Ljubljana, Slovenia – 203 km

Motovun

Another glorious sunny day. After the usual buffet breakfast we all met at the designated time for our morning debriefing. The traffic out of Rovinj was easy and it turned out to be a great riding day. We were actually just over 100 km from Ljubljana by freeway but were able to stay away and have a great ride into the mountains, through vineyards and nice curves.




Bean Thresher

Our first stop was as Motovun for coffee. It was a very picturesque stop with a nice view of this medieval walled town. Lots of bikes stopping there for picture ops and just to take a break. There was a strange machine at the stop – a bean thresher. Not long after that we did our last border crossing exit from Croatia and a few yards later into Slovenia. We are getting lots of stamps in our passports with all these crossings but the guards are very good about conserving space.

Predjama Castle

For more photo ops we headed to Predjama Castle. The castle was first mentioned in the year 1274 and was built under a natural rocky arch high in a stone wall to make access to it difficult. The castle became known as the seat of the knight Erazem a renowned robber baron. Erazem was eventually killed by a cannon shot while seated on the toilet after a long siege in the castle. Apparently there are some secret limestone caves leading out on the other side of the mountain where food was brought in.

This was our last stop before heading to the garage where Primoz (P2) was waiting for us with chilled champagne. Such a nice touch to the ending of our tour. We have decided the Slovenians really love their champagne. After that we said goodbye to the black BMW K1600

Our guides: Primoz (P1), Primoz (P2) and Tomaz
 

that has safely and efficiently carried us over 2000km in these foreign lands.

This evening everyone met for our final dinner together, exchanged well wishes and hopes to meet again. Tomorrow we fly to opposite ends of the earth. Seems like sort of a cruel finality to dismiss people that you have depended on for your well being while on the road for the last 18 days. And, in turn we have contributed to theirs. We have been through the rain, narrow roads, illness, and the Bora wind together. And survived. And in the process accumulated many memories to cherish.

To the people of the Balkans: please take good care of your special part of the world.

Goodbye LJ01-TZ!

Rovinj, Croatia – Rest Day

Woke up to a beautiful clear day on the Adriatic and had breakfast at an amazing buffet. The larger the hotel, the bigger the spread and this is a big hotel. Had breakfast with American John – asked him what he did yesterday after dinner – he said he went straight to bed as he was exhausted from yesterday’s ride in the Bora wind. The lighter bikes may have had it worse than us being blown around.

We had asked our guides how they learned English as they all speak fairly well and know all the slang words. Did they learn it in school like our kids learn French and Spanish but it is not taught in school and they say their parents do not know any English. It seems cartoons and English speaking movies have been the main source of education for them hence the slang. All the younger people we have encountered have a fair command of our language. We did encounter some older people on our outing today that had very little command.

Our plan was to get to Pula, Croatia (about 40 km away) to see the Roman amphitheater then

Any lions in there?

to look around Rovinj a little more. We opted to take the bus rather than ride as then we could add “having ridden on a Croatian bus” to our experiences. Turned out to be a nice modern roadliner that somehow manages to squeeze its bulk around these narrow roads. A couple of times we were waiting for the bump, though!

After making a wrong turn from the bus depot (we didn’t have a map or ask anyone where to go) we happened to turn around and see a road sign. We could have ended up walking aimlessly

Sidewalk Biffy

around for hours but we did manage to find the amphitheatre. The structure was completed in 81 AD under Emperor Titus and was “on the gladiator circuit” during Roman times. The amphitheater remained in use until the 5th century, when Emperor Honorius prohibited gladiatorial combats. However, it was not until 681 that combat between convicts, particularly those sentenced to death, and wild animals was forbidden. There are several old looking gates on the lower tier where we can imagine the lions were housed! In modern times it has been used for musical concerts featuring such notables as Pavarotti and Elton John.

Church of St. Euphemia

An interesting sidewalk toilet was observed on the walk in Pula. Don’t think that dates from Roman times.

