{"id":1663,"date":"2025-02-02T13:47:27","date_gmt":"2025-02-02T13:47:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reidsguides.com\/rb\/?p=1663"},"modified":"2026-06-08T21:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T21:10:10","slug":"in-search-of-istria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reidsguides.com\/rb\/in-search-of-istria\/","title":{"rendered":"In Search of Istria"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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“Istria is shaped like a heart, and it is the heart and the soul of Croatia.” As I waited for Anna, my host’s English-speaking daughter, to translate this nugget of Istrian wisdom, I took another gulp of the Stoj\u0161i\u0107 family’s Muscat-Malvasia blend. It was pretty good stuff. Strong, too. That was why, explained my host, he had cut it with Malvasia grapes.<\/p>\n

Croatian Accents<\/p>

All those accents are actually pretty easy. Mostly, they just mean to soften the consonant\u2014so a š<\/strong> sounds like a sh<\/em><\/strong>, a ć<\/strong> or č<\/strong><\/em> both sound like a ch<\/em><\/strong>, and a ž<\/strong><\/em> is a slurry z,<\/strong><\/em> like the “s” in meas<\/strong>ure.<\/p><\/div>

“If you drink only Muscat, it will go straight to your head and make you crazy.” Apparently, in diluted form the wine merely drives a man to poetic insights about his homeland.<\/p>\n

The homeland of which Slavko Stoj\u0161i\u0107 is so proud is the Istrian Peninsula, a broad wedge\u2014yes, given enough Muscat you could call it heart-shaped\u2014dangling its spectacular scenery into the northern Adriatic Sea at the point where Slavic, Teutonic, and Italian cultures meet. Its coasts are strung with a necklace of medieval resort villages done in Venetian Gothic. The mist-shrouded interior is a picture-postcard landscape of fortified hill towns separated by a green wash of forests, vineyards, and family farms. <\/span><\/p>\n

One of these farms is the Stoj\u0161i\u0107 family’s Gologori\u010dki Dol, which raises sheep, horses, cows, goats, and chickens, grows fruit, grains, and vegetables, and, as an agroturizam,<\/i> rents out four rustic but comfortable rooms and serves farm-hearty meals. As Anna checked me in for a two-night stay, Slavko appeared in the doorway, wearing a bucket hat and dusty worn clothes and carrying a ham hock. He asked his daughter who the stranger was, then immediately insisted I accompany him to the cellars to share his wine\u2014and learn about the peninsula’s convoluted history and identity.<\/p>\n

“Istria is today in Croatia and in Slovenia,” said Slavko. (Actually, most of it is in Croatia, but after the dust settled from Yugoslavia’s implosion in the early 1990s, Slovenia kept its traditional strip of territory across the north of Istria, including 29 miles of Adriatic coastline.) “Before that it was Yugoslavia,” he continued, taking my wineglass and filling it again, this time with a tangy Teran-Merlot red.<\/p>\n

Eager to show I had read up on their forgotten corner of Europe, I pointed out that Istria had also once been part of Austria, and Slavko nodded. “Yes, and between the world wars it was Italy, and centuries ago it was split between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Republic of Venice.” Slavko leaned in to emphasize his final point.<\/p>\n

“But always, always,<\/i> it was Istria,” he said. “Everything south of Trieste is Istria. It doesn’t matter what the politicians say or what lines they draw on a map.” He poured himself another glass, we toasted the uselessness of politicians, and I settled in for the duration. I knew my plans of sightseeing before lunch were now hopeless\u2014just getting out of this wine cellar before restaurants stopped serving lunch would be difficult. This wasn’t the first time I had been subjected to Istrian hospitality.<\/p>\n

Beachfront Slovenia<\/b><\/p>\n

On my first visit to Piran<\/b>\u2014eight years before, on a daytrip from Trieste just 23 miles to the north\u2014I ended up spending most of my time in the woodsy little Okrep\u010devalnica Cantina, tucked into the corner of a square buried in the backstreets.<\/p>\n

I’d stopped in for just one drink, but when I went to pay for my glass of Teran I asked the kindly older proprietor about tap behind the counter labeled refo\u0161k.<\/i> She smiled and poured me a glass of this light red on the house. Then I asked what the plastic jug of what looked like cloudy grapefruit juice by the register was.<\/p>\n

