FINALLY THE ADRIATIC SEA
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| sunset in Trieste |
There are hardly any sand beaches along the Croatian Adriatic coast. The harbour was small and the access to the sea rocky. A tiny concrete staircase allowed to go down in the water. Finding seating space on the dike was not an easy task, however the atmosphere was relaxed. Regulars were severely well geared up with portable long chairs/ beds equipped with an adjustable sunshade panel for the head. The beds helped them forget that the ground was hard and uneven but took quite a bit of space on the already small waterfront. We did not feel comfortable picking a tiny space for our towels so we deferred our desire to swim to later in the villa's pool. Meanwhile we stayed on to soak in the beach atmosphere. Kids were busy with fishing rods on the inside of the small harbour, where one is always sure to see small fishes hunting for food. Books were being read between two applications of tanning lotion, basking in the sun. Dogs, some of them the size that fits in a beach bag, were also part of the beach merriment, signalling themselves to each other with harmless barks.
In the evening, we came back to the harbour for dinner at one of the restaurants by the waterside. It was still holiday time and we quickly realized that we would have to bear with the lackadaisical service and pay a golden price for it.
The next morning everything was forgotten, the sun was shining again and Duino's castle overlooking the sea was a cheering sight. The sea and the castle had inspired Rilke to compose his poems. This is how the coastal path on top of the cliff between Duino and Sistiana was named after Rilke. One could see colourful patterns of buoys a few hundred meters off the coast. These were for fish and shell farming. Dorada and seabass are farmed there. We followed the four kilometers stretch to Sistiana enjoying the view from the cliff over the Adriatic sea. The perspective from the top of the cliff made the water much larger than what one can see on the shore, it spread majestic and peaceful under our eyes. In Sistiana, life was buzzing. Shopping, coffee, everything one needs on a regular holiday morning. We soon left the coast for the hills having to cross the railway and the motorway that run parallel to the shoreline. Our plan was to reach Prosecco in the afternoon and from there get a bus on to Trieste to avoid its outskirts. We traversed a rural landscape of olive groves and vineyards. We came across a number of World War II commemoration monuments with inscriptions in Slovenian as an indication that the region had only recently become part of Italy. As we walked out of the sleepy village of Prepotto, we saw a wooden stick protruding above the roadside and holding a leafy branch that hanged upside down. This was a traditional signpost for an ephemeral restaurant that serves new wine. At the bus stop, someone had pasted a "territorio libero di Trieste" sticker, as a claim to return to the Free Territory status that Trieste had got in the past.
The history of Trieste is long because the location was ideal for commerce being by the sea side next to very fertile land. It was at the crossroads of the Latin, Slavic and Germanic worlds. It is thought to have been a settlement as early as two thousand years BC. In the middle-age, Trieste was a rival port to Venice. In order to be able to remain so, it sought protection from the Habsburg empire (Austria and Hungary) and was de facto the access to the sea of the whole Austrian empire. In the 19th century, the city became economically autonomous - free to trade - which boosted the development of a whole new area by the seashore which was filled with imposing and elegant Austrian buildings. The square of Italian Unification is a perfect example of this grandiose architecture meant to impress around a huge square opened on the sea. Somehow, I couldn't help thinking of the Venetian San Marco square when I saw it. The 20th century came around and changed everything. Italy took over Trieste at the end of World War I as a prize for having fought along with the Allied Powers. This annexation caused tensions among the population that was partly Slovenian, Italian and Germanic. It also separated Trieste from the northern part of Istria. Many Slovenes emigrated as a result. Trieste attracted many Italian newcomers whose number made up for the departure of the Slovenes. At the end of World War II, Trieste became a Free Territory administered by an American and British military government between 1947 and 1954, after which it was returned to Italy. The future of Trieste seem to be around trade, now that China has managed to secure access to the port of Trieste in order to deliver a platform of its Belt and Road Initiative leveraging on the city's rail and road connectivity with the rest of Europe.
Yet we still had a bit to walk before reaching Trieste. In the fields, the vines were grown tall so that one wouldn't have to bend to harvest the bunches.
