Close to all the featuresOur conveniently-located apartment was only a few minutes’ walk to the places of major interest, the river walk, the Ljubljana castle, supermarket, shopping centre, railway and bus station.
Summer tempertures in Ljubljana topped 30C with overnight lows around 20C. We had access to copious quantities of fresh fruit, produce and local foods at the markets.
Our next stop was Rijeka, a two-to-three hour train trip across the border into Croatia. The 1.5km walk to our accommodation looked easy but a combination of the 30C+ heat and carting our luggage up steep hills and a vast number of steps meant we arrived so exhausted we just sorted a few groceries, had lunch and a nap.
We had not heard the best reports about Rijeka. We were told it was industrial and not very tourist friendly, but we found it the opposite.
The temperatures were very warm which made our hiking strenuous. But climbing 140m, including a 500-step stairway up to the old fort, was well worth the effort for the awesome views of the scenery and buildings.
Rijeka had a mixture of older and newer buildings and many derelict factory and industrial sites.
Help yourselves!Our accommodation, a sleep-out at the bottom of a well-tended garden, came with the instructions to help ourselves to anything we fancied. The fresh vegetables were a welcome addition to what we had eaten along the way.
Rijeka, on the northern coast of the Adriatic Sea, was the departure port for the ferry that took us to our next destination, Novalja on the Croatian Island of Pag. Sadly the seating arrangements on the ferry were similar to an aircraft, which limited our views of the picturesque Adriatic coastline.
The island was pumping when we arrived. It seems that it’s always party time on Pag and the students were taking their organised end-of-year, topping up the already huge numbers of summer tourists there.
We stayed one night and saw very little of the island because of the crowds but it was worth the stopover. We were treated to pig on the spit for dinner. The whole dining experience was great. It seemed as if were were expected to eat a whole pig each but not so. It was just real hospitality, the type of quality and cost that makes you hope you can wander that way again.
On our bus trip from Novalja to Split and on to Mostar, we had two bus breakdowns, but even this could not detract from the awesome scenic drive along the Adriatic Coast and inland to Bosnia.
