Road Trippin'

Yesterday we took most of the day driving up from Zadar to Rovinj, which is in the Istrian peninsula of Croatia.

We left our digs in Zadar in the morning, loaded up Otto (our car), scarfed down some leftover pizza and were on our way.

We took the Croatian equivalent to Big Sur and drove along the water, through lots of little coastal towns and tiny marinas.  The landscape became driier and rockier with less vegitation.

A side note about Croatian drivers:  they will tailgate the shit out of you.  Also, honking is more "hey buddy!" than it is "move bitch, get out the way".

After a few hours on the road and a fill up of Eurodiesel, it was time for lunch so we stopped at an adorable seaside town called Senj (pronounced 'sane'.  Like 'insane'.  Like 'we had lunch and it was in Senj').  Turns out, Senj's waterfront restaurants are essentially Adriatic biker bars - hordes of German and Austrian tourists parking their bikes and hobbling around in their leathers and Kevlar.  After a quick lunch and the obligatory ice cream, we picked up some postcards and were back on the road.

As we drove further and further into Istria, the vegitation became greener.  Istria is known for 3 things - wine, olive oil, and black truffles.  After 5 1/2 hours on the road, we pulled into our apartment in Rovinj (pronounced like 'ravine'), parked Otto and dropped our things.  Our host recommended a restaurant by the water, just a 10 minute walk from our apartment.   

We headed down, found a seat and watched the sun set with a fantastic bottle of chardonnay.

We indulged in schnitzel and a very rare steak and chocolate cake, then grabbed a cab and headed home, all of us falling asleep early, excited for the following day.

CAVEAT: one thing we've noticed that look pretty stupid, are these sticks with pincers at the end that people put their phones in to more easily facilitate selfies.  So dumb.  In our opinion they rank up there with taking photos with your full size iPads.