A few hours later, we finally approached the village of Prosecco through a pine forest. We were eager to discover the village whose name has become famous worldwide. It was a bit of a disappointment and the abrupt end of an expectation, that I had nursed throughout our journey. Prosecco was an ordinary village. There were for sure a few cafes where one could have had some table wine, but nothing special. It took us a while to figure out where to buy a bus ticket, because it couldn't be done in the bus itself. We entered a sleepy cafe that had probably not seen any changes since the 1980s, the lady explained to us where we could find a kiosk selling tobacco and newspapers, there we could buy bus tickets.
The bus arrived a few minutes later. Prosecco is on the edge of a plateau which overlooks the slope on which Trieste is spreading all the way down to the sea. After the first curve, the corniche road revealed Trieste to our eyes, bathed in the evening sun, with, in the foreground, the A-shaped modern sanctuary of Montegrisa which added some relief to the slope which had been fully conquered by houses, many of which must have had a fabulous panoramic seaview.
We stepped out of the bus in the vicinity of the Trieste central train station, at the heart of the 19th century area built under the Austrian influence. Large five or six storey buildings, large squares. The older city is located on the hill of San Giusto, topped by a fortress initially built in the 15th century. That hill had however been occupied for centuries before, the Romans had made use of it in their own time.
To affirm Italy's hold over Trieste, a bronze memorial, representing four naked men in antique style, was erected on the square in front of the fortress in honour of Italian soldiers who fought during World War I.
From there, a maze of narrow streets leads downhill to the Austrian area. As we walked back from the castle at sunset, it was aperitif time and all the pedestrian streets were busy with people seating outside at tables constituting what looked like improvised terraces. Further down, more organized restaurant terraces were filling-up reclusive corners, away from the scrutiny of the main squares. It seemed that Triestans enjoyed the privacy of their back-alleys. And so did we.
We had a farewell dinner with our Canadian friends who had joined us for nearly two hundred kilometers in one of the restaurants serving fish and seafood. The evening was cool unlike the heat of the day. As we walked back, the whole town was illuminated.
On our second day in Trieste, where we had decided to spend a couple of days in conclusion of our stretch on the Alpe-Adria trail, we did a bit of shopping to prepare for the subsequent part of the journey along the Croatian coast. Maps, a light bathing suit, etc... I also needed to get the sole of my shoes glued. We entered a cobbler and the lady said she didn't want any money for it. We told her the journey the shoes had gone through to thank her for kind gesture.
In the afternoon, we went to visit the Miramare castle, next to Grignano, which was built around 1850 -1860 as a summer residence for the Emperor Maximilian, who made a point of directing the creation of a Mediterranean garden. It seems however that this task was not easy because the Bora, a cold wind blowing from the North in winter, wasn't liked by the plants that had been chosen. A massive entrance gate had to be created along the seashore together with a long and thick row of trees to stop the wind from reaching the castle and the garden.
The whole shoreline between the castle and Trieste has been turned into a giant concrete beach, where inhabitants from the city can escape the city in the summer and get their share of sun. Nearly eleven uninterrupted kilometers of long chairs and towels. After leaving the noble atmosphere of the castle painted in white, we strolled along the beach and decided it was time for a swim. We stopped at a crowdy spot that was separated from the level of the road by a flight of stairs. The facade of a glass building by the roadside was reflecting the sun light on the stairs as if it had been in a photo studio, making the entrance or the exit of people as dramatic as walking the stairs to the Cannes film festival. Two perfectly suntanned Italian playboys in their fifties made their entrance wearing each long hair, a pack of cigarettes, sunglasses and minimalistic bathing suits, one them Ferrari red. There was no doubt anymore that we were in Italy! The water was pleasantly refreshing. We resumed our stroll in the direction of Trieste and noticed a guy on a skateboard with a small dog on a leash. I looked at them thinking that I wouldn't like to be on the board for fear of loosing balance if the dog pulled too hard on its leash (this could have been a premise for an electro-skateboard).
That day there was a spectacular sunset mixing pink clouds with the azure of the sky. The harmony and intensity of colours made us feel the moment was timeless.
The next day, we crossed the harbour of Trieste by boat to Muggia to avoid walking through the industrial area of Trieste. Muggia is everything that Trieste isn't.
