Ho viaggiato a Rovigno (in Croatia)

In the previous post, I alluded to going away this past weekend. A group of nine of us played hookey on Friday and got up at (gasp) 3:30 AM to take a 4:30 AM train to the coastal city of Ravenna. Drama started nearly right away as one student was waiting for a taxi to take her to the train station, but it was getting really close to departure time. So, another student heroically hopped in a cab, took it to her apartment, picked her up, and got back to the train station and in the train with about 30 seconds to spare.

In Ravenna, we hustled from the train station to the port, which was about a 20 minute cab ride. From there, we got on a 3 hour ferry to Rovigno/Rovinj in Croatia. Unfortunately, a major storm had just passed through the region, so the water was a tad bit on the choppy side. Faces turned green, some stomachs were purged (not mine!). Good times.

Once we got to Croatia, we found a tourist office that set us up in pretty sweet accommodations. Basically, two small apartments in a very attractive part of town. For two nights, the total came out to only 38 euro per person, which was great.

After settling in, our rumbling tummies directed us to a restaurant where, for the first of many times, a lot of us had mussels. I think at least two people ordered mussels at each nonbreakfast meal. Yum.

In the afternoon a small group, including me, took a little boat to a local island. We walked around the coast, alternating between climbing around rocks and trees, and nearly injuring ourselves on the various exercise stations that were randomly placed around the coast. I'd never seen a bouncy balance beam before, but I have now.

We also found an extremely large chess set (the rook was about halfway up my thigh) and what started as a "oh let's have a quick game" turned into a rather tense match as the boys edged the girls after a bloodbath that claimed the girls' queen.

That evening, we had dinner (mussels again) in a little restaurant right on the water. Some people went out to a bar afterward, but I just headed back with another group.

On Saturday, the first noteworthy activity was taking a bus to Pula, which is a small town about 45 minutes away from Rovinj. Hilarity ensued when we got on what we thought was the right bus and started heading out of town. About 2 minutes into the ride, the person checking tickets stared at one of us and starting shouting "No Pula! No Pula!" Thankfully they pulled over, ushered us out of the bus, and we took off sprinting back towards the bus station hoping our correct bus hadn't left yet.

It hadn't.

The major (only) attraction in Pula is a huge coliseum where gladiator fights used to take place, and music concerts now take place. It was pretty cool to be walking through a residential neighborhood, turn a corner, and go "Oh, look, there's a huge coliseum." We wandered around the arena for a couple hours before heading back to Rovinj and down to the beach.

Finding the beach was a pretty amusing enterprise as a few group members took the cushions off some lawn chairs (they were on the terrace in our apartment) to use as "blankets" on the beach. Someone had the bright idea to wear theirs like a cape, and soon we looked like a caravan of some very oddly dressed beachbound superheroes.

At night, we went to a choir concert at the big church in Rovinj. Seriously, you can see the church from pretty much anywhere in the city, as it's big and on top of the only real hill in the city. The highlight, for me, of the concert was when a youth choir broke out into the Sister Act version of Hail Holy Queen (whoah-oh-oh-o-Ma-ree-ah).

Afterward, we had some dessert and coined a new catchphrase for the group "Buonasera" which one guy kept saying to pretty women as they passed. It became a noun "So, is she a buonasera?" A verb: "I think you just got buonasera-d." When we got on the ferry to return to Italy, it was at night, and the ticket-taker said "buonasera" to us, and he must've thought we were stupid or something as we all started cracking up.

After dessert on Saturday, we went back to the apartment and had a seriously makeshift poker game as we used a combination of clothespins, rocks and toilet paper sheets for chips.

Sunday was a very relaxed day as we lazed on the beach and went on a beautiful bike ride along the coast. In the evening, we got back on the ferry and returned to Ravenna. Unfortunately, there were no trains from Ravenna to Bologna, so we had to stay one night in a hostel. The next morning, we caught a 6:30 train back to Bologna, and at 9 AM I was sitting in my first of two classes of the day.

It was an exhausting trip, but one of my major goals for this year was to travel as much possible, and I've left the city twice in two weeks, so I'm pretty happy.

Now to figure out where to head this weekend!