All about Croatia

The largest Disco in Dalmatia AURORA is situated in Primošten 50 north of Split, during the summer season from mid June to mid September, some of the best DJ’s in the world like David Morales, Cedric Gervais and Shapeshifter are in the program for this summer.

As we noticed that getting to AURORA from Split by public transport was quite complicated and expencive, we decided to launch a partybus, so every Friday and Saturday at 11 PM our partibus leaves from center of Split with destination AURORA, during the 50 minutes drive we party on the bus and get to know the other guests.

Last Friday we went to Foam party which was great fun, everybody ended up be completely soaked after bathing in the Foam and jumping into the pool.

Here you have a few photos from the Foam Party

So if you are interested in visting AURORA together with the partybus from Split, you can read more here.

As I told in prior post, my friend Shain and I had signed up for the 34^th Vogalonga which was held on the Sunday the 11^th of May in Venice Italy.

Friday we left Split and headed to the Camp Capalonga in Bibione, which is 100 km north of Venice, as we had a few work related thinks to handle on the way so we did not arrive before 23:30, so it was good that Julie a few hours before had announce our late arrival, otherwise they would not have let us in as the camp, as it is closed for vehicles from 23:00 to 07:00. The trip from Spilt had taken us 10 hours, so everybody was ready for the beds.

On the Camp Capalonga, we had rented two “Golden Suite Mare” , which we had booked through Bibionekajak at a special rate of 65 Euro, which to me seam ok for the luxury mobile homes, with 6 beds, 2 bathrooms and fully equipped kitchen.

Saturday morning Shane and I went to pick the two new double kayaks he had ordered by an Italian dealer in the area, this took much longer as we expected as we had a hard time finding the town where the dealer was situation, but finally we managed.

As we came back to the camp, I went in to the pool with the kids (which already spend most of the day there), Shane went to talk with the arranger of the bibionekajak 2008 – Gergio. At 17:00 all we went to information meeting regarding Sundays race in Venice, after we finished the meeting, we prepared the new kayak and finally, at 18:30 if was time for my virgin trip in a kayak, which was only a trip of 30 minutes, but enough for me to get serious doubts if I would be able to do the 30 Km on Sunday.

We finished the day with a very important task, Barbecue on the Terrace while we where mentally preparing us for the race by having a few glasses of wine.

On the 4 day of our Istria Easter holiday we went to Pula which is 40 minutes drive from Porec, on the way we made stop in the cities Vodnjan and Bale.

The city of Vodnjan is not that interesting, most street reminded me of the cities in the north eastern part of Croatia, according to our information the city church is home of some mummies which is the main tourist attraction.

Our photos from Vodnjan

The city of Bale is a nice little town made of stone houses, which gives the city a historical atmosphere.

Our photos from Bale

As we finally arrived in Pula we manage to find the main tourist attraction, the roman amphitheatre "Arena" quit easily, the theatre was build more than 2000 years ago for gladiator fights, and it today, besides a tourist attraction also used for cultural event like the International film festival in Pula.

After have a walk around the impressive building we decided to pay the 40 kuna entrance fee to see the Arena from the inside. Our girls was quite existed to see if there was still lions here, and especially when we entered the exhibition in the basement, Ida our smallest daughter was not 100% comfortable. But after I convinced them that the lions were long gone, they found it very interesting to see all the historical objects in the basement.

After finishing our visit at the Arena, we took the car to the centre of town, where we had a walk on the main street, starting from the forum (with temple of Rome and Augustus) through Sergei’s Arch until the outside market (Which i can recommend from prior visits). Pula as the largest city in Istria is also the main city for shopping, not only in the large supermarkets but especially in the city where you can find the most common brands. After finishing our walk we headed back to pula to prepare for our evening dinner at Bebo’s place.

What you can / should see:

• The roman Amphitheatre - Arena
• Sergei’s Arch - the old city gate.
• Several Churches and the Cathedral of Assumption of the blessed Virgin Mary
• Istrian historical museum, which is situated in old fortress at the top of a hill in the centre.

Where to stay:

I personally have always avoided staying in Pula, not because Pula does not have a good offer of private accommodation and Hotels, but mainly because there is much cheaper accommodation in Medulin which is only 10 from Pula. If you prefer a camp site there is a perfect camp in Fazana - the camp Bivillage.

Our photos from Pula

In the evening we went to have our "test" dinner at restaurant Borgonja (Bebo’s place), Bebo had prepared to menus which we could use for our groups.

The food was excellent especially the dessert, the homemade Fritule, which is balls made of a dough similar to the one you use for pancakes, served with Powdered sugar was irresistible, for the food Bebo served his homemade red wine, which is the best I had in Croatia until now, so I asked Bebo if I could by a couple of litres, two minutes later I had 5 litre bottle in front of me!!!

