Pula Hoop

Wednesday May 16.  Today we went to the port City of Pula where one of the best preserved Roman amphitheaters stands.  While not as big as Rome's this was more intimate, if that is possible given the intended spectacles, and really stood in contrast to the city that has grown up around it.  The Pula tour was a nice circular one (a hoop of you will) that included a number of Roman artifacts that have survived several millennia and are now integrated into this working city.  We visited a less ancient church and while walking in the expansive and stark basilica we happened upon two secondary alters.  One with Mary and the other with Jesus.  Each had votive(sp) candles for 2Kn and that became a source of questions from the kids.  The first one was, what is that all about?  I did my best to explain that Catholocism teaches that Mary intercedes with God on behalf of the faithful, but that is in conflict with what we read in one of the epistles in the Bible.  I would get you the exact verse, but I have no Internet as of this writing.  The Bible says that there is one intercessor between God and man and that is Jesus the Christ.  He has paid the ultimate price to make us right and our prayers heard before God.  So save your Kn and lift your hearts to God.

The character of our accommodations are consistent with the lodging strategy that typifies our vacations.  That is, look for the cheapest places in the best locations.  I suppose that is how you end up staying in und secret garden.  Granted, sometimes that strategy fails, but not often enough to deter us.  All of our places on this trip have been unique and fun and full of character.   With our apartment in Venice we did take a little gamble.  Some of the reviewers had indicated that the place was dirty, but everything else was in line with our needs so we went for it.  Venice can be a smelly place, but our accomdations took the cake.  The toilet had a serious rock to it so we had a regular venting of sewer gas into our unit.  The kids discovered ants all over the stone wall that their mattress butts up against this morning.  We will see if they make it through the night.  Here is yet another quirk our our place:  we found an unplugged fridge behind a big old door, gave it some power and voila, it worked.  Only catch is, when it rains you have to use an umbrella to get your food out.

Here is our full size rental car, they ran out of midsize, and if this is a full, compact and subcompact are really not going to cut it for our luggage-ness.  We parked this baby in the only free lot in town.  And it looked like the hood so we opened every compartment that could hide anything of worth and prayed for the best.  I also put a Croatian newspaper up on the dashboard to make us look a little more local, even though the plates are from Italy.  I was remarking to Patti about how every page seemed to be about religion and how that must play a bigger role in daily life here.  Then she reminded me that I picked it up in a church, must have been the Diocese Daily.

It was Patti's Birthday today and we celebrated with some home cooked pasta and fresh parm.  Then we let her win a few hands of rummy.

Check the links above right for pics.

Note, not all the pics to date are up, need faster Internet.