On the north rim of the Limski Kanal is Aeropark Vrsar, a private airfield, open to the public, that offers skydiving, scenic flights and, if you care to spend longer, flying lessons. It also has a museum of oldtimer planes parked behind the hangar. The airfield belongs to Rajko Tomašić. It has a 700m paved…
The long narrow inlet between Rovinj and Vrsar is a very distinctive natural feature in the landscape. If you’re driving from Bale in the south to Poreč, as we were, you have to cross it one way or another. It’s a spectacular canyon, and well worth taking the time to see it properly. Lim gets…
From Bale, it was an easy day trip to the island of Brijuni, a place we had long wanted to visit. Since the 1990s it’s a National Park that anyone can go to, but before that, it was the summer residence of Yugoslavia’s President Tito and off-limits to all but government officials and foreign dignitaries.…
From Rijeka, we follow the coast road down trough Opatija and Lovran, enjoying the old Austro-Hungarian buildings and gardens, and the views over the Kvarner gulf and the islands floating out there. Although it’s around midday, the clouds are still dark and heavy after the storm, but we can see it clearing as we head…
We’re very lucky in Vrboska to have such a thriving community of boat owners, enthusiastically keeping the heritage of the traditional wooden boats alive. Sadly that’s not so everywhere on the Adriatic coast, where generic fibreglass boats are now the norm. So, it’s good to have an exhibition of the next best thing – a…
Our final cultural destination in Istria (at least for this trip) is a visit to the truly wonderful frescoes in Beram. These are not in the parish church in the town centre, but in a tiny chapel in the graveyard, just a little way out of town. This is the church of St Mary on…
The name Dvigrad means “two town”, or perhaps “twin towns”. It’s tucked away in the Drago valley, which leads from Pazin to the sea. The actual river has gone underground at this point, only emerging in the Lim channel. In prehistoric times, this was a major highway to inland Istria, and later it became the…
There are over 300 Bronze Age hillforts around Istria, of which Monkodonja is one of the most impressive. Not simply for the glorious location and the massive defensive walls, but the careful interpretive boards that really help you to visualise what it was like when it was inhabited. Monkodonja means Quince Mountain in the local…
Monte was Croatia’s very first Michelin starred restaurant, currently one of three. So far we’ve visited the other two: Pelegrini in Šibenik, and 360 in Dubrovnik, to find out what makes these restaurants so special. Nothing if not thorough, we’ve now driven up to Istria so we can experience Monte’s award-winning cooking too! I’m particularly…
One of Istria’s most iconic towns is the lovely Rovinj, which we last visited as students many moons ago. In going back, I was a little afraid that the intervening years and busloads of tourists would rub the magic off my carefree happy memories of the place. But as it turned out, Rovinj in September…
Go Hvar 
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