries that have controlled it. Thankfully, there is little in the way of Cold War era Yugoslav architecture in the Centar.

Most fascinating are the Palace and Mausoleum of Diocletian, the Roman Emperor, These buildings are halfway through a restoration, and will be quite magnificent when done. Much of the palace is able to be renovated only because a bomb exploded on the site during the war (the 1991 war) and destroyed the houses that had grown up over the ruins of the palace. It was an archaeologist’s delight – tons of garbage dumped into the palace over the years.


From left: Diocletian’s Mausoleum; the entry to Diocletian’s Palace


Diocletian’s Mausoleum

We find an internet place that will let us plug in our laptop, François and John sip coffee in a café while we update the web, and then we head back to the car, fingers crossed. It is as we left it, and we head back to Primošten through the 5 p.m. rush hour traffic of a typical Croatian Friday afternoon.


Back in Primošten - François, and John; Greg and John

We awake to rain this morning which forces our courtyard breakfast into Duscha’s kitchen. The cloudy rain blows away around noon and leaves a sunny, warm day. We begin to do a little research concerning the next leg of our journey which will include a rendezvous with our Toronto neighbours, David and Kathryn, in Spain and Portugal in mid-September. Monika, our German friend, has rented us her house near Montpelier, in the south of France, for the end of September. We hope to meet our friend Rose there for a week or so of exploring the countryside. John and I have both agreed that the next few months will be less hectic and schedule driven. We hope to spend a minimum of 3 days in each location and not push ourselves too hard to get around Europe, even if that means skipping places we would love to go – memories of Vienna (or more accurately, the scarcity of memories of Vienna) haunt us.




Around Primošten

Our breakfasts continue long and leisurely here in the courtyard at Stara Vila. Duscha serves up lovely food starting at 10 and unless anyone has anything pressing to do, we all linger until 11:30 or so, discussing, chatting or simply relaxing. Sometimes Irina and Davor linger longer over their tea and Irina’s one cup of coffee. The German and Italian tourists, on their pilgrimages to the church on the hill, enviously spy over our fence and seem to wish to join our conversation in this special garden. Inside the garden, everyone is falling into an easygoing, relaxed vacation mode. It’s not too hard to do.


Primošten


From left: entrance to the garden; the sun terrace at Stara Vila


From left: garden seating; the sun terrace; the breakfast nook, with the door to our room behind

We meet our fellow guests at the villa over a long and leisurely breakfast in the garden and we truly are an international crowd: Francois and John from Paris (John via the US), Stefan from Frankfurt, Franco from Rome, Irina and Davor from Frankfurt and of course, Dusha, as Stefan puts it; “the boss”, our gracious hostess.

It takes no time to navigate the island. You can walk around the circumference in about twenty minutes. There are no sand beaches here; mostly rocky outcroppings with pebble beaches for the children (and there are a lot of children) and rocky beaches for the adults. Everyone seems to have diving or beach shoes to protect their feet from the jagged rocks and scree on the beach and as you enter the water. The other necessary beach accompaniment is a pad to go with your towel. This makes the lounging much more bearable. Swimmers and sun bathers have grabbed every conceivable inch of the island to spread themselves out. In the harbour, luxury yachts abound.

Nothing, nothing, nothing. I try to accept and apply this mantra to our time here. The crossword puzzle, books, the hammock in the garden or the sun chaises on the roof top will be our familiars over the next week or so. We are in the old town and the pealing from the old church bell on the hill is a recognizable reminder of where we are. Narrow slated walkways take you steeply up or down. Many tumble down buildings with some neglected, overgrown gardens. Some tended houses have small kitchen gardens, their tomatoes and bay leaves and thyme producing bumper crops. There aren’t any major hotel chains here, just family run businesses that reap their successes during the heady summer months of Italian and German tourists. It almost seems like the unspoilt Greece of 15-20 years ago.

Everyday life is evident on the local lanes. We can hear the cries of the baby across the small lane outside our bedroom window. Newborn kittens grab the attention of passersbys; old men silently police the lanes from their hard, wooden benches. The aged women of the old town, black-scarved and black-stockinged, make the pilgrimage up, up to the church cemetery, visiting loved ones long since gone. It is difficult to catch the eye or even a smile from these silent ladies. The last forty or fifty years of their lives have been incredibly difficult. I wonder how they must feel now as the German, Italian and other chubby, sleek, under-dressed and sunburnt tourists invade their town and take over the fleeting summer months.

We connect with some email at the Tourist Bureau, the only internet in town and receive two emails from Eric in Sydney and Derek in Berlin, asking if we were still in Prague and commenting on the small bomb that had gone off in Wenceslas Square. We reply that we were well out of harms way at that point and look for a Herald Tribune to get caught up on the news.

N 43
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Vienna to Primošten: 713 kilometres

Like seemingly everyone else in Northern Europe, we are craving some sun and warmth, and like seemingly everyone else in Northern Europe, we are heading to Croatia to find it. We are heading to on the Dalmatian coast, halfway between Šibenik and Split, where Stefan, who we met in Frankfurt, has a small guesthouse. Once a small island only metres offshore, Primošten was connected by bridge to the mainland 500 years ago.

Traffic is heavy on the Austrian autobahn as we head out of Vienna early on this Sunday morning. The drive through the hills is easy – we note that the Austrian autobahns wind through the hills, gently rising and falling, unlike the Italian autostradas, which are much straighter and which use tunnels and bridges far more extensively.

We make the Slovenian border in excellent time. We continue on the autobahn for another 30 kilometres, then it heads off to Ljubljana, and we, like most of the cars on the road, take the narrow local road for the 60 or so kilometres to the Croatian border. We get through quite easily, but the line of cars heading north waiting to cross back into Slovenia is kilometres long.

A few kilometres into Croatia we hit the motorway to Zagreb. Our road atlas, dated 2003, shows us that from Zagreb south, about 350 kilometres, we will be on local roads, but we discover that in fact the new southern motorway opened on July 1 – and we zoom down the road, except for 1 short interval where we drive over a mountaintop because the tunnel through the mountain won’t open until next year. We see hundreds of cars with German, Dutch, Polish, Czech, Slovak, British, Italian and of course our French license plates, all heading south, all fully loaded with gear. We go through a long tunnel and emerge on the other side to views of the ocean – we have passed from the valley to the coast.

We leave the highway and drive the last few kilometres on the coast road, bumper to bumper and moving very slowly. (The tolls for the motorway, about C$25, seem well worth the price.) We find Primošten, find parking (harder than finding the town itself, as it is overflowing with people), the bridge connecting the island to the mainland is no longer recognizable as a bridge, but in aerial photos, the island still looks like an island, albeit an island connected to the mainland. We meet Stefan, and start the winding walk up to Stara Vila.

When we get to the villa, we find a charming place. Dusha, our official hostess, shows us our room. It is a wonderful white bedroom off a treed courtyard. On sight I fall in love with the place, and contemplate luxuriously lazy naps in the stark white coolness of this chamber.

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