We observed from the bus that the rural houses almost uniformly have wonderful looking, well-tended gardens which reminds us of our job when we return home. We still wonder at the lack of vegetables being served with our meals when seeing this.

By the time we got back from Pula it was almost 3 pm and really starting to warm up. We persevered however and bought some truffles in the market. This being a big truffle area they try to sell every kind of product imaginable including cheese truffle spreads, truffle oil and preparations for sauces. Of course we had to have ice cream, too. After all it was hot. We will miss the ice cream and gelato! There seems to be a place on every street corner and the flavours are something we never see at home.

Dominating the skyline of Rovinj is The Church of St. Euphemia with its magnificent tower. It seems the old town has been built on a hill of limestone so to get to the church it entails an uphill climb.

A lovely sunset is being appreciated by a young mom and her daughter at the beach behind the hotel.

Tomorrow we return to Slovenia.

Rovinj, Croatia – 350 km

Last night we were walking back to the hotel and just off the sidewalk was a memorial display. Seems strange where it was located almost at the end of a driveway. We have seen a few of these along the various roads.

Sidewalk memorial

We started our ride in a slight drizzle. Nothing serious enough to suit up for but lots of warnings from our guides as the roads get pretty slippery when this happens. This was touted as part of the best road in Croatia, skirting along the Adriatic Sea and by the number of bikes out we were soon aware of how this must be a favorite Sunday ride. The

Sunday Riders

coast along here is called the Blue Istria and it gets flooded with tourists in the summer. The traffic was the least of our concerns today though.


Today we experienced the Croatian Bora wind. It is a katabatic wind originating from the mountains above the sea.  Its record speed is over 300 kph. At one point north of Zadar this morning the speedometer was reading 80 kph and our flag was flapping forward! The police CLOSED the highway to motorcycles and campers/trucks while we were halfway along

Worried about the wind:)

due to winds gusting to 140 kmp plus. Don’t bother asking how the ride was, suffice to say we all agreed that closing the road was a good idea. To be charitable we will say the ride was unpleasant. The guides lead us into Senj for a coffee break, to regroup and discuss what was next. They had been checking on the net regarding the wind conditions and a new plan was formed. There was a group of four riders from Britain that were also in a quandary as to what to do so Primoz helped them out by sharing the info re the road and alternate route.  We escaped by going over the mountains into the teeth of the wind away from the sea dropping the temperature to a cloudy and damp 10C. Once over the mountains the wind abated. We were then able to make our way back down to the coast for the remainder of the ride. So you might wonder why Norma’s first comment when we arrived at the hotel was “I feel wind burnt!”



Rovinje Harbour

Because we went away from the coast (kind of looped through the interior) we picked up some time by joining the freeway. Some of the bikes on the tour are powerful sport bikes which, of course, leave us behind on these twisty roads. When we catch them they have been waiting for us for varying amounts of time. Funny they didn’t seem to want to take on our big K1600 on the freeway, thoughJ. Doing 160 kmp at one point was a little hairy and there were people passing us at that! There is no speed limit on this section of road.

Lots of long tunnels in this country. Most are well lit and in excellent condition. In fact the road conditions are generally better the farther north we go. We are again in a very lovely hotel about a 20 minute pleasant walk to the old town. After showers and clothes changes the group met in the lobby and walked into town for another lovely dinner. Norma finally got a plate full of huge grilled scampi while Doug had a truffle pasta. There was the most beautiful sunset over the harbour as we left the restaurant for the walk back. This is a touristy but very pretty little town. Tomorrow is a rest day so we will see what we can get up to. Don’t plan to do much more than explore the town.

 

 

Zadar, Croatia - Rest Day

Gail, Aussie John and Blaz

Last night we confirmed it –we really are the oldest on the tour. The next oldest man is 64 and woman is 65. We had to laugh at a few of them when they talked about not being able to do this in 10 years’ time.  When we signed up they were sort of trying to talk us into taking a lighter bike for this particular tour, now the guides are complimenting Doug on his ability to handle the big K1600 two-up on the tight, twisty roads.