First, it was only under Austrian control in the 19th century and therefore has a much stronger Venetian feel, starting with its tiny old harbour, the mandracchio, but also the pastel coloured facades, the main square with its winged-lion and the curvy outline of the church's front. Muggia feels medieval with its narrow streets surrounding the hilltop fortress that overlooks the whole bay of Trieste. We had dinner, on the hill, in a family-run fish restaurant that was serving home-made food of the day. We started with a carpacio of tuna, sea-bass and snapper.
Our walk resumed the next day, this time going along a bicycle track, called La Parenzana because it is built on an old railway track going all the way to Parenzo, a Croatian harbour on the western coast of Istria. Train tracks means that the way is easy to follow but at the same time it can quite monotonous and close to large roads. This is how we left Italy for good and crossed the border to Slovenia which runs on the top of the hill above Muggia. We crossed a few villages, where mothers took their babies for some fresh air in strollers, before we got in sight again of the coast and of the industrial area of Koper (Capodistria in Italian). A tedious path between the motorway and the newer railway got us in the middle of a shopping mall area. Everything was made easy for cars, a parking lot paradise but not exactly a paradise for pedestrians. We were glad to reach our hotel and leave the kingdom of motors behind us. The old city of Koper was strongly influenced by Venice. On Tito square, Tito trg in Slovenian, we climbed up to the top of the bell tower which provides a 360 view on the area. From there we could see the circular shape of the old city which at some point was surrounded by water. Now modernity has caught up and what used to be water has become shopping malls and factories. There was a huge cruise ship, anchored along a dedicated jetty in the deep water port, which was nearly has high as the buildings next to it. The old city is indeed on the map of touristic ships cruising the Adriatic.
The sun had come out and we made our way towards the water in the hope of a swim. This allowed us to discover another aspect of Koper, the palm tree-lined waterfront promenade. A black Porsche with a Bulgarian number was parked at the entrance of the beach, giving a different twist to what we had seen so far. We walked back to our hotel along the harbour where fancy restaurants and cafes were playing dance music to their cocktail-sipping customers. The holiday mood was still there in full swing. In anticipation of our visit to Croatia, we had dinner in a restaurant called Cevapcici 1984, which is actually a franchise. It was located in a courtyard behind a holiday residence next to a small parking lot and had a covered terrace with wooden tables. It wasn't fancy, alternative rather with local customers. One of them wore a t-shirt with the slogan "the future is now" which I felt was a good summary of what we had seen over the day. The cohabitation of the past as a tourism business with the development of an industry and a relentless aspiration to modernity, perhaps as a way to catch up the time considered lost under Yugoslavia. While we were finishing our cevapcicis (grilled minced meat skewers), the fat long-haired red house cat came out for an inspection of the terrace. He was immediately spotted by a black Scottish Terrier, about the same size as the cat, that immediately started barking. The owner of the dog felt compelled to let the dog on a leash follow the cat who quickly established with a stroke of paw who was the strongest. The dog retreated. It was party time on this Friday night but we had to get up early the next morning so we skipped the party.
At breakfast, the waiter was wearing a t-shirt with his own hashtag #imakemyownsoup, a clever way to advertise for his food delivery business.
The sea was like a mirror when we left Koper, echoing seamlessly the colours of the sky. We walked along the coast where a cycling lane had been built all the way to Isola. Toilets had been built mid way next to a solar bench fitted with USB plugs where one could charge a mobile phone, another proof of aspiration to modernity: recharging batteries while peeing.
Isola is another former-island city with its hilltop church that has a striped apricot-coloured facade. It was another example of Venetian influence. It had a lovely baroque music school, white with green adornments, lost in the middle of narrow roads that eventually led to the huge harbour. Isola was clearly the place for sailing, considering the amount of sailing boats in the harbour.
An artist had been asked to decorate a little garden square that made the junction between the old town and the harbour. He planted some plastic lamps, that looked like connected tulips and could be lit at night, on patches of lawn that constituted the garden.
We continued along the coast whose cliff had been carved to create a walkway along the waterside and allowed access to the sea through concrete stairs and metal ladders. The time of mass holiday was obviously over, however locals still came to spend the day at the public beach. We walked past a team of about 10 robust looking men, on their way to become lobster-red, who were enjoying themselves listening to beer, schnapps and local music. The sound of accordion was blasting out of a large loudspeaker to accompany the merriment of drinking and possibly swimming. They anchored themselves to a bench by the waterside and probably stayed there until the exhaustion of the content of their icebox or perhaps until sunset, whichever happened first.