After 3 nice hours at the restaurant it was time to head back for Porec, so I asked Bebo for the bill, he said that price was 0 kuna, even when I tried to insist on paying he refused to accept it, as he said, maybe you will bring group this summer then I will be happy, if not it is also ok as you are one of Carlo’s friends, that is what I call hospitality!!

As I do not know if I will have any groups this summer, the least I can do is to recommend Bebo place to all of our readers, so if you should be in Istria this summer please go an have lunch or dinner at bebo’s place, I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

The address you have here:

Taverna Borgonja

Istarska 10

52463 Višnjan

PS: if anyone can recommend me a better red wine then the one Bebo makes, dinner is on me.

Here a few photos from Višnjan and the restaurant

Read about Porec here

Read about Novigrad and Umag here

Read about Vrsar and Rovinj here

For our travel agency solitum, we need good places to take our tourist groups in Istria, so I had asked Carlo to show me a few good Konoba’s (Restuarants) in the area, so first we went to Višnjan where we visited the konoba Borgonja, the owner Bebo invited us for a test dinner thusday evening so we will tell about that later, second stop was a real farm with 14 different animals species, the owner a couple of years ago build a restaurant in the middle of the farm, which can be used for e.g. a barbecue party for up to 100 people, unfortunately they where already fully booked by and Italian group this day, so for a test we will have to come back later.

Vrsar:

After finishing our duties and setting of Carlo in Porec we continued to Vrsar which is about 15 south of Porec, Vrsar is a small holiday town situated in a bay, the old town part is situated on a hill above the Marina. In the old part of town we went to see the Church at the very top of the hill, the church and the tower has been completely renovated so for 10 Kuna entrance fee we went to see the view from the Church tower, which you can see at our photos was amazing.

After visiting the old part of town, we went down the steep hill to the Marina, where we had a look a some of the nice yachts. The promenade in front of the Marina is full with restaurants and coffee bars, so in the summer you would find lots of people here.

What you can / have to see: 

• Church and the view from the Church tower
• The Kastel from the 14 to 18 century
• Festival the "Guitar and the see"
• Fishermen’s nights, which takes place from may to September, here you can taste fish, wine and Rakija and other domestic products.
• Sculpture park - Dušan Džamonja and the sculpture school montraker.

Where to stay: 

Vrsar as all other tourist towns offer private accommodation and Hotels, but in the area you also find the following camp sites:

• Camp Porto Sole
• Camp Orsera
• Camp Valkanela 

You can see our pictures from Vrsar here:

Rovinj:

From Vrsar we continued to the most beautiful city in Istria Rovinj, which is actually only few km air distance from Vrsar, but as the Limski Kanal (Lim Canal) is between the cities you actually have a driving distance of around 25 km.

The old part of Rovinj which is placed on peninsula, it is on of the most beautiful in Croatia, similar to Trogir and Primosten. Once you enter the old city gate the Balby Arch, you find your selves in small streets which continues in a labyrinth trough the old town, if you make sure to continue going up you will eventually end by the cities landmark, the St. Eufemija Church with it’s 60 meter high bell tower, a visit to the church where Eufemija is berried is free of charge, to see the tower you have to pay 10 kuna, but believe me this is a good investment!! What a view.

After visiting you can follow the water back to the small marina and the main square, on the way you find several nice coffee bars on the rocks and nice little restaurants.

Along the small marina you have the main promenade which is full of restaurants, i tried a few of them which was not to good, so i would recommend to go direction hotel Eden, after 600 -700 meter you have 3 or 4 restaurants on your left hand side, the quality here is much better.

What you can / have to see: 

• St Eufemija Church
• Old town - count 2-3 hours if you want to have good look at it.
• Walking street behind the promenade - here you find lots of restaurants and souvenir shops.
• Balbi Arch
• City museum

Where to stay: 

Rovinj as all other tourist towns offer private accommodation and several Hotels (e.g. hotel Eden), but in the area you also find the following camp sites:

• Camp Valdaliso
• Camp Vestar
• Camp Amarin
• Camp Polari

Se our pictures from Rovinj here:

Read about - 1 day in Porec 

Read about - 2 day in Novigrad and Umag

Here you find all our favorit links from Croatian - Links about Croatia 

.

Novigrad:

Unfortunately the weather was not to go on Easter Sunday, but we anyway decided of visit the cities along the costal road north of Porec. First stop on the road was Novigrad, which is about 12 km north of Porec.

