During our 12 days in Split, we used the time to catch up on some personal priorities. Due to the seasonal slowdown and the marginal weather, we opted not to make any daytrips to Croatia’s numerous island destinations or to Dubrovnik in the far southern corner of Croatia. Split is rich with atmosphere and we …
I visited Rome during a Navy port visit in late 2005 (same deployment as the visit to Split). One of my vivid memories was all the stray cats ‘roaming’ the city. Three years later, we moved to Naples with the Navy. I was excited to sightsee in Rome again but when we got there, the …
In the boomerang shape of Croatia, the southern arm is the region of Dalmatia, tucked between the Adriatic coast and the nation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Dalmatia also includes most of Croatia’s islands. At the north end of Dalmatia is the city of Zadar where we spent five days (yes, that’s a little more than 101 hours). …
Here’s one website’s description of Hum, Croatia: Hum is a fairytale-esque village in Istria known for being the smallest city in the world, situated 14 kilometers from Buzet. This petite village has only 30 inhabitants and 2 streets. Hum’s size may be notable, but the city itself is also a monument of architecture and culture …
As a Navy family, we’ve had our share of atypical Thanksgiving celebrations as a result of deployments and living overseas. Although I am no longer on active duty, this felt like another one of those years. We got up in Pula and had a plan to visit three towns in the central hills of Istria …
For Thanksgiving weekend, we rented a car to see some other places in Istria. We also booked two nights in hotels since our Air BnB in Pula was relatively inexpensive. Like our road trips from Pontevedra, it felt great just heading off with nothing more than a small backpack and leaving behind the bulk of …
When you look at a map, you might see that Croatia is shaped kind of like a boomerang with its capital of Zagreb in the middle surrounded by the region considered to be “Croatia proper”. At the extremity of the northern “wing” is the region of Slavonia. At the extremity of the southern wing is …
Croatia’s capital city of Zagreb has a modern airport which makes a positive first impression even in bad weather. We have grown accustomed to arriving in the rain lately but for the first time in our travels we took a taxi to our hotel instead of walking (okay, we had a rental car in Iceland …
North to go South We checked out of our apartment after 25 days in Pontevedra and walked to the train station one last time for a 1:30 pm train to Madrid. In addition to our numerous walks in Pontevedra, which often took us past the train station, we also made this walk each time we …
We designed our trip with the idea of staying in one place for a month in order to de-compress following a busy and dynamic initial six weeks of travel. We also wanted to pursue some personal and professional goals in tandem with our travels and decided homesteading would help achieve those goals. We chose Pontevedra, …