“Mo\u0161t,” <\/i>she said. “New wine,” and, waving away my wallet, poured me a tall glass of that. Then she asked if I wanted to try the Malvasija<\/i>. It went on like that for an hour.<\/p>\n

This time I was determined not to let Istrian hospitality get in the way of seeing the sights, so I bypassed the cantina and started exploring. Piran\u2014Pirano in Italian (locals frequently use the Italian versions of place names in brochures and conversations with tourists)\u2014follows the general model of most coastal Istrian towns: a jumble of Venetian Gothic buildings terraced along a narrow thumb of land jutting into the Adriatic. <\/span><\/p>\n

Since my last visit the parking lot had been evicted from the center of town and replaced by a pedestrian square paved in marble slabs by the tiny harbor inlet bobbing with fishing boats<\/span>. Kids kicked soccer balls around the modern sculptures populating this new Cartesian expanse. Young couples in sunglasses chatted and compulsively checked their cellphones at outdoor caf\u00e9 tables along one side of the square; on the other, old men gathered around chess boards on the stone benches shaded by the Neoclassical Lo\u017ea.<\/span><\/p>\n

Near my hotel\u2014the waterfront Hotel Piran, where I opted for a cozy mansard twin with sea views in the original Art Nouveau structure over the more amenity-laden, pricier, and blander rooms in the two modern wings\u2014was an outdoor market selling baskets of nectarines and cherries and piles of purple artichokes and local tart kiwis.<\/p>\n

I stopped into the tiny Neoclassical church of St. Peter on Tartinijev trg to marvel at the Crucifix of Piran that looks almost modernist but was carved in the 1300s, and chatted with a photographer who had a show hanging in the quiet 14th-century cloisters of the Friary of St. Francis.<\/p>\n

Singing from the tiny medieval church of St. Stefano echoed through the back alleys as I climbed toward the church of St. George, lording over the topmost point in town. An old woman, swaddled in black, had just finished washing the church steps and bent double to weed the seam where the wall met the cobblestoned street. The interior was a decorous baroque abundance of art and gilded frippery, the titular St. George slaying his dragon in both sculptural and ceiling fresco form.<\/p>\n

Joining the gelato-licking Italian families strolling the waterfront promenade by my hotel, I ended up at Restaurant Pavel. The sound of waves slapping and sucking at the jumbled limestone breakers was louder than the clink of cutlery, and my waiter gently guided my choices to the grilled sole, medley of grilled vegetables, and pala\u010dinke s \u010dokolado<\/i> (crepes smothered in chocolate sauce). He also recommended I sprinkle olive oil and cracked pepper on the tart goat cheese that came with my appetizer platter of salami, pickled veggies, and pr\u0161ut<\/i> (Istria’s rustic cousin to prosciutto, which is really just air-dried ham, heavy on the “dried” part\u2014come to think of it, it falls somewhere between prosciutto and jerky; toothpicks are essential).<\/p>\n

After dinner, I wandered the moonlit alleys of Piran and was drawn, inexorably, to a theatrical little square buried in the backstreets and the wooden tables of the Okrep\u010devalnica Cantina.<\/p>\n

At a bend in the main road leading south out of Portoroz\u2014an awful strip of cement-block hotels south of Piran\u2014a steep cobblestoned lane dives down to the right and ends at the Krajinski park Se\u010doveljske soline,<\/b> a vast plain divided into grids for the evaporation and production of sea salt. In continuous use for at least 700 years, these historic saltpans are operated today as a national park and living museum, its 650 acres still worked by hand using simple tools.<\/p>\n

There’s a museum with interactive displays on the surprisingly fascinating history of salt and the craft of making it, and an on-site shop hawking, naturally, salt\u2014in more varieties than I ever realized existed\u2014plus salt soap, salt mud (for beauty treatments), salt olive oil, and even salt water (honest; it costs \u20ac12.28 a bottle).<\/p>\n

Munching on some salt chocolate (better than it sounds, like a chocolate-covered pretzel without the pretzel), I walked back to my car along the high dirt bank between endless salt pans where barefoot men worked their beds with long poles, sparrows hawked for insects, tiny brine shrimp scuttled through the ponds, and white egrets stalked the waters on black chopstick legs.<\/p>\n