In Novigrad we have a customer, which we visited several times the last 3 last years. Until this visit i always thought city looked a bit boring to me, but i turned out that the city actually have a quit charming promenade and old town part, which definitely is worth while visiting. I the bay at the north part of the town several new apartment houses and a brand new marina are being build, so I am sure Novigrad, will have an increased number of visitors in the future.

What to see in Novigrad:

• Several museums, marine museum and "Lapidarium”.
• Summer events which include fishermen nights, blues festival and sports activities.

Eating out:

• Restaurant Mandrac on the promenade

Where to stay:

• Private accommodation or Hotel can be found in the centre, 5 km south of town you find one of Croatians largest camps "lanterna" which has several thousand pitches.

See all our pictures from Novigrad here:

Umag:

After visiting Novigrad we headed on to Umag, which is about 7 km from the border to Slovenia and only 30 km from Trieste in Italy, which explain the huge number of Italians.

Personally I believe Umag not the most interesting city in Croatia, but because of it geographic placement Umag has visitors all year, main part of them are staying in the 6-7 large hotels at the north end of the town, also here the international tennis stadium, which each year hosts an ATP tournament, can be found.

The peninsula with the old part of Umag has a large number of Fish restaurant all place directly to the water on the south side of the peninsula, the rumour is that several of these restaurants should be quite good.

What to see / what to do in Umag:

• Umag aquarium, which holds most of the species from the Adriatic see.
• The hotel at northern end of town have extensive wellness program
• During whole year event are taking place in these hotels.

Eating out:

• 10-12 fish restaurants on south side of peninsula.

Where to stay:

• Hotels, I personally can recommend sol Umag whic has nice wellness area. as an alternative a large number of private accommodations can be found.
• South of Umag the new renovated camp - Camping park Umag which offer 5 star camping.

See all our pictures from Umag here:

From Umag we drowe back to Porec, where we in the evening had the most perfect home made Gnocci at Gina and Dino’s restaurant Kvartin.

Here you find all our favorit links from Croatian - Links about Croatia 

.

During the years here in Croatia, we have visited almost all corners of the country, but main the visits has been working related, so for this eastern we decided to make family trip to Istria, so Saturday morning at 9:30 we left Split and headed for Istria.

A couple of weeks ago i was contact by a German guy named Carlo, he had read on our German blog, that we plan to make trips to the World cup in Handball 2009 here in Croatia, so he wanted to meet with us and discuss potential working relationship, anyway Carlo also offered to book private accommodation in Porec for us, which we gladly accepted, as it actually can be quit difficult to find and apartment which is not closed for the winter.

As we after 5 hours driving arrived at our meeting point with Carlo, the hotel Diamant (Diamond) in Porec, we where quite existed to see what Carlo had booked for us? I turned out to be a perfect apartment, in the suburbs of Porec - Vranići, just 100 meters from one of the best Konoba’s (Restaurants) in Porec.

After unpacking our stuff, we went down to the old town in Porec, at this time of year there is of course not as much life as in the summer, but it is still very nice place for a walk. What surprised me a bit was the price level here, although knowing Porec is one of the major tourist destinations in Croatia with around 700.000 yearly visitors, i found several things which was douple price compared to Split, which at least at this time a year was to much. Anyway, we had a nice 2 hour walk in the old town before we headed back to the apartment.

At 19 we went to our local Konoba Kvartin to meet Carlo, he immediately introduced us to the very nice owners, Gina and Dino, their restaurant is famous not only in Porec, where a 2 page picture from the restaurant can be found in the mid section of the official tourist  brochure, but also in other parts of the country. The restaurant is filled with historical object collected mainly from local farms in the area, so inside the restaurant actually looks like small museum.

This evening we decided to try the mixed grill from the menu, although Carlo insisted we should take the Gnocci (next day we found out why). The meal was excellent, especially the home made fries was "Prvo liga" first class, Carlo told me that everything you get by Gina and Dino is homemade, Dino him selves travel around to the local farms and fishermen and pick the best of what he can find. Around 21 we Lene decided to take the kids to the room, I stayed and had a glass of wine with Carlo which ended being several glasses and we also had a taste of Dino’s homemade Rakija, so I was a bit dizzy when I went home around midnight.

Here you can see pictures from our first day in Porec

Resturant tip:

Of course I have to recommend Gina and Dino’s restoration, it is absolutely on of the best i have tried in Croatia, so here is the direction how to get there. If you go from Porec centre direction Umag / Novigrad, you will come to a roundabout after approximately 2 km, in the roundabout you go in direction Vižnjan and take the first road on the right 3 times in a row after exiting the roundabout, you should be infront of the resturant.

