Slovakia Trip, 2024: Part 3—Croatia

Croatia

We've been dying to go back to Croatia since our first—and, until now, only—trip there back in the summer of 2013, which I wrote about here. In 2013, we only explored some of the Istrian coast, but there was plenty to see in the several days we were there (and a crazy storm forced us to roam the area more than we had originally planned).

This time we went back to Istria, with Terezia's brother Tony and his wife Silvia again (and their two kids Tea and Timotaj [pronounced like Tay-ah and Teem-o-tay]), mainly because it's the closest part of the Croatian coast to drive to from Slovakia. Tony did some research on non-sketchy places on the coast that didn't have to be booked months in advance, and he found a coastal/beach campground/"resort" called Maistra Camping Polari, located just five kilometers south of the beautiful Italian-esque medieval town Rovinj.

The lovely Rovinj.

The sprawling campground offers a slew of options, from simple campsites for camping in tents or campers/trailers, to yurt-like "glamping" structures, and even mobile-home-type cabins that come fully equipped with indoor plumbing, toilets, showers, electricity, gas stoves, air conditioning, beds, towels, dishes, a refrigerator, etc. Tony booked two of the mobile-home cabins—the "standard" for us, and the slightly larger and fancier "supreme" for his family—which were directly across a narrow lane from each other.

The Long-Ass Drive

Tony rented a big Renault eight-seater van so that he could drive us all together. But because we went together, we were forced to endure their preferred way of driving to Croatia, which, sadly for us meant packing everything up the night before, waking up at 4:00 in the goddamn morning, and rolling into the van for a 4:30 am departure. Tony's wife Silvia said they do this so that the kids spend a good portion of the drive sleeping.

But my god, they didn't sleep much longer than an hour, and, in any case, despite getting on the road at 5:00 am—"very behind schedule," according to Silvia—we got to the campground two hours before our 3:00 pm check-in, and unlike some places, this facility was absolutely not going to have our cabins ready until the check-in time. We had to piddle around the premises for two hours, weary and sleep deprived, until the cabins were ready. So, yeah: waking up at the far more reasonable hour of 6:00 am and leaving at 7:00 probably would've been okay (even if it would've meant a little more traffic)—and we wouldn't have felt like garbage all day.

The sky had already lit up considerably at 4:00 am when we awoke at Tony's house, and by the time we left at 5:00, the sun had officially risen.

The eight-seat rental van ready to go, photographed at 4:48 in the morning. (Yes, this is how light it is in Slovakia at 4:48 in the morning in mid June!)

Something that has always messed with my head (and my internal clock) is the fact that sunrise occurs far earlier in the morning in Slovakia this time of year than in the Bay Area. The reason this messes with my head is I will wake up on any given morning in late spring/summer in Slovakia, and, based on the quality and quantity of the light shining through the cracks around the blinds or curtains, I'll assume it's about 6:30 am, only to look at my phone and see that it's 5:00 or even earlier! This, I believe, is due to the fact that Slovakia sits at a higher latitude than the Bay Area, but also because it's at the eastern-most end of the main European time zone, and it's quite a wide time zone.

For some comparisons, the sun rose in San Francisco on 6/15/24 (the day we left for Croatia) at 5:47 am, but it rose that same morning in Bratislava at 4:51, nearly an hour earlier! By contrast, the sun rose in Brest, France—the western-most European town in the same time zone that's on a similar latitude to Bratislava—that same morning at 6:15. So, that's a very wide time zone. It'd be like if the Pacific standard time zone in the US spanned the distance of Kansas City, Missouri, to San Francisco! In any case, as an insomniac whose problem is not falling asleep at night, but rather, waking up too early in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep, I find this difficult to get accustomed to.

But back to the trip...

The seven-hour drive went pretty well, and the kids were, for the most part, well behaved and able to entertain themselves and each other, though two-year-old Timotaj was naturally getting fussy at times, confused as he likely was about having to be strapped into a moving car for so long that day. We pulled over at a couple of rest stops for snacks and (later) lunch, which helped somewhat.

