Loving Croatia

After our 24 hours in Zagreb, we bee-lined for the coast. Home is currently a little seaside resorty village called Opatija. We decided to make this our base from which to explore the area for a few days. Yesterday found us travelling through a 6km long tunnel to a nearby village with a very well preserved Medieval castle, and following that; winding our way to the top of a hill to visit an ancient walled city. It is impressive to me to see such old structures still standing, but what is even more baffling is seeing people living in some of these draughty and often crumbling old dwellings. Clotheslines are drilled into walls of stone that are hundreds of years old and general household noise such as the din of a vacuum cleaner can be heard drifting down into the cobbled streets. It is ordinary modern life in a medieval setting.
After checking out the amazing views from the walled city on the hill we descended upon a neighbouring village called Livade. Livade owes it’s existence and it’s fame in Croatia to the gastronomically revered truffle! The world’s largest white truffle was found in this region and gave birth to one of Croatia’s best restaurants Zigante! The truffle made it into the Guinness Book of World records and was about the size of a human brain. The first round-about in the town even has a truffle statue in the middle! Despite our casual "sightseeing attire" the restaurant graciously welcomed us for a late lunch. The entire menu was based on truffles. Almost every course saw the waiter shaving fresh slices off a tennis ball sized truffle onto our plates, he even graced our ice cream dessert with truffle.
Cue the truffle hunters…..
On our drive home from lunch, Adam spotted a woman digging around in a field with a dog. I thought he was delusional when he suggested she might be truffle hunting. For those of you who haven’t heard of this peculiar fungus, here is a link that describes more about it’s collection: http://www.cnn.com/TRAVEL/PURSUITS/FOOD/9908/truffle.lat/

Further down the road we saw more people with dogs and little spades. We pulled off and approached one of the purported truffle hunters. Sure enough, he rather disappointedly produced a white truffle the size of a large marble (which by our approximations would have retailed for approximately $50). We were amazed- it was almost like the whole experience had been staged.

Today we decided to drive to one of the many islands for a day of beaching. We stopped at a tourist office to ask if there was a quiet beach on the island. The agent laughed at the suggestion and then pointed us in the direction of a “quieter” beach. We had to park a little ways from the beach and walk in.

Here is my thought process as we approach the beach:
Seeing naked children playing in the sand..
Hmm, children really grow up differently here in Europe, very free.
Seeing naked man standing on sand…
Well Europeans ARE well known for naked sunbathing
Seeing another naked man frolicking in the water…
I’m glad to see the nudies are having a good time
Realizing that the other 300 people have not a shred of clothing…
Priceless.

“To cover everything else there’s Mastercard” ...if only you had pockets!
I guess the lady at the tourist office misunderstood the definition of “quiet”
Funny thing is, it took me a minute or so to convince Adam that it was a nude beach. I guess his eyes are failing.
Eventually we found a little spot on the sand, and had a dip. Adam being the good sport that he is, decided to camouflage by removing his shorts, forgetting how cold the water had been…let's just say Mastercard would've covered it. For obvious reasons his back got a great tan.

So far, we have already established a small collection of observations about Croatia:
-Every small restaurant we dine in seems to play Elvis (we think it has something to do with our presence)
-The Croatians are very nice, polite, and happy to help out
-Croatians give the elusive letter “Z” a reason to exist- it is used numerous times in every sentence
-Croatian wine is fantastic and cheap
-Mr. Ed is not a television character in this country (A horse is a horse of course of course, unless he is the main course)
-The speed limit is as fast as you can go without dying