Down the Croatian Coast<\/b><\/p>\n

Even though Pore\u010d<\/b> (Parenzo) has one of the top sights in all of Istria\u2014the glittering 6th-century Byzantine mosaics in the Basilica of Euphrasius\u2014and even though this small city is one of the popular resorts in Istria, there’s little reason to linger after you’ve seen the basilica. Why? Because it is <\/i>Istria’s most popular resort.<\/p>\n

Pore\u010d suffers from mass tourism like nowhere else in Istria. The streets of the historic center\u2014a Roman grid little changed in 2,100 years (the primary thoroughfare is still called Dekumanska, after the Latin for “Main Street”)\u2014are lined with souvenir shops, ice cream parlors, and lackluster restaurants, most of them fronted by noisy touts trying to hustle tourists inside.<\/p>\n

The slippery marble paving slabs of the old center teem with vacationing Italians and Germans\u2014not to mention Austrian, English, and Swedish empty nesters prowling for bargains on rural properties in what’s being touted as the next Tuscany. Most of them stay in the hotel complexes that sprawl in all their terraced cement glory around every (formerly) pretty little cove along this stretch of coast.<\/p>\n

But beyond the tourist blight, once the road south from Pore\u010d turns inland, things get quite a sight nicer. The scraggly Istrian forest is interrupted only by the occasional small vineyard, fields of summer wheat flecked red with tissue paper poppies, or village restaurant roasting entire sheep on outdoor spits.<\/p>\n

Roadside stands offer fresh fruit and vegetables, or honey, olive oil, and rakija<\/i> (the ubiquitous grappa-like brandy that seems to come in more flavors than Baskin Robbins offers), all free for the tasting. Just what the motorist needs: drive-through sales of the local moonshine\u2014with free samples.<\/p>\n

A far better base for the central coast is Rovinj<\/b> (Rovigno in Italian), founded on what was once a (barely) offshore island long since connected to the mainland. Its historic center is the sort of place featured on the covers of guidebooks, an oval of pastel medieval houses rising directly from deep blue waters and swirling in a tangle of alleys up to the 18th-century hilltop church of St. Euphemia, which faces out to sea and spills its terraced gardens down the tip of the peninsula like some grand theater stage.<\/p>\n

For slightly less than what the nearby hotels were charging, I stayed in a gorgeous studio with kitchenette at Alla Porta Antica, a set of apartments in the old town overlooking the sea and run by Svetlana Belyaeva, an Estonian who winters in Northern Italy and lives here during tourist season (ah, the ever-shrinking Europe).<\/p>\n

In the surrounding narrow streets were an outdoor market by the water, women hand-tatting lace in one doorway and little girls trading cards in another, and, 30 feet above my head, neighbors tossing casual conversation from one baroque balcony to the next.<\/p>\n

Rovinj seems to have found the right balance, offering a variety of tourist services without sacrificing itself on the altar of mass tourism. One night I dined at Kr\u010dma Ulika, a tiny boite with six tables, a candlelit ambience, and an ever-changing menu of high-end cooking. The next I dug into simple but abundant staples like njoki<\/i> (potato dumpling pasta) with goulash and a massive mixed grill of chicken, pork, and sausage at the homey Konoba Veli Jo\u017ee, sort of a homespun Istrian T.G.I. Hooligan’s crowded with farm and fishing implements, musical instruments, an old-fashioned diving suit, and other Croatian kitsch.<\/p>\n

You really notice the difference, though, after dinner, strolling the tomb-quiet streets. There are no German tour groups or sun-crisped Italian families, just the moon-slicked limestone of the streets and the rustle of waves against the buildings.<\/p>\n

The Republic of Venice controlled this coastline throughout the Renaissance era, and it planted a bell tower in the style of the one at St. Mark’s in what seems like every town in Istria. The one connected to St. Euphemia on Rovinj’s hilltop\u2014fitted with 190 alarmingly rickety steps up to a glorious panorama across the town and its harbor dotted with islands and boats\u2014is crowned by a statue of St. Euphemia that acts as a weathervane. When she faces inland, it means the humid Jugo<\/i> wind is blowing in from the sea\u2014bad news for fishermen. When she turns to face the sea, it’s a sign of dry Bora<\/i> winds off the mountains and good conditions for sailing<\/p>\n