Doug, John and Primoz

Typical Island

Today was Adriatic Sea cruise day. About half of the group signed up to go on a charter motor launch to the Kornati Islands. These are a widespread group of 150 limestone islands forming part of a National Park of the same name. They are very popular with private sailboats because of beautiful coves and calm Adriatic blue water. The islands have very few human occupants because of a scarcity of water although many of them had sheep. We left the hotel at 8:45 am and returned just before 5 pm.  They had a van waiting for us and after a half hour drive we made it to the boat, which is a converted fishing boat they now use for smaller tours. Once we were under way the captain brought out a huge plate of shrimp and mussels and fresh bread.  Pretty decedent for a pre-meal snack.

Scary, loud bar patron

 After nearly three hours we arrived at one of the islands where we got off and wandered to the swimming beach. There was a large tour boat there and it looked like some of them had just spent the time in the bar. When we got back on lunch was ready. They served fish and meat – which this time was pork and again more of the lovely fresh bread. The weather was mixed, with showers, some lightning, and then sun only to repeat. By the time we got back on the boat it was clearing and turned into a very nice afternoon. With all these weather changes nevertheless there was minimal wind so the seas were calm. Before we left Doug got a piece of bread and was feeding the schools of fish that had congregated around the boat. Our return trip took a different route.

 Because lunch was so late again today we just walked up to the grocery store and will be having cheese and crackers for dinner! We picked something up called Kora which is a very nice hard cheese. And it is Saturday night – chocolate night!



Captain Cook

 

 

Sailed under the bridge on the way back

Zadar, Croatia – 235 km

Hope there is no bus coming!

Late start this morning (9:30 am) because we had to time a ferry sailing to Split, Croatia so we started our morning with a walk along the sea wall in front of the hotel.

We took the scenic route to the ferry over the mountains through the lavender fields (sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?). The road was narrow (what else is new) and a bit rough but almost traffic-less so a great way to start the day. We aren’t sure when the lavender beds were established but the entire hillside has rocks piled

Lavender fields

in rows, supposedly to keep the soil from blowing away. This is not harvest time so all we could see was the green – no flowers and no lovely lavender aroma.

We arrived at the ferry terminal in plenty of time for one of the guides to buy food for an onboard picnic. The loading procedure was interesting as the bikes were directed down a steep, narrow corrugated metal ramp onto a bottom deck. It looked like the bike riders were not going to make it as it was such a small opening into this “hatch”.  We then proceeded upstairs to have a picnic lunch of bread, cheese and meat which P2 cut up with his large knife. Later, Norma was fascinating to the little guy in the window on the ferry!

We arrived in Split, Croatia about 2 hours later then extricated the bikes from the hold and entered bedlam. It was a scene that reminded me of the scary street scenes in India with traffic snarled, cars, busses and trucks pushing their way through the pedestrians, who in turn were running in front of the vehicles. Unbelievable. Norma wisely walked on/off the ferry and missed the hold and the street scene. After about 20 minutes we managed to split Split (thank goodness) and proceeded north toward Zadar. All this traffic is proving to be the down side of this vacation but luckily once we got out of town it cleared and the traffic flow improved.

At one photo spot along the way there was a family selling their home grown cherries. We bought some and Doug gave the little boy a Canadian flag pin.  We left to a chorus of Kanada, Kanada! They were really excited – big smiles and waves to us as we rode away.

The three single riders went off on their own heading to the hotel and we three couples set our pace with Tomaz. We did make a very nice coffee stop near Sibenik before making our way to Zadar.

Split

Cherry Seller

We are in a very lovely hotel. From the descriptions we are getting from the others we have the biggest and nicest room. It is huge and very comfortable after the last two nights.

