Roaming to Rovinj

Monday May 14 found us in transit again, this time via auto with a bit of water taxi and pavement bus preceeding that.  Getting out of Venice proved more a challenge then we had planned on.  First, we had intended to arrive in Rovinj about 90 minutes before we had to meet the man at 'the door'.  When we plugged our destination it showed us arriving with 20 minutes to spare.  Sounds fine, but we need to park and then dash 15 minutes through the old city where no cars are allowed.  Confused.  We had checked the timing a few times and could not figure out what was going on.  So out of the rental lot we pull and the first turn was closed for construction.  So, we went straight and waited for the recalculate which naturally instructed us to do a u turn at the turn that was under construction.  When we finally got on a route we were still way off in time.  So we pulled over and looked at the turn by turn directions.  It read like: right 200m, left 1.6km, left 100m, right 150m, and so on all the way to Croatia.  Oops, we had the gps set for toll avoidance, that was a quick fix but were way off course by then and it took some time to correct but we were finally really on our way.

Well, we found to door no problem, it looked as interesting as the picture and our man was there to let us in.  As unique as the door was, that was just the start.  This is the most eclectic, bizarre, random house we have ever seen.  The pictures i have taken are unable to do it justice.   The kids are having a blast exploring it and for about the first hour straight I was hearing "dad, come here and look at this.". It is a 200 year old house that belonged to fisherman and at least the last fisher had quite an imagination.  Apparently this house has been in a Hollywood film, we are still trying to ascertain just which one, I think it would great in a Tim Burton film.  The gate (the door turned out to be a gate) is a huge draw to tourists.  The man who met us said we had to keep it locked because tourists will just wander in, it is just that interesting.  I was leaving once and there were two age 70ish women who were peeping in, when I opened the gate they said (in your best German accent) "und secret garden".  This place is just filled with interesting junk, literally packed.  I suppose who ever lived here went through some hard times (including a war not too long ago) because there is one of everything  in this place.  It is as if the people living here just vanished and we walked in.  The cupboards are full as well as an old refridgerator and deep freezer we found.  It is far from 5 star, maybe maybe a 1.5, but 6 stars in character.  My Dad would appreciate this as being the most outlandish Norge cabin of them all.

The house is right on the beach.  The beach is Rovinj style, meaning climb down a 40 foot cliff and hop off a rock.  No sand or even pebbles here, just skin scraping rock, but the kids and are planning to jump in.  It was a shock in Cinque Terra  to wade into the water, I hope I don't drown jumping in here.

We found another Nazi pill box here and this one we could enter in and give the girls some historical perspective.  This structure was one of the few in town that was tagged (spray painted) and inside it was full of trash and reeked like urine.  Quite a contrast to the rest of old town Rovinj.  I suppose the city fathers are careful to keep this intact as a reminder of the horrors of war and also loathe it at the same time, which may explain its condition.

I forgot to mention that we skipped Pisa on our way to Monterosso because it was going to add a bunch of hassle to our day.  Patti and I have been there before and thought it was to much hassle for the kids to appreciate.  Anyway, I think the leaning tower capital is Venice.  I think 1 out of every 3 towers I saw had some degree (no pun) of lean to them.

You can check out all the pics with the links up on the right.