Third night: Rovinj Old Town

  After meeting our attractive manager ( Some very good looking Croatian men here I must say )  and getting the ok to park for an hour in the narrow streets of the old town to unload and bump up the cobblestones to our apartment,  it's just about dusk and the light is sublime.

 All the tiny boats are safely tucked in and we head to the other side of the small peninsula of Rovinj ( which used to be an island ) to park outside the town and see the setting sun.

 Can you believe we are hungry again?   We head to Jeanne's favorite Italian place but really just want a pizza.   The head waiter sends us around the corner to a unprepossessing square.  It is his friend's place aptly called: Amici... a bar/cafe perched on a slope with a few tables outside in the balmy air.

This square fascinates me as none of the houses are painted as they are in the rest of the town.  It looks a little dilapidated but there is a modern tile slab that the children have made their playground.  There are lots of young parents and lots of babies.  It has a wonderful fresh-start feel to it despite the run down appearance.

 Rovinj has an interesting history. According to Wikipedia:



It was from 1283 to 1797 one of the most important towns of Istria under the Republic of Venice. The city was fortified by two rows of walls with three town gates. The remaining town walls date from this period. Close to the pier one can find the old town gate Balbi's Arch, dating from 1680, and a late-Renaissance clock tower. The city got its statutes in 1531.
After the fall of Venice and the Napoleonic parenthesis, Rovinj was part of the Austrian Empire until World War I. According to the last Austrian census in 1911, 97,8% of the population was Italian speaking.Then it belonged to Italy from 1918 to 1947, when it was ceded to SR Croatia within SFR Yugoslavia. During that period many of the Italian inhabitants left the city. 

 I understand the Croats were not treated well by the Italians throughout their late stewardship of the town and perhaps that is why it feels very Croatian now and the Italians have gone.

My God this pizza is good.  The white is not all cheese, its mostly a white sauce (bechamel).  This is a Slovenia style pizza with bacon, peperoncini,  salami and mushrooms.  It is so good and soooo filling.   I leave most of the crust which is a disgusting habit , I know ....I know, but otherwise how does one get past the first 2 slices of a pizza?

We wander home in the dark with Croatian folk songs being blasted from a boom-box nearby.  This seems fitting for the end of an unparalleled and full day in what is becoming a favorite town.