We all piled into taxis and headed to the old town for dinner. After a walking tour of the old town we headed for dinner in a very nice outdoors restaurant. After dinner more walking to view the solar light show and hear the water pipes. You can look this up on u-tube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBhk5KFwLVc. It is pretty impressive.

Hvar, Croatia – Rest Day

Hvar Harbour

This morning started with a walk along the seawall back to town. Beautiful harbour views along the way. Our objective was to climb the hill above town to the old fortress which saved the inhabitants of Hvar from the invading Turks. The trek up the hill started with a steady climb up too many stairs to count. It was very interesting as the narrow stair paths are cut up the hill through shops, bars, private residences before you reach a zig zag dirt path through gardens and on up to the fortress. This provided a lot of exercise and proved to be a very interesting site containing exhibits of materials found in old shipwrecks (samovars,

The Fortress

etc.), a prison, cannons, etc.  Norma managed to do some gift shopping there after we had a cold drink. We then descended back to the town square which was already beginning to get busy, warm and humid.

Hvar is a very popular destination for tourists. We met some young people from Texas who were “just over for the weekend from school in Paris”. We suspect it is very crowded during the summer months.

This afternoon we rode 60 km return to a

From the top

cottage winery with the California couple and Tomaz, a guide, for a tour, snacks and wine tasting. We were the only people there. The lady provided an excellent description of their business. She served us home grown olives and olive oil with lovely fresh bread and a wonderful cheese. We tasted four different wines, two white, one red and a dessert wine. It was a lovely setting basically in their back yard, not like the wineries at home where the tasting takes place at the actual orchard.

Incidentally, we can track how many times our

Town Square

blog is accessed on the internet and where the access is coming from. Turn out we are getting almost as many hits from Russia as we are getting from Canada! I suspect that is because this area is such a popular place for Russian vacationers and their search engines are bringing us up.

For dinner this evening we had a seafoodish dinner at one of the recommended restaurants. Excellent!

Tomorrow is a riding day to Zadar, Croatia and involves a 2 hr. ferry ride.

Wine Celler

Winery

 

Hvar, Croatia – 205 km

Tonight we find ourselves on the Island of Hvar, in the town of Hvar. The ride today consisted of four parts:

Start of the ride

      A. The busy coastal road which runs north of Dubrovnik back into Bosnia for 14 km then back into Croatia. The busy border crossing was a fiasco as our guide decided he would try to expedite matters by cutting into the waiting lineup to get us through. This incensed the people that were waiting in cars who took out their anger on us. Remember these are people who know all about war. Very uncomfortable feeling. We didn’t even show passports, were just waved through.

      B. The 35 minute ferry trip to Hvar Island. The

Ferry

same guide parked very close to us in the line-up so when the ferry worker called to load Doug straightened the bike to ride off and just touched his top case and over his bike went. His first mistake was to park so close. And he must have incorrectly set the side stand.

       C. The first half of the trip on the island road was a tortuous 2 lane road which was about one normal lane width with NO shoulder and a deep drop off on both sides. It wound its way through rocky vineyards. See GPS for example!

Wiggles

      D. The second half of the island highway was in direct contrast to the first, a beautiful modern winding highway just made for motorcycling. We fell behind the group as we stopped to take pictures and chat with the California couple who also were dawdling.

Our coffee stop this morning was at Mali Ston, which is just a little piece of rock on the coast. It was surrounded by oyster farms with big signs all along to try an oyster farm tour or the products of the farms. It was a bit rushed as we were on a time crunch for getting through the border and catching the ferry to Hvar.

The ferry ride was a very pleasant trip with Primoz 2 passing out fresh fruit, oranges, yummy strawberries and apricots. We are really going through fruit and vegetable withdrawal.



