Opatija, Krk, Punat
We got to Opatija the evening of the 4th of July and got in just early enough to spent about an hour on the beach before a thunderstorm blew in and had everyone heading back to the hotel. Shortly after dinner the clouds broke enough to allow me to take a few pictures, but I was pretty beat and ended up going to bed early that night.
The rest of the group went to see the Roman ruins on the 5th, but decided to skip that and use it as an off day to spend by the pool.
On the 6th we got up early and headed to the city of Punat on the island of Krk.
After a brief tour of the city we got on a boat and were taken to the island monastery of Kosljun. We were given a tour of the monastery, got back on the boat and headed back to the mainland for lunch. The plan for lunch was to head to Vrbnik to do some wine tasting. As part of the tasting we also got great prosciutto and cheese (there doesn’t seem to be bad prosciutto here) and some really, really good pasta.
After lunch we had a few hours to kill before the SJTs performance so everyone headed to the beach. The beaches here are unlike any I’ve ever seen, in that they don’t actually have any sand - they’re just big concrete slabs where you put down your blanket. If you’re lucky you get some stairs to shallow water, and you have to be aware of sea urchins, which are basically underwater porcupines. Three of us have been stung so far, and it’s really hard to get the stingers out (no one’s been able to get them out completely yet). A lot of people brought water shoes, but since I didn’t know about this I didn’t bring any and will probably be avoiding the water most of the time.
Around 7:30 everyone went back to the bus, grabbed their bags and headed to the town square. There were a couple of rooms made available for the kids to change, and around 9pm they had their performance, which went great.
The group seems to have people they know in each town, and today was no exception. In this case we were met by Sandra, who was the tour guide for the group when they were here five years ago. They all became fast friends and have kept in touch ever since. Sandra brought her 4yr old daughter Lucia to the performance, and even made up her hair to match the performers. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a cuter girl in my life. Everyone loved her, and she had quite an eye for the camera.
After the performance everyone went for pizza, then loaded on to the bus and slept during the 90min drive back to Opatia. We got back around 1:00am and had a 7:00am wake up call. The next morning we loaded up the bus and headed to our next stop, Trogir.
See the rest of the Opatija pics here All Europe Photos
