From Green to Blue

After spending a lovely time in green Istria, we drove to Rovinj on the southern coast of Istria. Since this area is located on the coast and around the water, it is aptly named Blue Istria.

Rovinj is a seaside town that is split into the old town (which is pedestrian only) and new town where you see a lot of newer developments and construction. This is similar in the way that Dubrovnik was split up with the old town and newer surrounding areas.

Our suite that we stayed at in Rovinj was very nice and right in the heart of the old town. However, we didn’t know this until we spent a day or two wandering around. This is because Rovinj is, like many other cities we visited, a bit of a maze. It was very easy to get lost in and lose your sense of direction.

Wandering was part of the fun, though! Rovinj is a town of artists and you can find everything from paintings, to ceramics, to jewelry, to you name it. There were so many art storefronts that we spent a few hours checking out the shops and admiring the artists’ work. We really liked this one painter, C.B. Schneider, but didn’t know how we’d get any of his work home. They were really beautiful pieces!

We did buy some art, though! We stumbled upon this shop that sold the most beautiful light fixtures made out of ceramic. We wanted to buy out their entire shop with a number of things they had. However, we settled on buying two new pendant lights that will make great additions to our bedroom as bedside lights. Yay!

Another really cool thing we did in the city was a traditional Turkish coffee experience. Neither Nicole or I had ever tried Turkish coffee (and, admittedly, had no idea what it was) so when we saw a coffee shop by our hotel advertising it, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity. What we learned was that Turkish coffee is essentially boiled coffee grinds that get poured into a copper mug with the end result being the strongest coffee you have ever tasted. The Turkish Delights were a nice touch to get rid of the bitter taste from the coffee.

A Michelin Star Experience

Nicole and I are wannabe foodies, for sure! We love trying new foods and food experiences. Lucky for us, Rovinj has the only Michelin star restaurant in all of Croatia. We heard about it when we were planning our trip so we made a reservation months prior to leaving. It was one of the highlights in Rovinj we were looking forward to.

So what’s the fuss about Michelin stars?

You can read all the details about the Michelin rating on Wikipedia but the main thing to know is that there are 1-star, 2-star, and 3-star ratings—and they’re incredibly hard to earn. How hard? There are less that 200 restaurants with a single Michelin star, let alone two or three, in the whole world.

Basically, if a restaurant has a Michelin star, it’s considered excellent in all things from service, to atmosphere, to the food. The whole experience needs to be flawless.

And yes, it’s the same Michelin as the car tire company. Who knew way back when they started a restaurant guide, that a tire company would set the de facto standard for the best restaurants in the world?

Anyways, back to our Michelin restaurant, Monte.

The whole dinner experience was unlike any we’d ever had. From the second you sit down, there are servers catering to your every need without you even realizing it. Almost immediately after getting to our seat we had drinks being brought out, a couple small amuse bouche’s from the chef, and were greeted and welcomed by the manager of the restaurant who explained the menu to us and answered a few questions. Before we even had our first course, I was already impressed.

We opted for a seven course meal and decided that since we were on our honeymoon, that we’d splurge (as if we weren’t already) and get each course paired with wine.

I won’t get into the details of every dish but will say that everything we ate was delicious and the presentation of each was really beautiful, intricate, and just creative on a culinary level we’d never experienced before. Probably the most memorable example was our dessert. When we read the menu for dessert, it said:

Eggplant and tomato compote, meringue, yogurt, origano ganite, and almond powder.

Now, I don’t know about you, but it didn’t exactly jump off the page for me when thinking about dessert. However, once we took our first bite, it completely surprised us and was amazing! Possibly one of the best desserts I’ve ever had. But enough talking about the food. I’ll let the photos tell the rest of the story here.

Sights and Tastes of Pula

While in green Istria, we also ventured outside of Rovinj to visit some of the surrounding areas. One place we visited was the city of Pula so that we could see the Pula Arena which is the sixth largest of the surviving Romans arenas left in the world and constructed in 27 BC–68 AD (yea, it’s old!). The Pula Arena is also one of the best preserved Roman amphitheatre which still has its four side towers and all three Roman architectural orders still intact.

We loved taking in the history of the colosseum in Rome a couple years ago so we thought it’d be fun to see the one in Pula.

While visiting, we were surprised to find out that outside of being a top tourist spot for the area, the arena is still used to this day for events, concerts, and other types of shows. In fact, as you can see in the photos, the venue was being used as a meeting spot for what looked like a meetup of scooters and bikes from all over Croatia and even surrounding countries.

If you’ve been following our trip and read our other posts, then you know by now that we’re big fans of wine. So as we travelled around Croatia, we visited a number of wineries to taste the local wines. One of those wineries was Wine Station Trapan. We were fortunate that we were the only ones there so we got to hang out with the owner/winemaker and taste a flight of wines with snacks. All the wines here we consistently delicious. In fact, we left with 5 bottles.

The next day, we decided to go do another tasting. But not for wine. Istria is know from some of the best olive oil in the world so we stopped by Brist to take a tour of their olive grove and to learn (and taste) their different oils. First off, if anyone is in the area, we highly recommend visiting Brist. Our guide, Paul, was fantastic and taught us so much about olive oil. You can tell he is really passionate olive oil. The whole company is family run with 3 different generations working and helping make the oils.

It was interesting to learn all the about the differences in olive oils and how they are different. Especially, about how many of the oils in North America and falsely advertised as extra virgin olive oil and are actually of poor quality. We also learned what to look for when tasting oils back home to help us find good quality oils.

And this brings us to the end of our Croatian adventure. From here, we dropped off our car and caught a midnight shuttle to the Venice airport so that we could continue on our adventure. Next stop, Santorini, Greece for the last week of our honeymoon. Stay tuned!