The drive takes you through picturesque mountains and dense forests in Austria and Slovenia before you enter the lush, rolling vineyard- and olive-tree-covered hills of coastal Croatia. Along the entire drive, we saw numerous other station wagons, SUVs, campers, and vans, all stuffed with as much camping gear as they could fit, with license plates from Germany, Austria, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia—just like last time.

Driving through Slovenia.

The drive was smooth until we hit Koper, the last town in Slovenia before the Croatian border, because in Koper, the freeway (or motorway, as it's not free) abruptly ends, and from there you have to take a congested two-lane road that winds through and over the hills for about 10 miles to the Croatian border, then another four miles before finally reconnecting with another motorway in Croatia. We hit a bit of traffic in Koper, but nothing too crazy, yet it was still a bit slow going due to the windiness of the road. 

A lush valley near Slovenia's coast on the edge of the border with Croatia.

However, a frighteningly long line of cars in the oncoming lane exiting Croatia was backed up for nearly this entire stretch, and it appeared to be barely moving. We chalked this up to it being Saturday and these were likely people leaving after vacationing there for the week. (Croatia is now in the Schengen Area, so at least there's no stopping for passport control.) This missing stretch of motorway is a major bottleneck that results in massive congestion in and around Koper, and makes entering/exiting Istria in the north exceedingly painful. I hope Slovenia and Croatia are working to address this, because it's a pretty glaring flaw in an otherwise smooth (and heavily used) travel artery.

Once in Croatia, you have to contend with their tedious motorway toll system: you enter it via a congested toll plaza where, after waiting in line, a machine spits a ticket at you, and when you exit the motorway—through another congested toll plaza—you hand your ticket to a human in a booth and pay a toll that's based on the distance you've traveled. Several other European countries' motorway toll systems (including Slovakia) simply require you to buy a sticker, called a vignette, that you place on your windshield as soon as you reach their border. (You stop and park at the border checkpoint and buy a sticker covering a specific period of time from a vendor or a machine, get back in your car, and continue.) In my experience, this actually seems to be faster and more efficient than the long lines at Croatia's motorway toll plazas.

The Campground

Much like the campground we stayed at in 2013, which was up north on the Istrian coast in the area of Bašanija, this campground was also more like a bustling and crowded refugee camp than a tranquil, idyllic retreat into nature.

I mean, sure, you're on the lovely Istrian coast with its nice rocky shoreline, trees everywhere, and the sounds of birds chirping all around you; people are in laid-back summer mode, ambling around in their swimming shorts or bikinis and plastic slide-on sports sandals, or leisurely cruising along on big, clunky (often electric) bicycles; and the guests (pretty much only families with small kids or retired couples in their 60s or early 70s) are mostly mellow, content, and respectful; but it's the sheer volume of people crammed into every pocket of this sprawling facility that makes it feel abuzz with activity. You also have row upon identical row of trailers and campers, and in our section identical mobile-home cabins, all resembling a dense suburban landscape if you squint your eyes a bit.

It's not my ideal camping situation, but I get why it would appeal to people who live in landlocked countries or far from any any coastal areas.

For people not lured by the tranquil, clear, warm-ish waters of the Adriatic Sea, this campground has a large, sleek, modern pool complex with oiled-up Europeans lying on rented chaise lounges, working to perfect their bronze tans (or in some cases, just turning beet red and looking weirdly unconcerned about it). People entering the complex are forced to remove their shoes and walk through shallow tubs of water, with nozzles that squirt water at your feet to "disinfect" them.

The campground also has its own grocery store; multiple bars/lounges; at least two full-on restaurants; ice cream, pizza, and hamburger stands; tennis, bocce, and volleyball courts; bike and kayak rentals; massage centers; and more. They've designed it so that people don't even have to leave the premises for the duration of their stay, and I'm sure some don't (which is bizarre when you've got such great towns nearby like Rovinj or Pula). It's a well-oiled facility, with employees clad in matching white short-sleeved polo shirts and khaki shorts, buzzing to and fro on electric scooters.