On our second day in Trieste, where we had decided to spend a couple of days in conclusion of our stretch on the Alpe-Adria trail, we did a bit of shopping to prepare for the subsequent part of the journey along the Croatian coast. Maps, a light bathing suit, etc... I also needed to get the sole of my shoes glued. We entered a cobbler and the lady said she didn't want any money for it. We told her the journey the shoes had gone through to thank her for kind gesture.
In the afternoon, we went to visit the Miramare castle, next to Grignano, which was built around 1850 -1860 as a summer residence for the Emperor Maximilian, who made a point of directing the creation of a Mediterranean garden. It seems however that this task was not easy because the Bora, a cold wind blowing from the North in winter, wasn't liked by the plants that had been chosen. A massive entrance gate had to be created along the seashore together with a long and thick row of trees to stop the wind from reaching the castle and the garden.
The whole shoreline between the castle and Trieste has been turned into a giant concrete beach, where inhabitants from the city can escape the city in the summer and get their share of sun. Nearly eleven uninterrupted kilometers of long chairs and towels. After leaving the noble atmosphere of the castle painted in white, we strolled along the beach and decided it was time for a swim. We stopped at a crowdy spot that was separated from the level of the road by a flight of stairs. The facade of a glass building by the roadside was reflecting the sun light on the stairs as if it had been in a photo studio, making the entrance or the exit of people as dramatic as walking the stairs to the Cannes film festival. Two perfectly suntanned Italian playboys in their fifties made their entrance wearing each long hair, a pack of cigarettes, sunglasses and minimalistic bathing suits, one them Ferrari red. There was no doubt anymore that we were in Italy! The water was pleasantly refreshing. We resumed our stroll in the direction of Trieste and noticed a guy on a skateboard with a small dog on a leash. I looked at them thinking that I wouldn't like to be on the board for fear of loosing balance if the dog pulled too hard on its leash (this could have been a premise for an electro-skateboard).
That day there was a spectacular sunset mixing pink clouds with the azure of the sky. The harmony and intensity of colours made us feel the moment was timeless.
The next day, we crossed the harbour of Trieste by boat to Muggia to avoid walking through the industrial area of Trieste. Muggia is everything that Trieste isn't.
First, it was only under Austrian control in the 19th century and therefore has a much stronger Venetian feel, starting with its tiny old harbour, the mandracchio, but also the pastel coloured facades, the main square with its winged-lion and the curvy outline of the church's front. Muggia feels medieval with its narrow streets surrounding the hilltop fortress that overlooks the whole bay of Trieste. We had dinner, on the hill, in a family-run fish restaurant that was serving home-made food of the day. We started with a carpacio of tuna, sea-bass and snapper.
Our walk resumed the next day, this time going along a bicycle track, called La Parenzana because it is built on an old railway track going all the way to Parenzo, a Croatian harbour on the western coast of Istria. Train tracks means that the way is easy to follow but at the same time it can quite monotonous and close to large roads. This is how we left Italy for good and crossed the border to Slovenia which runs on the top of the hill above Muggia. We crossed a few villages, where mothers took their babies for some fresh air in strollers, before we got in sight again of the coast and of the industrial area of Koper (Capodistria in Italian). A tedious path between the motorway and the newer railway got us in the middle of a shopping mall area. Everything was made easy for cars, a parking lot paradise but not exactly a paradise for pedestrians. We were glad to reach our hotel and leave the kingdom of motors behind us. The old city of Koper was strongly influenced by Venice. On Tito square, Tito trg in Slovenian, we climbed up to the top of the bell tower which provides a 360 view on the area. From there we could see the circular shape of the old city which at some point was surrounded by water. Now modernity has caught up and what used to be water has become shopping malls and factories. There was a huge cruise ship, anchored along a dedicated jetty in the deep water port, which was nearly has high as the buildings next to it. The old city is indeed on the map of touristic ships cruising the Adriatic.