Of all the boat trips offered on Rovinj’s harbor, a four-hour cruise up the coast and into the Limski Kanal<\/b> is the most popular, possibly because the entrance to this long, skinny bay passes between two nudist camps. Though carved by a (now-vanished) river, not a glacier, Lim Bay is often mistakenly called a fjord.<\/p>\n

This is largely because Kirk Douglas’s 1958 The Vikings<\/i> was filmed here\u2014boats stop for gelato, beer, and souvenir rakija<\/i> at the bay’s only settlement, the Viking restaurant complex opened by the film’s caterer. The Limski also kind of looks like a fjord: eight miles long, just 500 to 800 yards wide, and flanked by steep, heavily forested slopes and limestone ridges riddled with caves once used by pirates (though not, despite what most folks in the area tell you, the British privateer Captain Morgan, who spent most of his career in the Caribbean).<\/p>\n

Large swatches of the bay’s deep green waters have been given over to aquatic farming: black floats marking beds of oyster and black mussels, floating cabins encrusted with seagulls and surrounded by underwater breeding pools for sea bass and bream tended by fish farmers bearing long poles and wearing wide-brimmed straw hats.<\/p>\n

South of Rovinj, Istria begins to flatten out and the ka\u017euni<\/i> proliferate. These drystone beehive huts, used as farm sheds and shepherd shelters, are a prehistoric type of architecture, and the southern tip of the Istrian peninsula is steeped in antiquity.<\/p>\n

The big sight in Istria’s largest city, Pula<\/b> (Pola), looms over the main parking lot: an AD 1st-century Roman amphitheater. Still in breathtakingly good shape, it was once the sixth largest in the Roman world, with a capacity crowd of 20,000. In the dusty center where gladiators once clashed there is a modern stage for summer concerts and theater performances.<\/p>\n

The undercroft, which once held caged beasts and gladiators between shows, is stacked with ancient terracotta amphorae and display plaques boasting of Istria’s tie with Spain as the Roman Empire’s second most prolific producer of olive oil after Italy.<\/p>\n

More Roman ruins are scattered around Pula’s historic center: a temple to Augustus on the main square (still called “Forum”), some floor mosaics excavated behind the modern shopfronts on main drag Ulica Sergijevaca, and, at the end of that street, a Roman city gate decorated with time-bitten reliefs.<\/p>\n

Just inside this gate was the Caffe Uliks, where I had a spiked coffee in memory of James Joyce, whose life-sized bronze likeness kicks back at an outdoor table and who lived here for six months, teaching English to Austro-Hungarian diplomats at the Berlitz school here to finance his writing.<\/p>\n

My favorite ancient site in Pula was the least ballyhooed\u2014a much-decayed ancient Roman theater tucked between the unremarkable archaeological museum and the hilltop castle (a squat, no-nonsense defensive star bristling with cannon and offering panoramic views and exhibits on local traditions).<\/p>\n

The theater is clearly a place of escape from the urban hubbub. Birdsong mingles with the distant buzz of scooters. Teenagers sprawl across the ancient seats of the cavea,<\/i> smoking, fingering their dreadlocks, and watching the occasional local resident pass through walking a dog. Tiny brown-and-white snails cling to the thistle growing between cracks in the lichen-spotted limestone of the ancient masonry<\/p>\n

In Pula’s southern suburbs, with a view of the ocean, is one of Istria’s finest boutique hotels. Everything at the Valsabbion is done in postmodern chic, from the 26-foot hydromassage pool in the glassed-in rooftop spa to the designer d\u00e9cor of the rooms, which they change every few years but at the time of writing was rigorously black and white with red accents.<\/p>\n

For more than a decade, the meals served al fresco on the flagstone patio have earned the Valsabbion “Best Restaurant in Croatia” nods from top international gastronomic guides. Menus change constantly, with \u00e0 la carte dishes starting around $20\u2014a price that will get you a full meal in much of Istria\u2014and tasting menus for around $80. Then there’s the Menu d’Autore:<\/i> a marathon of 12 courses featuring their finest concoctions paired with glasses of five different Istrian wines for $110. The dinner lasts for hours, each course more wonderfully odd than the last. (I’m trying to decide which was quirkier, the single clam backed inside a huge cylinder of black salt, or the raw steak pounded into a p\u00e2t\u00e9 and cooked by blowtorch at the table.)<\/p>\n