The cabins at least looked clean (with crisp, clean sheets and towels) and smelled of pine-scented cleaning products, so it seemed to be well maintained and not a dump. 

Our cabin. The German-speaking family in the cabin directly behind ours had a penchant for grilling trout every night. We kept our rear windows shut in the evenings.

The "master" bedroom in the cabin.

The central kitchen area.

I didn't hear a word of North American or British English the entire time we were there, and it wouldn't have surprised me if Simon and I were the only Americans in the whole massive place. As I mentioned in my 2013 Croatia post, these sorts of coastal campsite experiences in Croatia are not something most American tourists would be remotely interested in, since they can get something akin to that much closer to them in the States. Americans come to Croatia for the medieval splendor of towns like Dubrovnik, Rovinj, and Split, which is totally understandable since you can't find anything like that in the US. So, with campgrounds like this, you're getting a uniquely European experience.

The language we heard spoken the most was definitely German, but we heard Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, and more, too. We even met a nice Slovak couple in their 60s on the beach who were from Senec.

The calm, relatively warm Adriatic sea was a pleasure to swim in. However, Simon and Tea actually preferred swimming in one of the smaller man-made swimming pools just outside Tony and Silvia's cabin. The pool wasn't more than five feet deep at the deepest end, so it was easy for Simon and Tea to swim in and jump into (no submerged rocks to stub your toes on or abrupt drops in the sea floor), which is why they liked it so much. It got to where they were coming up with any excuse to stop by this pool on the way to and from the beach. I joked to Tony that we drove all the way to Croatia just to hang out in a damn swimming pool.

Croatian beaches are all naturally rocky. If you ever see sand on a Croatian beach, it's been trucked in. Even the small pebbles that coated the parts of beach we spent time at might've been shipped from elsewhere. For this reason, wearing water shoes on Croatian beaches is absolutely necessary.

The swimming pool that Simon and Tea liked even more than the Adriatic.

Tony has fully signed on to the paddle board trend, and spent a lot of time ferrying the kids around on his paddle board, making several trips to a tiny, deserted, tree-covered island just a short distance from the beach with an old, abandoned stone house that has reportedly been completely overrun by seagulls. We saw dozens of other people each day on paddle boards; some navigating them like pros, and others struggling a bit with their balance.

Simon trying out the paddle board.

Rovinj

On Monday morning, we all took an excursion to Rovinj's historic center. Tony really wasn't crazy about navigating the big-ass rental van through the narrow, congested, somewhat labyrinthine streets of Rovinj, and we couldn't blame him. After Tony spent several minutes driving white-knuckled around the outskirts of the pedestrianized historic center, unsure of where to park, he pounced on the first paid public/tourist parking lot we came across, which was slightly unfortunate since it turned out to be more of an overflow lot for when the main lot—three or four blocks closer to the pedestrianized historical center—fills up. But again, I can't blame him for not wanting to drive that hulking thing through these busy, narrow streets a second more than he had to.

 

Rovinj, as I mentioned in my older Croatia post, is a gorgeous, well-preserved medieval coastal town clustered on a small hill, and was actually once a heavily fortified, walled-in island. The narrow, winding cobblestone lanes and colorful medieval facades all look extremely Italian, resembling a mix of Venice, the Cinque Terre villages, and a typical Tuscan hill town. (In fact, Rovinj was governed by the Republic of Venice from 1283 to 1797.) It's a densely packed jumble of high, worn, often colorful facades; windows adorned with requisite green or brown Italian-style wood shutters; and narrow, curving, cobblestone lanes.

We walked up to the very Venetian-looking white church and adjacent bell tower that lord it over the town from the highest point on the hill and took in the views.

Tony and Silvia brought the stroller for their two-year-old son Timotaj, but as soon as we hit the rough, uneven cobblestones on the streets of the historic section, it became immediately apparent that this would be too bumpy of a ride for a stroller, so Simon and Tony took turns pushing the empty stroller up the streets and lifting it over the numerous steps, while Tony and Silvia took turns carrying Timi or letting him roam a bit.

