he suburbs and villages of Pula with local kids getting off at their respective towns along the side of the road but then the ride turned quite scenic when we entered the Dinaric mountain range near the town of Labin. The crowd on the bus was light and was never more than a ¼ full. Our driver handled the numerous S-curves and switchbacks with great aplomb and our views of Kvarner Bay were excellent. For some reason this bus that we thought had only 1 stop (in Labin) actually had several. Many riders on the bus made special requests of our driver to make a stop that was more convenient for them rather than wait for a proper bus stop. Similarly, some riders hailed the bus from the side of the road as if hailing an overgrown, shared taxi. Our ride also passed through the resort town of Opatija and other similar towns like Kraj and Lovoran. These bayside resorts were densely populated along the shore and very charming. They looked like Croatia’s version of the Jersey Shore or the Cape – self-contained seaside towns with large resorts and many people. One look at these resorts and one could tell that if you stayed here there would be no reason to leave. Anything you could possibly want on a vacation would be there. We found out later that many residents of Rijeka would often make the drive to Opatija to drink and socialize during the summer months making the drunken drive back to Rijeka in the middle of the night.The bus pulled into Rijeka not at an enclosed bus station but in what can only be described as a “bus area” that made this relatively small city seem much more chaotic than it actually was given all of the other buses and passengers that were there at the same time. With a few hours to spare before our ferry left, we deposited our luggage with the Garderoba left luggage service which was situated in the back of a takeout pizza restaurant. The strange location for this service cast the whole idea of the Garderoba in a peculiar light but Jess assured me that our bags would be fine. There were plenty of bags already checked so it must be perfectly safe. After leaving our luggage, we checked in with Jardrolinija and found a place for lunch. It was a Belgian themed restaurant in the middle of a very noisy square. The square itself was somewhat crowded but with loud music cranked up at the restaurant and a local radio station minivan parked caty-corner and attracting attention to itself by blasting cheesy pop it was a little unsettling.
After lunch we followed a walking tour from the Lonely Planet book to the top of the castle overlooking the city. We began the tour by crossing the noisy square and then a bridge traversing a small river that fed into Rijeka Bay and found ourselves at the foot of a very steep set of steps going straight up to the top of the mountain overlooking the city. These steps were more like a pedestrian street as they were lined with the backyards of houses and apartments all the way up to the top. The long walk in the hot sun was tough but the views along the way were worth it. A light yellowish haze persisted over the city as more of Rijeka and the surrounding hillsides came into view. At the top of the hill, a small neighborhood had taken shape around the castle and
its cathedral. There were several small caffes and restorans as well as a small park. The cathedral had a plaque near its front entrance commemorating the visit of Pope John Paul II in the 1980’s. We entered the castle grounds and walked through the park that led to the castle and caught magnificent views of Rijeka and Rijeka Bay. Our ferry was huge and we could even make it out from the top of the hill. There was actually a caffe at the top of the hill at the castle. Quiet and relaxing, the castle gave us a perfect opportunity to cool off so we stopped and drank in the views. Our descent was much quicker and we walked through the city to collect our bags from the Garderoba and aimed for what we thought would be an early check-in at the terminal.
The ferry was waiting for us where it had been docked all day.There was no line when we checked in nearly 3 hours early but that did not necessarily mean that not that many people had checked in because there were many cars already on board. When we got to reception we found a decent sized line waiting for us. A slow moving line. We were finally checked in and shown to our room. Now, I knew that we could potentially have roommates and as a result I was not expecting our room to be that small. If 4 people were going to inhabit the room it would need to be big enough to accommodate them one would think. But this was definitely not the case. Two bunks were made up while the other sleeping arrangements consisted of a padded bench and a pull down panel for a bed that had been left folded into the wall. I couldn’t possibly see how 4 people could coexist in this space even for a night. I could almost touch the opposite ends of the room with outstretched arms. Our only consolation was that most people had already checked-in at this point so we were hopeful that if we did indeed have roommates they would’ve already been in the room had they even existed. But as of yet we did not know for sure. We went up to the 4th level café and looked out over the water and the city absorbing the sunshine. We watched two different sets of men’s and women’s crew teams rowing in the Bay. Their boats however, were not typical of crew teams but were in fact large wooden boats that looked they could’ve been rescue boats on the Nina, Pinta or Santa Maria. After about an hour or so the mighty ship began to depart. It backed into the bay and then did a ponderous 3-point turn to head out. Once we passed through the Bay we had the island of Krk on our left and the very long and skinny island of Cres on our right. We stayed out on the deck until 9:30pm or so, went down to our room and found that we had no roommates (yay!) and went to dinner. The dining room was trying to be elegant but had a somewhat dirty imperfect underbelly that we found to be uniquely Eastern European. The 3 course meal was beef-themed with Beef Broth, Spaghetti with meat sauce and Beefsteak with potatoes. Afterwards we found the bottle of Istrian wine that we had brought along for the trip and konzumed it up on the deck. At this point most of the active seniors on our trip had gone to bed so we were up there largely by ourselves. The ship itself was overall pretty nice, especially for a ferry. Probably because this was an overnight ferry, our boat, the Marko Polo, was more like an Oceanliner than a short distance ferry. It was clean and made us confident that we would actually get where we were going in a reasonable amount of time. The other tourists on the boat were mostly German with of course plenty of Croats, some English and a handful of Americans.
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