Address is : Konoba Kvartin, Vraniči, Humska 14, 52440 Porec

Here you find all our favorit links from Croatian - Links about Croatia

One of our absolute favourite cities here in Croatia is Dubrovnik; we have visited the city numerous times, both privately as well as professionally, and every time we have great time in this historical pearl.

Historically Dubrovnik has always been very special; in the times where the city was a republic it had a very interesting, political system where the major / Senator was elected for a period of one month, this was done to avoid corruption and keep focus on working in the interest of the republic.

Meanwhile Dubrovnik has regained its position as one of the major tourist spots in Croatia, the old town of Dubrovnik has been completely rebuild after the heavy bombing during the Balkan war, where only visible evidence left is the many new red roofs tops in the old town.

One thinks which you can not miss out on visiting Dubrovnik is a walk on the up 6 meter wide walls surrounding the old town, from the wall you have amazing view on the old town. The walk on the wall takes 2-3 hours.

Normally we are driving by car to Dubrovnik from Split, which takes around 4 hours, but last year we tried once to take the local ferry line, which is a 9 hour trip with stops on the Island Hvar and Korcula, the trip is extremely beautiful, so we can only recommend that.

Here you find more of our pictures from Dubrovnik

Here you find all our favorit links from Croatian - Links about Croatia

.

This Sunday we together with our Australian friends went to see the National park Krka to see the waterfalls, although we have been here several times, this was our first trip in the winter season. We went to Skradin, which is the southern entrance for the park, he we actually had plan to have lunch in a winery which friends of ours from Split had recommended, unfortunately the place was closed.

From Skradin you can in the summer season go with boats to the lower end of the waterfalls, at this time a year options are by foot or car, so we headed for the blue bridge just outside of Skradin, from where a road leads to the lower end of the waterfalls, the young man at the gate was so kind to inform us that it was actually easier to go to the entrance in Lozovac (7 Km from Skradin).

In Lozovac, you would normally have to park you car app. 1 Km from the waterfalls and take the bus or walk down to the small village inside the park, but during winter you can go by own car, so after paying the 25 Kuna entrance we did so.

From the village, which actually in the summer works as a museum with blacksmith, weavery etc which you can visit. We took at walk on the beautiful laid out walking paths, compared to our last visit this summer you could clearly see the difference in the amount of water going down the falls, which made everything looks much more wild. Judge your self!

Summer visit to Krka Waterfalls

Winter visit to Krka Waterfalls

Here you find all our favorit links from Croatian - Links about Croatia

.

Last Sunday we went on a trip with our Australian friend to see the Nature phenomenon the Imotski lakes, which is a red and a blue sinkhole lake.

Imotski is situated in the mountain land of Dalmatia close to the Bosnian border, a 100 km drive from

Split. It took us around 1 hours and 15 minutes to get there.

Both lakes has some impressive dimentions which actually makes them some of the largest sinkhole lakes in the world, the blue lake has cliffs sides up to 900 meters high, the red lake has almost vertical Cliffside which make it a bit scary for people like me with height problems to look down the whole.

Too the bottom of the blue lake there is a walking path, so you can actually walk all the way down, so in the summer the local people swim in the see. And special phenomenon whit the blue lake is that it actually dry out from time to time, when this happen the local people play soccer at the bottom of the lake.

The red lake can only be seen from the small viewing platform next to the road. Numerous divers have tried to find the bottom of the red lake, until now the have only succeeded to determine that the red lake continues into a cave 280 meter below the surface. A funny think about the red lake is that is almost impossible to throw a stone into the water, Shain and I tried numerous times with out any luck so if plan to make holiday in Croatia and are close to Imotski, maybe you should give a try (-:

Here you can see all photos from our trip to Imotski

Here you can all our pictures from our trips in Croatia

Here you find all our favorit links from Croatian - Links about Croatia

.

After visiting the archaeological museum, we headed on to the ruins of the roman city Salona, which is situated in the suburbs of Split on the way to Trogir.

 

What few people know is that Salona actually was one of the major cities in the Roman Empire with a peak time population of almost 60.000, which is 3 times as much as e.g. Pompeii had.

 

 

 

Unfortunately lager part of the Salona city has been covered by industrial factories, which mainly was established when Croatia was part of the former Yugoslavia republic.

 

 

 

Despite of this the, area which today can be visited is still quite big, so we definitely would recommend you to plan at least half a day for the visit, if you want to see all of it. As you can see on our pictures, bring you own launch is also, not a bad idea. What you definitely should remember is appropriate shoes.

 

 

 

Salona is open whole year to visitors’ and the entrance fee is only 20 Kuna, so if you are close to Split this summer you should plan a visit.

 

Here you find all our favorit links from Croatian - Links about Croatia

.