What's odd about Rovinj's shiny white cobblestones is they are perilously smooth, as if they'd just been coated in a layer of wax. Terezia even found walking downhill on them in her Birkenstock sandals difficult to do without slipping. It seems like even a light rain would instantly turn these streets into a treacherous obstacle course, resulting in countless tailbone injuries and eggplant-sized bruises on butt cheeks. I noticed an abundance of big, similarly white and slippery-smooth rocks scattered around the beach back at the campground, which I suspect may be the same kind of rock that these cobblestones were made from. This type of rock appears to wear down to an ice-like smoothness when exposed to the elements over time. It looks nice, but in hindsight, maybe it wasn't the best choice for a walking surface?

The slender, gently curving, (mostly) pedestrianized streets are sensory overload for me. Every smaller side street and alley leads to some cool medieval tunnel or tiny courtyard crowded with plants and steep, rough-hewn stone steps ascending precariously to old wood front doors, with laundry drying from lines or racks protruding from the sills of windows that are all lined with Italian-style wood shutters.

We wound our way back down the other side of the hill and stopped for some ice cream once we'd completed the loop to keep the kids happy, as they were growing weary and whiny from being forced to trudge up and down the steep streets of this medieval town (and forced to take a morning off from being in the water).

I would love to stay in Rovinj someday for a full weekend or longer. I admit that I was a tad envious of the childless couples sitting at outdoor cafe tables sipping leisurely on cappuccinos. I remember when Terezia and I used to do that! This is a town I would love to really get to know at a more leisurely pace.

After we checked out the outdoor food market at the entrance to the pedestrianized historic center and bought some cheese- and potato-filled savory pastries (local specialties) for lunch, Tony ran back to the parking lot to retrieve the van and pick us and the kids up, as the kids had hit their absolute limit and had become temporarily inert.

When backing the gargantuan rental van out of the parking spot, Tony accidentally struck another car, whose owner happened to be in it! It barely left a scratch on both vehicles' rear bumpers, but Tony understandably freaked out, immediately worrying that this guy would call the cops or something. Instead, the driver was totally cool and told Tony not to worry about it. After Tony collected us, we managed to make it out of the city after making only one wrong turn at a roundabout, and we headed back to the campground for another afternoon of swimming.

The Campground's Food Scene

For dinner we ate at one of the campground's restaurants, Lovor Real Grill, which looked sleek and ultra-modern—all metal, concrete, and glass; sharp angles and shades of grey; with massive, white expensive-looking umbrellas covering the front outdoor seating area; and wispy reed-like plants growing out of beds filled with smooth, white, bead-like pebbles.

The hostess first seemed to be punishing us for turning up without a reservation by insisting the only table that could accommodate all of us was way in a back west-facing corner with zero shade, and direct sunlight cranked on full blast, which felt like a sauna. After Terezia politely pushed back, the hostess had a change of heart and led us back to the much cooler and shadier front patio overlooking a children's playground, and put two tables together to accommodate our group.

The food was pretty good: several of us had fried or grilled calamari (a local specialty), and Simon's hamburger was surprisingly quite tasty. I had the fried calamari, since, as long as it's not the texture of rubber bands, it's usually a safe bet.

Going wild at the campground's restaurant.

What was mildly amusing about this place is that, despite all the effort that went into making it look sleek, modern, and posh, most of the people eating there were, of course, in their extremely casual summer camping attire (flip-flops, t-shirts, shorts, etc.), with one woman wearing nothing but a bikini bottom, white Crocs, and a thin tank top pulled up over one breast which an infant was intently chugging away at. There were a few—notably childless—couples who were trying to class it up a bit, i.e., smug-looking guys in mirrored aviator shades and crisp polo shirts with popped collars, and their wives/girlfriends in ruffle-y tube tops, lightweight/loose slacks, and platform sandals, but the scruffy campers (which included us) had a solid majority on this particular evening.

We went back to this place two nights later, and I opted for the tempura shrimp that came with this truly tasty spicy guacamole aioli sauce. The shrimp were perfectly cooked, delicate, and tender—a thoroughly enjoyable dish (and better than the calamari).