The sun had come out and we made our way towards the water in the hope of a swim. This allowed us to discover another aspect of Koper, the palm tree-lined waterfront promenade. A black Porsche with a Bulgarian number was parked at the entrance of the beach, giving a different twist to what we had seen so far. We walked back to our hotel along the harbour where fancy restaurants and cafes were playing dance music to their cocktail-sipping customers. The holiday mood was still there in full swing. In anticipation of our visit to Croatia, we had dinner in a restaurant called Cevapcici 1984, which is actually a franchise. It was located in a courtyard behind a holiday residence next to a small parking lot and had a covered terrace with wooden tables. It wasn't fancy, alternative rather with local customers. One of them wore a t-shirt with the slogan "the future is now" which I felt was a good summary of what we had seen over the day. The cohabitation of the past as a tourism business with the development of an industry and a relentless aspiration to modernity, perhaps as a way to catch up the time considered lost under Yugoslavia. While we were finishing our cevapcicis (grilled minced meat skewers), the fat long-haired red house cat came out for an inspection of the terrace. He was immediately spotted by a black Scottish Terrier, about the same size as the cat, that immediately started barking. The owner of the dog felt compelled to let the dog on a leash follow the cat who quickly established with a stroke of paw who was the strongest. The dog retreated. It was party time on this Friday night but we had to get up early the next morning so we skipped the party.
At breakfast, the waiter was wearing a t-shirt with his own hashtag #imakemyownsoup, a clever way to advertise for his food delivery business.
The sea was like a mirror when we left Koper, echoing seamlessly the colours of the sky. We walked along the coast where a cycling lane had been built all the way to Isola. Toilets had been built mid way next to a solar bench fitted with USB plugs where one could charge a mobile phone, another proof of aspiration to modernity: recharging batteries while peeing.
Isola is another former-island city with its hilltop church that has a striped apricot-coloured facade. It was another example of Venetian influence. It had a lovely baroque music school, white with green adornments, lost in the middle of narrow roads that eventually led to the huge harbour. Isola was clearly the place for sailing, considering the amount of sailing boats in the harbour.
An artist had been asked to decorate a little garden square that made the junction between the old town and the harbour. He planted some plastic lamps, that looked like connected tulips and could be lit at night, on patches of lawn that constituted the garden.
We continued along the coast whose cliff had been carved to create a walkway along the waterside and allowed access to the sea through concrete stairs and metal ladders. The time of mass holiday was obviously over, however locals still came to spend the day at the public beach. We walked past a team of about 10 robust looking men, on their way to become lobster-red, who were enjoying themselves listening to beer, schnapps and local music. The sound of accordion was blasting out of a large loudspeaker to accompany the merriment of drinking and possibly swimming. They anchored themselves to a bench by the waterside and probably stayed there until the exhaustion of the content of their icebox or perhaps until sunset, whichever happened first.
We entered a "private beach club" to carry on towards Jagodje. It was fairly empty and the colorful water toboggan had stopped operating. Most long chairs were vacant.
A few hundred meters farther, an interesting perspective materialized in front of us on a wooden jetty, a women was lying on her back with her legs gathered and spread at the same time, revealing the bottom of her two piece bathing suit, while a man sat upright behind her seemingly contemplating her only piece of textile. Meditation at the seaside.
We left the "private beach club" and walked up the hill planted with olive groves and branched on a path following the cliff with the sea on the right side and the village of Strunjan on the left side.
We stopped for picnic in the shade of pine trees at a spot that offered a panoramic view on the sea. Below us at the foot of the cliff, a narrow rocky stretch served as a beach for those who didn't mind using a steep stone path to reach it. I was admiring those attempting to use it with flip flops.
We exited the wood to traverse the wellness center of Strunjan towards a beach resort. Its restaurant was busy serving snacks on the terrace but few people were actually in the water. The long stretch of shoreline connecting the restaurant to the bridge leading to the salt pans was packed-up with empty long-chairs. On the horizon, the bell tower of Piran's church, perched on a low rock was marking the extremity of the cape of Piran. From the distance, the bell tower could have easily passed for a lighthouse. We got to Piran's town over a concrete path that has been carved at the foot of the cape's northern cliff.
Piran is the head of the villages between Strunjan and the Croatian border further South. It is also supervising the work in the salt pans of Strunjan and Secolje.