The Valsabbion was a lovely hotel with impeccable service. However, a big city and a boutique hotel weren’t really the Istria I’d come to experience. I\u2019d also had my fill of these picturesque fishing ports overrun by beach-besotted packaged tourists. It was time to get to the medieval hill towns and farmland at the heart of the peninsula.<\/p>\n

Back to the Center<\/b><\/p>\n

Gologori\u010dki Dol<\/b>\u2014where Slavko Stoj\u0161i\u0107 rhapsodized about Istria in the half-light of his wine cellar\u2014was a clutch of stone buildings at the end of a dirt road that wound past vineyards and a stream beside which grazed horses, goats, cattle, and one very noisy donkey. It’s a working farm (before you book, remember: you can’t hit the snooze button on a rooster), and they don’t seem to realize the overkill of feeding their guests the same hearty, rib-sticking meals they do their farmhands.<\/p>\n

Dinner consisted of comically ample portions of corn soup with beans, potatoes, and carrots followed by homemade potato njoki<\/i> in a rag\u00fa described to me as “bambi sauce.”<\/i> (Apparently, “bambi” is the Croatian term for any fawn under six months of age; for the record, Bambi was delicious.)<\/p>\n

They don’t let up at breakfast, either. While Slavko and his early-rising gaggle of cousins and farm workers washed down lunch rations with beer and rakija<\/i> at one end of the long picnic table, his sister-in-law Marlena sat me at the other end and provided a plate piled high with scrambled eggs\u2014studded with chunks of cheese and thick strips of what must have been half a pr\u0161ut<\/i> hamhock\u2014accompanied by strong coffee and amazing fried dough rings called peka<\/i>. They were delicious, they were clearly quite bad for you, and I insisted Marlena stop bringing them to me after the second basketful.<\/p>\n

I worked off some of Gologori\u010dki Dol’s bounty by exploring the hill towns of the interior. The provincial capital of Pazin<\/b> is an oversized cow town with a 10th century castle sprawled along the lip of a gorge slashing right though the center of town. Lofty Motovun<\/b> is picture-perfect from afar, but packed with souvenir shops and tour bus hordes once you get there. Gro\u017enjan<\/b> is an eerily preserved village of 80 residents and 40 art studios and galleries (the government invited the artists in years ago to revive the dying town). In tiny Beram<\/b> I learned that if you want to see the floor-to-ceiling medieval frescoes in the chapel outside town\u2014every village in the Istrian interior seems to have one of these, and Beram’s St. Mary of the Rocks is one of the most famous\u2014you need to find the person with the key, or klju\u010d,<\/i> pronounced klee-yooch. (In Beram the keymaster is Sonja, who lives at #38 on the town square and is not shy about dropping hints regarding tips.)<\/p>\n

As is usually the case, though, it was the smaller towns barely mentioned in the guidebooks (if at all) that proved the most rewarding. In the medieval hamlet of Dragu\u0107,<\/b> where cats appeared to outnumber people by a factor of three to one, I parked on the main square next to the bell tower, marched past a trio of old men sitting on a ledge, and asked the two women lounging at picnic tables outside the lone bar\/restaurant “Klju\u010d Sveti Roka?”<\/i> They pointed to a nearby door, so I went over to knock. The tapping echoed around the dining room I could see through the window, but there was no answer. I knocked again, harder, and called out “Dobar Dan?”<\/i> (Hello?) Nothing.<\/p>\n

I began to wander away when one of the old men jumped up and waved me back over, joining me at the door. He opened it up and bellowed something into the dark interior. There was a scraping noise from upstairs followed by a wavering crackle of a voice. He hollered again, and I heard the words Sveti Roka<\/i>. <\/i>He smiled at me and hustled back to his spot on the ledge.<\/p>\n

Eventually an ancient woman who couldn’t have been more than four feet tall emerged with a big, watery smile. I asked her for the kljuc\u010d<\/i> to the chapel of Sveti Roka, and she disappeared, reemerging with a giant skeleton key and a pantomimed admonishment to be sure I locked the door behind me. I waved the klju\u010d<\/i>triumphantly as I passed the three men, and they waved back; then they and the women at the bar all pointed to an arch between two buildings I probably would never have bothered trying in my search for the church.<\/p>\n

