Spectacular Natural Wonder

Plitvice Lakes National Park - we vote it best national park we've ever visited, with 16 terraced lakes and an incredible maze of planked walkways bringing us up close and personal with these natural beauties.  The water is crystal clear, but even more breathtaking is the forested area that surrounds each of these lakes.  The park, just a few miles from the Bosnian border, was home to the 1990s war between Croatia and Yugoslavia - and on the drive from Pula to Plitvice, bombed out buildings and bullet ridden barns were easily seen from the two lane highway that took us through otherwise beautiful little towns and lush forests.  The park is very well managed, with electric boats and trams to transport from various lakes and trails back to the park hotels - and even with the well designed transport system, we still logged 10 miles of hiking.  True joy!  Enlarge the below photos to get a better glimpse of what this gem of a park has to offer, which really doesn't do it justice.

A sunset stroll

The hotel is at the very top of a hill, so there is an incentive to stroll around the top (to keep from needing to hike back up), which is what we did this evening.  We headed out about half an hour before sunset and were struck by the color and beauty of it, not to mention even though we are probably 50 miles from the coast, we could see the sun reflect off a snip of the Adriatic Sea, wonderful sight.

Truffles and Anthony Bourdain

Anne and I are big Anthony Bourdain fans, especially some of his early work on the travel channel, before moving to CNN.  On his "no reservations" series, he traveled the world and had a much lower key and sometimes off color perspective on things.  It was sad to hear of his passing this year, but we had seen his show on Croatia years ago, which featured a restaurant specializing in truffles (Konoba Mondo) on our list. (https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xqcg4o).  It is all worth watching, but if you want the truffle portion, it starts at minute 7.

Being in Motovun, we had to try it and so glad we did.  This is a big step for Anne, who has a visceral reaction to truffle oil - but here, in the purest of countrysides, no fear - it's only real truffles sniffed out by truffle dogs that are on the menu, not truffle oil.

Arriving in Motovun

Home to the birthplace of Mario Andretti, we drove to Motovun Croatia. This is a beautiful hill town - and so hilly in fact, we had to leave our car in the middle of the hill, and the hotel came and retrieved us - I think they are tired of tourists ruining their beautiful walls in this city that's been around minimally since the first century - reflected by grave stones going back to the Romans.  The area is the Istrian Peninsula, just around the corner from Italy.  It has been part of Italy at times long ago and has the same feel, with a good portion of its 500 residents speaking Italian as their native tongue. A spectacular view of the city driving in.

A protest for breakfast

We arrived Pula on the ferry late in the evening, pleasantly surprised by a very vibrant bustling old town, with its own amphitheater - housing the first night a full week of music festivals.  We decided that we should conquer the town in the morning, so we could enjoy all of its beauty and graceful age with sunrise. 

During our morning scout for food, we decided to grab breakfast in the town square.  We practically had the place to ourselves, and then we heard horns and whistles coming towards us - we thought it was an ambulance - only to learn a group of 200 or so shipworkers (all men) came to the town square with drums, horns, and bazookas to protest something, we couldn't quite understand - but given the way our waiter explained it by rubbing his index and middle fingers against his thumb - it all has to do with money.  They are ship workers, protesting , then a large group of people marched into the square.  One thing we know, they weren't chanting, "we love our employer".  There were news crews following them, so we will need to check out later and see if we can figure out what happened.  The shots below are 1. The protesters first emerging on the square, we thought there would only be a few, but check out 2. The protesters actually assembled in the main square.  No small fete.   Update: From the news, we learned that the shipworkers had not been paid for several weeks - very peaceful protest, considering no paycheck!

The real problem came later when we tried to get an UBER to the airport to pick up our rental car.  The police had shut down all the roads into old town because of the protests and we could not get an UBER for over 30 minutes.  

Off to Croatia

We boarded our ferry to Croatia and it was very nice.  It was a high speed catamaran that was not very full.  We spent time with a professor from Canada and couple from Switzerland.  Very pleasant journey.  It provided us the opportunity to get a good shot of St. Marks square as we headed out.

Molino Stucky Hilton

Sadly, it's time to depart Venice, but we're looking forward to the voyage to Pula where we begin our Croatian visit.  We had a great time and enjoyed learning more about this beautiful city's history, which includes the hotel we're staying in - once home to a "super pasta" factory.  It's called the Molino Stucky and it's so tastefully restored from what was once a flour factory in the 1700s.  Grain was brought in by ship from Eastern Europe and ground into flour.  The main structure of the building was kept in tact, but fully retrofitted starting in the late 1990's and finally completed in 2007 - with a fire during construction,  almost destroying the building in its entirety.  An incredible hotel, current and historic photos below.