As much as Koper and Isola have got space to expand around the old city, Piran has no space for urban sprawl and industry. It is squeezed against the sea. The old town covers already the available footprint with a maze of narrow streets, some of them so narrow that one could nearly shake hands between two houses. The city's waterfront forms a promenade with colourful facades. Tartini square, the main square, is named after a Piran born musician who composed the violin devil's trill sonata. He actually spent most of his life in Italy between Padua, Assisi and Venice but he was sufficiently famous to make his town of birth proud enough to erect a statue of him on the town's main square.
At the beach, we sat next to Charlie, a very young doodle-golden retriever. He visibly didn't want to enjoy a sea bath imposed on him by his adoptive parents, a young German couple. For some strange reason, Charlie preferred running after pigeons. He looked very sad and wet after his bath while waiting on a leash for the couple to come back from bathing, only to take him for a shower! Things improved as they prepared food for him by the waterside, as expected he sat very keenly in front of his bowl. At sunset, the lighthouse guard played mandolin on the upper terrace to accompany the sinking of the sun in the sea.
Istrian cuisine is hovering between fish and meat. Fish starters like octopus salad, anchovies marinated with ginger, sardins pickled with onions and lemon, fish carpaccio or tartar. Then comes pasta or gnocchi with either fish, shrimps, shells or meat stew with other sorts of pasta. Main courses are revolving around grilled meat or fish (possibly in salt crust). To wash all this down one can choose from of an array of local white and red wines.
Our room was located right above a bar. 6.30 AM, we could hear the first voices resonate in the narrow street. A short while later the first customers, wearing sports clothes on this Saturday morning, were sitting outside at a table, waiting for their coffee. As more of them came it seemed that the standard breakfast consisted of coffee and very often cigarettes.
Piran's neighbour, Portoros, is not as gracious. It is designed for mass beach-goers with heavy resorts. It lacks charm but then I am sure that holidaymakers going there are happy to find a proper sandy space to lie in the sun for hours.
Towards the south of town, after the camping, a stretch of shore is explicitly banning "FKK" (Frei Korper Kultur, which is the German name for naturist) with a dedicated signboard.
The salt pans of Secolje are immediately south and spread over several square kilometres. They are opened to visitors. Currently, only a small portion is still in use. A long stretch of wooden duck-board enables to reach the shop built in one of the houses where workers used to stay while working in the pans. There was an incongruous painting exhibition on the first floor without any obvious connection to the salt pans.
More relevant was the multimedia installation, half a kilometre deeper within the pans, where l learned that, in the past, Istrians were offering bread and salt to their guests as being the most precious thing they had. Also that salt is associated with sexuality, for instance with the word salacious (Sal in Italian means salt, therefore the root of salacious).
Along the salt pans, there is a long channel leading to the sea. It is used to park boats. Two men were busy preparing their boat for a Sunday outing when two woman stepped out of a car. One was wearing a light white blouse with an assorted headband with white flowers, the second one a bit more mature, was wearing a bright red summer dress assorted to a red flower in her dark hair. She quickly brandished a bottle of sparkling rosé wine which she put in her picnic basket before taking it to the boat. It promised to be a glamorous Sunday on the water!
The salt-pans' southern edge marks the border with Croatia. There is still a border control for vehicles. As we walked through, a lady smiled at us and wished us a nice day. Right next to the border post, is a huge and rather ugly complex: Casino Mulino that is boasting a 5-star hotel and apparently is a favourite of Italian gamblers who can't do it in Italy. So welcome to Croatia!
A few hundred meters farther, an interesting perspective materialized in front of us on a wooden jetty, a women was lying on her back with her legs gathered and spread at the same time, revealing the bottom of her two piece bathing suit, while a man sat upright behind her seemingly contemplating her only piece of textile. Meditation at the seaside.
We left the "private beach club" and walked up the hill planted with olive groves and branched on a path following the cliff with the sea on the right side and the village of Strunjan on the left side.
We stopped for picnic in the shade of pine trees at a spot that offered a panoramic view on the sea. Below us at the foot of the cliff, a narrow rocky stretch served as a beach for those who didn't mind using a steep stone path to reach it. I was admiring those attempting to use it with flip flops.
