Rovinj and Vrsar

After a long awaited sleep in a quiet room, we started the second day of our tour well rested. After breakfast, we went on a tour of west coast of Istra. We went by blue and green lagoon, Roman canal, Pirates cove, Vrsar nudist beach and camp for 12,000 visitors, and ended in Rovinj. It took us about two and a half hours to get there. Before we left the boat for the tour, we had lunch, fish from the grill on the boat while slowly sailing around the city.

In Rovinj we saw church of St. Eufemija. She was born in Kanceldon, in little Asia. During the reign of Czar Diocletian, she was suffered martyrdom because of her faith, and died as a young girl in 304. Her body was preserved in marble sarcophagus in Kanceldon, and then in Carigrad until year 800. Then icon-fighters came to power, and the remains in the sarcophagus were in danger. A myth says that the sarcophagus disappeared from Carigrad and appeared on the coast of Rovinj in late 800 and is kept there ever since.

Paula is also famous for its film festival, so many streets are adorned with theatrical decorations.
Next we went with the boat back to Vrsar and spent some three and a half hours on the beach. The water was maybe 19 degrees Celsius and was much cleaner than in Makarska. The beach is made of small pebbles, but mom and I swam over to a small Island on the other side of the cove and there were some sand beaches there.



We wanted to have a coffee in the restaurant on the beach, and had a very unpleasant experience. There were only a couple of occupied tables on the terrace out of maybe 20 of them. We approached one to check out the menu and then walked along the fence to pick a table with most shade. We asked a lady who brought food to table next to us if they accept credit cards, and she told she has to ask inside. When she went in, mom overheard a man inside say: “they were picking where to sit for half an hour, now let them wait!” I told her it can’t be about us, we weren’t taking long and how could someone be so rude to the customers. Few minutes later a man passed us and went to serve people at another table who got there after us. When he came to us, mom asked him if he was the one commenting (komentarisao) inside. He first corrected her saying that he didn’t “komentarisao” (Bosnian) but “komentirao” Croatian. I thought this was already rude to correct the language as we were not speaking right, something that he for sure wouldn’t say to another stranger who spoke a foreign language. Then he continued to tell us how we were picky where we’ll sit, and he had to wait on us to sit until he can serve us. (we don’t have the same word in Bosnian, but isn’t waiting on someone really serving them?) I tried to tell him that it’s his job to wait and not push customers away with comments like those, and we just left the restaurant. I am usually very tolerable at people’s comments, but I thought this was totally uncalled for, and it would never happen if we spoke some other language.
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We had less than an hour to get ready for dinner, after which they had a musician play while most of us set on the terrace and getting acquainted with each other. He was upset people weren’t inside listening and dancing, but without the AC in the hotel, the tables outside were just so much more inviting.