ROVINJ, CROATIA

Today, we arrived in Rovinj, in Croatia.

To be precise, we dropped anchor in the bay (which woke us up because we’re right at the front of the ship, I have to say), so that guests could be taken ashore by tender boat, a short ride of about 10 minutes, on a relatively calm, flat sea.

Having been on ships where the whole process of picking up a tender ticket and waiting in a queue can be somewhat chaotic, we were very pleasantly surprised to find this mornings tender operation was one of the mosty civilised we’ve seen. In fact, we had a short lie-in and a leisurely breakfast, and didn’t go to pick up a ticket until about 10:30am. There was no queue or fighting over who got to go on the boat first… instead, we only had to wait a minute or two before those with tickets were called. In a relatively short space of time, we were stepping off onto the quayside at Rovinj, keen to discover what it has to offer.

Quite a lot, as it turns out.

Rovinj Old Town is quite compact, set on a small, almost circular peninsula, and its old cobbled streets and multi-coloured houses are some of the best we’ve seen.

We followed the coastal road and tracks to a low, rocky headland, where multiple stone steps set in the rocks provide access to the clear waters that lap against them. It’s all very clean and pleasant to see, and one gets the feeling that Croatians really care about their environment.

The Old Town is dominated by a large cathedral built on its highest point, and accessed by several sloping tracks and roads. When we got up there, I was surprised at just how many people where milling around – everywhere else seemed quite quiet in comparison.

We took a look in the church but didn’t bother paying the extra €4 per person to climb the bell tower. I think we’re all bell-towered out.

All-in-all, it’s an impressive place, and was certainly worth the tender ride over to see it. It is quite a small area, though, and with the last tender being 7pm, we worried that it wasn’t going to be enough to hold our attention for the full length of our visit… and we weren’t quite ready to return to the ship just yet.

So, we walked off in search of anything else Rovinj might have to offer. We headed off along the coastline, past a harbour-full of boats, towards a distant headland that we’d seen on our arrival, which mostly seemed to consist of large hotels, but also – according to Maps.Me – appeared to have a Nature Park.

What we saw on our meanderings were lots of interesting butterflies and a few interesting birds. The extensive grounds of the Nature Park maintained our interest for a couple of hours, and we had hoped to pick up some food from a small beach cafe there, except it was in the process of being fixed up, presumeably in readiness for the coming summer season.

We walked through well-maintained woodland and up to the highest point where there was a small radio mast and a building covered in graffiti. Paths led us along the coast and to a point that seemed to be an old quarry, where some climbers were scaling the cliffs with brightly coloured ropes.

We walked until we ran out of path and then turned back towards the town, where we stopped at an Italian restaurant with harbourside tables for a sit down, drinks and a large pizza.

When we finally arrived back at the quayside, we sat on the harbour wall and watched the tender boats come and go. It was so nice sitting there that we really weren’t in a hurry to return to the ship. Eventually, return we did, and had a very pleasant evening in The Grill, and an early night. The walk had worn us out, but we have to save ourselves for ‘the biggie’ tomorrow, when we’ll be visiting Venice.