We exited the wood to traverse the wellness center of Strunjan towards a beach resort. Its restaurant was busy serving snacks on the terrace but few people were actually in the water. The long stretch of shoreline connecting the restaurant to the bridge leading to the salt pans was packed-up with empty long-chairs. On the horizon, the bell tower of Piran's church, perched on a low rock was marking the extremity of the cape of Piran. From the distance, the bell tower could have easily passed for a lighthouse. We got to Piran's town over a concrete path that has been carved at the foot of the cape's northern cliff.
Piran is the head of the villages between Strunjan and the Croatian border further South. It is also supervising the work in the salt pans of Strunjan and Secolje.
As much as Koper and Isola have got space to expand around the old city, Piran has no space for urban sprawl and industry. It is squeezed against the sea. The old town covers already the available footprint with a maze of narrow streets, some of them so narrow that one could nearly shake hands between two houses. The city's waterfront forms a promenade with colourful facades. Tartini square, the main square, is named after a Piran born musician who composed the violin devil's trill sonata. He actually spent most of his life in Italy between Padua, Assisi and Venice but he was sufficiently famous to make his town of birth proud enough to erect a statue of him on the town's main square.
At the beach, we sat next to Charlie, a very young doodle-golden retriever. He visibly didn't want to enjoy a sea bath imposed on him by his adoptive parents, a young German couple. For some strange reason, Charlie preferred running after pigeons. He looked very sad and wet after his bath while waiting on a leash for the couple to come back from bathing, only to take him for a shower! Things improved as they prepared food for him by the waterside, as expected he sat very keenly in front of his bowl. At sunset, the lighthouse guard played mandolin on the upper terrace to accompany the sinking of the sun in the sea.
Istrian cuisine is hovering between fish and meat. Fish starters like octopus salad, anchovies marinated with ginger, sardins pickled with onions and lemon, fish carpaccio or tartar. Then comes pasta or gnocchi with either fish, shrimps, shells or meat stew with other sorts of pasta. Main courses are revolving around grilled meat or fish (possibly in salt crust). To wash all this down one can choose from of an array of local white and red wines.
Our room was located right above a bar. 6.30 AM, we could hear the first voices resonate in the narrow street. A short while later the first customers, wearing sports clothes on this Saturday morning, were sitting outside at a table, waiting for their coffee. As more of them came it seemed that the standard breakfast consisted of coffee and very often cigarettes.
Piran's neighbour, Portoros, is not as gracious. It is designed for mass beach-goers with heavy resorts. It lacks charm but then I am sure that holidaymakers going there are happy to find a proper sandy space to lie in the sun for hours.
Towards the south of town, after the camping, a stretch of shore is explicitly banning "FKK" (Frei Korper Kultur, which is the German name for naturist) with a dedicated signboard.
The salt pans of Secolje are immediately south and spread over several square kilometres. They are opened to visitors. Currently, only a small portion is still in use. A long stretch of wooden duck-board enables to reach the shop built in one of the houses where workers used to stay while working in the pans. There was an incongruous painting exhibition on the first floor without any obvious connection to the salt pans.
More relevant was the multimedia installation, half a kilometre deeper within the pans, where l learned that, in the past, Istrians were offering bread and salt to their guests as being the most precious thing they had. Also that salt is associated with sexuality, for instance with the word salacious (Sal in Italian means salt, therefore the root of salacious).
Along the salt pans, there is a long channel leading to the sea. It is used to park boats. Two men were busy preparing their boat for a Sunday outing when two woman stepped out of a car. One was wearing a light white blouse with an assorted headband with white flowers, the second one a bit more mature, was wearing a bright red summer dress assorted to a red flower in her dark hair. She quickly brandished a bottle of sparkling rosé wine which she put in her picnic basket before taking it to the boat. It promised to be a glamorous Sunday on the water!
The salt-pans' southern edge marks the border with Croatia. There is still a border control for vehicles. As we walked through, a lady smiled at us and wished us a nice day. Right next to the border post, is a huge and rather ugly complex: Casino Mulino that is boasting a 5-star hotel and apparently is a favourite of Italian gamblers who can't do it in Italy. So welcome to Croatia!
images:
1/ Sunset in Trieste
2/ Italian beach chic on Viale Miramare
3/ Koper
3/ Koper
4/ Strunjan salt pans
5/ Piran |
| Italian beach chic on Viale Miramare |
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| Koper |
 |
| Strunjan's salt pan |
 |
| Piran |
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