The lane beyond led past stony houses to a promontory with a 300-degree panorama over the valley below. Set just back from the lip was a miniscule church, its porch positioned for the view. I wrestled the giant key into the lock, stepped inside, and found myself surrounded by floor to ceiling frescoes\u2014shopworn and sun-faded in places, with graffiti scratched into much of it, but still spectacular. There were scenes from the Passion,<\/i> the Massacre of the Innocents,<\/i> and the Baptism of Christ<\/i> all populated by local people in medieval garb, an Annunciation<\/i> featuring a big white dog, and a Technicolor Trinity.<\/i><\/p>\n

The keymaster of Dragu\u0107 didn’t answer when I returned to the village square, which was now empty, but her door was still wide open, so I crept inside, left the key on her dining room table, and retired to the bar for an espresso.<\/p>\n

The road to Hum<\/b> is called Glagolite Alley, and every few hundreds yards there’s a little gathering of modern sculptures done in the style of miniaturized prehistoric monuments. These are meant as an homage to the history of Istrian literature and Glagolitic script\u2014Istria’s homegrown forerunner to the Cyrillic alphabet that was used locally from the 9th to the 18th centuries and bears a passing resemblance to Klingon. However it’s hard to shake the image that they look like nothing so much as the woefully undersized Stonehenge prop in This Is Spinal Tap.<\/i><\/p>\n

Hum banks on its Guinness Book <\/i>status as “The Smallest Town in the World,” and it is, indeed, pretty tiny: one street, one back alley, a main square, three souvenir shops, and 17 residents packed into a circlet of 16th-century walls under the guard of a tall bell tower, the sides of which were being weeded by a man dangling in a climbing harness. Still, I’ve seen crossroads towns in America with fewer buildings, so I asked Aleksandra Rigo, the garrulous owner of the Ethno Shop, what netted Hum the smallest town title.<\/p>\n

“It has everything a town requires,” she said. “From the Middle Ages it had the prefect\u2014like a mayor\u2014two churches, the council of wiseguys, and the army.” I gently corrected her “wiseguys” to “wise men,” explaining the difference in English, and without missing a beat she pointed out that it worked either way, since, “Everywhere, when the government is in issue, there must be a little mafia.<\/i>“<\/p>\n

Apparently it was the concept of democratically electing a town mayor that sealed the deal with the Guinness folks, which may explain why Hum revived this old tradition in 1977. A plaque on the little loggia overlooking the main square showed a photograph of the “voting rod,” which looked like a half-finished spindle or baluster from a staircase. “Every June, we pick this guy, who is like the boss for one year,” said Aleksandra. “But this is now only a title, nothing else.” She grinned. “Still, we have a party, and we drink a lot of biska.”<\/i><\/p>\n

Ah. The biska.<\/i> Perhaps I should mention that, throughout our conversation, Aleksandra was keeping up the Istrian tradition of force-feeding visitors shots of the local cordial. In Hum’s case this is a mistletoe-infused herbal rakija<\/i> called biska<\/i> that she claims helps lower blood pressure (also inhibitions and, given enough, your entire body to the floor). The biska<\/i> she poured me was the sickly yellow of a wolf’s eye, its taste an odd combination of bittersweet, sour, and that burning sensation that means you’ve just destroyed 10,000 brain cells.<\/p>\n

“I put in a little honey, because without honey it is too sharp, too like medicine,” said Aleksandra as my vision swam briefly. “This is medicine, but why make it ugly? Let’s make it beautiful, no?”<\/p>\n

I agreed. No shop, restaurant, or roadside stand in Istria will let you escape without sampling its variation on herbed brandy, so I\u2019d already tried a rakija<\/i> with kopriva<\/i> (mistletoe). Without the honey, it tastes exactly like that nasty yellow cough syrup you used to get, before the discovery of cherry flavoring.<\/p>\n