When ordering a glass of local Croatian beer, the waiter asked me if I wanted the regular lager style, or what he described as "that beer with difficult flavor that smells like flower," grimacing as he was saying it, which I thought was one of the most spot-on descriptions of IPA I've ever heard. (For the record, I detest IPAs.) 

Sadly, however, on this second visit, the children's playground in front of the restaurant was completely roped off with handwritten "closed" signs posted up all around it. We were told that a child had badly injured his leg somehow on one of the play structures, and apparently it was bad enough that police came out to investigate it and the campground had to close the playground.

Terezia had brief chats with our friendly waiters from both evenings, and when asking the first one what a certain Croatian phrase she heard meant, he informed her that he was actually from Serbia (and couldn't translate the phrase), and that he just came there to do seasonal work. When chatting with the waiter from the second evening, he said he was from (North) Macedonia and that he, too, just came to do seasonal work. It occurred to us that perhaps a lot of the employees at this and similar campgrounds probably come here from other former-Yugoslavian countries to do seasonal tourist-industry work, which I'm guessing might pay better than whatever they can earn back home.

More Pools and a Water Park

On our final day there, we discovered that next to the sleek aforementioned pool complex is a big water park for kids, with three separate pools and a big play area with two water slides and a series of shower-like nozzles and other contraptions that sprayed water all over you from seemingly every direction.

One of the pools in this area was fairly deep and had a diving board. Simon was instantly drawn to this one, as he had never jumped off a diving board before. He went up onto the board without a shred of fear or hesitation, and jumped right in. He then spent the next hour or so doing nothing but jumping off the diving board fifty million times. It was difficult to tear him away. Both Simon and Tea lamented the fact that we hadn't noticed this place sooner.

The Drive Back

The long drive back to Slovakia was mostly uneventful, except that on a few occasions in Slovenia and Austria, we encountered these sections on the motorway where a lane on our side would be closed due to road work, so they would route the fast lane over into the oncoming traffic's fast lane, and separate this new temporary lane from the oncoming traffic with a thin, low, temporary modular concrete barricade. (The oncoming side's lanes were both shifted to the right, with temporary new lanes, painted in bright orange, extending into the shoulder.) This created an extremely narrow corridor where you had the low modular barricade on your immediate left, and the permanent center divider directly on your right.

There were signs that warned of this in advance, telling you to move right if you're in a larger vehicle because the fast lane would soon narrow to "2.1 meters" wide, and a few times Tony didn't notice the signs until it was too late, and was forced to drive the massive van through these scarily tight, narrow corridors, with inches to spare on either side of the van. One section like this went on for several kilometers, which had Tony extremely tense, gripping the steering wheel so tight I thought he was going to snap it off, and muttering expletives the whole way.

Final Thoughts on the Croatia Trip

We would love to have done a day or morning trip down the coast to Pula or up north to Motovun (two wonderful places we visited back in 2013), but it just wasn't in the cards this time. The kids were so obsessed with being in the water all day that it was hard to keep them away from it, and Tony was so reluctant to drive around in that big-ass van that he refused to do it again after the Rovinj trip. (He was also afraid of losing his prime parking spot right outside his cabin.)

While we were definitely here at least a day longer than I could handle, I tried to adjust my frame of mind and embrace the ability to just relax, swim, and spend time with the book I've been reading (the well-written and engaging autobiography by Wild Swans singer Paul Simpson, called Revolutionary Spirit).

Had it just been us in our rental car, we definitely would have done a few trips to the above-mentioned Istrian towns, regardless of any protests from Simon. If we ever do a trip like this again, we will definitely go separately and use our own rental car so that we can have more freedom of movement and explore more places. It might even be worth checking flights to Pula and local rental car prices, and just stay in a hotel or sobe, and avoid the long drive all together.

This trip may have been less eventful than the 2013 one, but having small children obviously changes the dynamic and limits what one can do, not to mention, there were no hurricane-strength storms to contend with this time, unlike the last Croatia trip.

Click here to see all the photos from this trip so far!