Ride to Hvar

Once we got off the ferry we stopped for lunch at Sucuraj in a great outdoor restaurant on the bay. We had the best salads so far, Doug octopus and Norma cheese, which is very much like a Greek minus the olives. Maybe it is that we are finally feeling like eating. This lunch stop allowed all the traffic from the ferry to go so when we hit the road it was clear sailing with no need to pass on the roads already described.

Water Taxi to dinner

We find ourselves in the Hotel Croatia. It is a very old building with small rooms and very small bathrooms. It smells like they have just painted the cupboards. We were a bit surprised with this as the accommodation to date has been tops. Won’t pass judgement yet as we are here for two nights – tomorrow is a rest day- so we will see.

The town square is a very pleasant 20 minute walk along the ocean where we walked to find a market. We walked there again to meet everyone for a drink before dinner. They had reserved a water taxi to take us to the restaurant. During the 30 minute ride the guides treated us to champagne. Not sure what that was for but it was a nice touch. The water was relatively calm and the scenery was lovely so it was a very nice start to the evening.


Dinner was at this lovely outdoors restaurant in the middle of an olive orchard. The olive trees were in full bloom so the table was full of flowers and you needed to check your drink for fall out. The start was an introduction to the grappa they produce there. They make olive grappa as well as wild rose petal (not rose hip) grappa. They also produce their own wine which was provided along with the very nice seafood dinner of octopus salad, shrimp, calamari, and sea bass. You could see the cook in his outdoor kitchen preparing the large shrimp, etc. over a wood fire. Our return trip was by mini bus.

 

 

Dubrovnik, Croatia – Rest Day

After checking on the wellbeing of the rest of the group (sure enough, Aussie John had contracted it) we set out to the supermarket this morning. Tommy’s Hipermarket (sic) is about a 10 minute walk and has everything one needs. Sort of compares to the Superstore at home.

After breakfast (the buffet was one of the best settings so far - sitting outside on the edge of the cliff overlooking the ocean) we met up with John and Gail (John is just a little rocky this morning) and shared a taxi to the cable car station. Our hotel is just a little too far out of town to walk. We then travelled via cable car to the top of the mountain overlooking Dubrovnik. This is the site of the Imperial Fort built in 1812 by Napoleon. It was used as a secure fortification during the Yugoslav War of the early 1990s as the Dubrovnik Croatians attempted to defend their city against the Serbian forces. The 200 year old Imperial Fort walls withstood the pounding from modern artillery. The old city (a 17^th century UNESCO World Heritage Site) was not so lucky and was severely damaged, perhaps the stupidest thing the Serbs did as it turned the world against them. This act and some horrible massacres in Bosnia resulted in a NATO 15 country force basically putting an end to the conflict. At any rate we went through a museum at the top of the mountain and rode back down to the old town.

There seems to be a Croatian belief in the luck of lady bugs and we were seeing this symbol and home crafted articles everywhere. We did purchase a leather lady bug to bring home. At the fort at the top of the mountain there had obviously been a new hatch as there were literally hundreds of lady bugs up there.

We stopped for a cold drink in one of the many lovely outdoor cafes on the ocean side and later for some ice cream, before we shopped. A wedding photoshoot was happening there today. There was also a lady with her numerous exotic birds letting people take pictures holding them for a fee. She would not disclose how much she made in a day but had a pretty brisk business going, especially with the kids with birds on their heads, etc.

When we were in the Mediterranean five years ago we were intrigued by many spice markets and how smartly they were arranged. Here is Dubrovnik they have candy stores with the same kind of barrel displays. We couldn’t identify any of it so needless to say did not make a purchase. We did look in one of the other stores where they had truffles, all sorts of olive oil and balsamic vinegars and olives. If we could have found those lovely little olives we had purchased in our previous trip you can be sure we would have been bringing some of them home.  We taxied back to the hotel in the early afternoon.

Have included a picture of one of the motorcycle friendly roads leading to the city.

Tonight's dinner was a pizza - very good - with some of their excellent ice cream for dessert. Tomorrow we will ride to Hvar - a island accessed by a ferry.