I had a sunset dinner on the panoramic terrace of Humska Konoba around the side of the town walls: a platter of pr\u0161ut<\/i> and truffled cheese followed by a bean, corn, and chickpea soup with spicy sausage. For dessert I couldn’t resist the Istriche supa,<\/i> an “Istrian soup” of mulled red wine poured over toasted bread along with pepper, olive oil, and lots of sugar served in the traditional wide-mouthed ceramic jug. It was powerful in every sense of the word, and a marvelous throwback to ancient times, when Romans would often toss a piece of charred bread into their red wine (the charcoal softens the wine’s acidity). This, incidentally, is why the ritual of raising our glasses and saying a few words at the start of a meal is called “the toast.”<\/p>\n

I was walking back to my car when I heard the music. Strains of guitar, accordion, and singing were flowing up over the high walls of Hum.<\/p>\n

Two dozen people had mustered on the main square, singing folk songs and passing around large earthen jugs of biska.<\/i> As three women got a grill going, the music petered out and the crowd started, apparently, rehearsing a play. The little loggia overlooking the square served as a stage, the stone wall in front of the church an audience gallery.<\/p>\n

People seemed to float in and out of the recitation, most of the time tossing what were quite clearly verbal insults at the performers from the peanut gallery sitting along the wall, but occasionally strolling over to take up a role, read a few lines off a script, then return to the wall to sip their biska<\/i> and crack wise. Some of the performances were wooden, some melodramatic. Many suffered from a biska<\/i>-induced mumble.<\/p>\n

I had no clue what the proceedings meant until someone produced the spindle of power. Ah. They must be rehearsing for the upcoming selection of a new mayor. I watched for half an hour and never could figure out whom they were planning to elect, but it didn’t really matter. I was sitting under the stars on a medieval stone wall in the world’s smallest town, with the smell of grilled meat wafting across the square, watching what could charitably be called the world’s worst actors keep up an 800 year tradition of democracy.<\/p>\n

Then someone passed me the jug of biska.<\/i> <\/span><\/p>\n

Perfect.<\/p>\n

BOX: Istrian Practicalities<\/b><\/p>\n

Getting there:<\/b> The only useful international service into the Pula airport is Ryanair’s flight from London Stansted, three times weekly starting at $8.80 (that’s not a typo; that’s a low-cost airline; ryanair.com). The airport is also served by Croatia Airlines (croatiaairlines.com) and Air France (airfrance.com), but flights from North America require at least 2 or 3 transfers. <\/span><\/p>\n

It’s far better to drive<\/b> in from a major city outside of Istria. The closest big city gateway is Trieste, Italy, just a few miles across the border (some consider its southern suburbs part of Istria). Ljubljana, Slovenia, is less than two hours away by car, and Venice, Italy, and Zagreb, Croatia, are both within a four-hour drive.<\/p>\n

You can also grab a boat from Italy.<\/b> Hydrofoils from Venice (011-39-041-242-4000 in Italy, 011-385-(0)52-422-896 in Croatia, www.venezialines.com) head to Pore\u0107 (2 hr. 30 min.) with sailings once or twice a week in April and October, increasing to almost daily\u2014twice a day on weekends\u2014in July and August. The service also connects Venice with Piran, Rovinj, and Pula, but with less frequency (it varies, but at least weekly) and slightly shortened sailing seasons. From late April to late September there’s also a coastal ferry from Trieste (011-39-0923-873-813, www.triestelines.it), twice daily except Sundays, with stops in Portoroz\/Piran (45 min.), Porec\u0107 (2 hr. 15 min.), and Rovinj (3 hr. 15 min.).<\/p>\n

Getting around:<\/b> Buses connect most towns, as do some ferries, but the peninsula is best explored by car. Istria is not big\u2014you could leave Trieste after breakfast, drive all the way to Pula, and be back in Italy in time for lunch\u2014but it’s packed with riches that can easily eat up a week. <\/span><\/p>\n

Invest in a good, recently published map as soon as you arrive. Many maps available outside Istria don’t yet show all sections of the Y-shaped Ipsilon highway, completed in 2006. Besides, some of the best days in Istria are those spent exploring back roads and tiny towns, so you’ll want a detailed map.<\/p>\n

Tourist info: <\/b>There a lot of good information at the achingly slow www.istria.hr; their main office is at Poinirska 1 in Porec (011-385-(0)52-452-797). Major towns each have their own tourist info office:<\/p>\n

