Restaurant choices in Istria are huge. Even the tiniest hamlet will usually boast a konoba, serving food of an excellent quality. If you love pasta, gnocchi, stews and truffles, then Istria is definitely for you, as these do form the staples of many restaurant menus. I think it’s also fair to say that quite a […]
What a treat, a day and night away at Hotel Navis, in Opatija, is. Built into a cliff-face, and with all rooms overlooking the sea, it is situated between Rijeka and Volosko, on Preluk Bay – and for us, not too far away from our home in Istria. We spotted the hotel on one of […]
As well as family and friends coming out to visit us in Istria, we now have the opportunity to meet up with people who come to Croatia on holiday. We still find this very exciting as we get the best of both worlds – entertaining and travelling. Good friends from Didsbury were returning to Croatia, […]
Ipša, in their own words, is …a family estate which has been producing extra virgin olive oil and wine for many years…situated in Ipši, a small hamlet surrounded by olive groves in the vicinity of Oprtlaj, a picturesque medieval village in north western Istria… We’re very lucky to live somewhere so close to somewhere that […]
We are so lucky that we now live so close to some amazing places, and that it is now very easy to hop across the border if we fancy doing something in Italy or Slovenia. So, when we saw that Kraftwerk were playing in Ljubljana, having missed the chance to see them when they played […]
We had originally planned to end our winter road trip in Ravenna, in Italy, spending four days at Alighieri Theatre Charming Suite but we felt that we had been on the road long enough, and so, in very nice communcations with Silvia, the owner, decided to postpone until later in the year. However, we also […]
We were up with the larks this morning – no mean feat as our builder popped by late last night to discuss some new ideas (wine & beer were involved) – and packing the car as we’ve never packed before. We’re not instinctively organised travellers. We can arrive on a beach with not a flip […]
…maybe not so hidden, because Bale (or Valle) is well sign-posted on the main road to Pula, but until this weekend, we’d not actually visited it, despite forever saying that we must. So, after spotting a great deal at Hotel La Grisa, we decided to go for it and do the Gourmet Package for €138 […]
Ever since seeing a snowy photograph of Lake Bled, I’ve wanted to visit it. Slovenia has always seemed like one of those faraway places that you read about but aren’t quite sure exactly where it is. Well, we now know, living less than 15 minutes from one of the border crossings from Croatia into Slovenia. […]
One of the the things that excites us massively about now living in northern Croatia, is our proximity to so far undiscovered islands, very close to home. Greece has alway been our favoured destination of island exploration and we’ve never really given the Croatian islands a second thought. Until now… We’ve extensively explored the Istrian […]
We’ve got our first guests staying with us at the moment, friends from West Didsbury. It’s been brilliant to have people we know here and to be able to communicate, once again, without having to speak in Esperanto. In fact, being able to speak without thinking. Without having to compute in your head what might […]
One of the things that we have discovered on our travels, is that flexibility can often mean being able to stay in places that would normally be otherwise a bit too pricey to justify an off-the-cuff trip. We’re very lucky that our circumstances allow us to be flexible and so we’re always on the look-out […]