Piran,<\/b> Tartinijev trg 2, 011-386-(0)5-673-4440, www.portoroz.si <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Porec,<\/b> Zagrebacka 9, 011-385-(0)52-451-293, www.istria-porec.com<\/p>\n

Rovinj,<\/b> Obala Pino Budicin 12, 011-385-(0)52-811-566, www.istria-rovinj.com<\/p>\n

Pula,<\/b> Nikole Tesle 1, 011-385-(0)52-219-197, www.istria-pula.com<\/p>\n

Pazin, <\/b>Franine i Jurine 14, 011-385-(0)52-622-460, www.tzpazin.hr<\/p>\n

Sidebar<\/b><\/p>\n

Activities<\/b><\/p>\n

Krajinski park Se\u0107oveljske soline, Piran\/Portoroz<\/b><\/p>\n

011-386-(0)5-672-1330, soline.si, or kpss.si<\/p>\n

Delfin Excursions, Rovinj <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Docked in front of the Adriatic Hotel, off trg Marsala Tita, Rovinj, 011-385-91-514-2169, Limski Kanal tours daily at 2pm, 150 kn.<\/p>\n

Roman Amphitheater, Pula<\/b><\/p>\n

Daily 8am\u20139pm, 40kn.<\/p>\n

Stay<\/b><\/p>\n

Hotel Piran, Piran<\/b><\/p>\n

Stjenkova 1, Piran, 011-386-(0)5-676-2100, hoteli-piran.si, from \u20ac82.<\/p>\n

All Porta Antica Apartments, Rovinj<\/b><\/p>\n

Ribarski prolaz 4, 011-385-996-801-101, portaantica.com; from \u20ac60\u2013\u20ac90, depending on season (stays shorter than 3 or 5 nights, depending on season, invoke a \u20ac20 fee).<\/p>\n

Valsabbion, Pula<\/b><\/p>\n

Pjescana uvala IX\/26 (a southern suburb of Pula), 011-385-(0)52-218-033, valsabbion.hr, from \u20ac81.<\/p>\n

Gologori\u0107ki Dol, Cerovlje<\/b><\/p>\n

Golgoricki Dol 6, 011-385-(0)52-684-625, from TK kn.<\/p>\n

Dine<\/b><\/p>\n

Restaurant Pavel, Piran<\/b><\/p>\n

Pre\u0161ernovo nab, 011-386-(0)5-674-7101<\/p>\n

Okrep\u0107evalnica Cantina, Piran<\/b><\/p>\n

Trg 1 Maja 10, 011-386-(0)5-673-3275<\/p>\n

Kr\u0107ma Ulika, Rovinj <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Vladimira \u0160valbe 34, 011-385-(0)52-818-089, ulika.hr<\/p>\n

Konoba Veli Jo\u017ae, Rovinj<\/b><\/p>\n

Svetog Kri\u017ea 3, 011-385-(0)52-816-337<\/p>\n

Caffe Uliks, Pula<\/b><\/p>\n

Trg Portarata 1, 011-385-(0)5-221-9158.<\/p>\n

Humska Konoba, Hum<\/b><\/p>\n

Hum, 011-385-(0)52-660-005, hum.hr.<\/p>\n

Konoba Astarea, Brtonglia<\/b><\/p>\n

Ronkova 9, 011-385-(0)52 -774-384, konoba-astarea-brtonigla.com<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dangling into the Northern Adriatic is a land that’s not quite Italy, not quite Croatia, but marries the best of both. Its medieval hilltowns, vine-clad slopes, and Venetian fishing ports are less crowded than the popular Dalmatian Coast\u2014and less expensive than Italy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[94,17],"tags":[12,30,85,39,98,24,70,28],"class_list":["post-1663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazine","category-travel","tag-article","tag-budget-travel-magazine","tag-croatia","tag-europe","tag-feature","tag-magazine","tag-road-trip","tag-travel"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reidsguides.com\/rb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reidsguides.com\/rb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reidsguides.com\/rb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reidsguides.com\/rb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reidsguides.com\/rb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1663"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/reidsguides.com\/rb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2387,"href":"https:\/\/reidsguides.com\/rb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1663\/revisions\/2387"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reidsguides.com\/rb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reidsguides.com\/rb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reidsguides.com\/rb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reidsguides.com\/rb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}