Croatia

Time is running out for me on this vacation...and in the greater sense, but you must promise to travel to Buzet, the center of  Croatia's truffle production zone, on September 8, 2113, when the 200th Anniversary of the town's founding is celebrated. I guarantee that it will be a wonderful time. I know because Leslie and I made it for the Centennial - purely by accident.
We had arrived in Rovinj the previous night by ferry from Venice and walked to the Hotel Park. Rovinj is a walled city, but the wall is mostly gone now. What is left is a friendly, low key, kind of bohemian beach town on the Istrian Peninsula. The Park proved to be an oasis, which we needed after that pit of hell in Venice. They even provided a free walking tour of the city the next day that provided insight into the history and culture of the place. At the very top of the hill in the old city (the area within the ancient walls) is the main Catholic church which is dedicated to Saint Ophemia, the Patron Saint of Rovinj. The story is that she was martyred in Constantinople (I believe) for espousing her belief in one god, eventually canonized by the church and placed in a sarcophagus, which then turned up missing for some 100s of years. Lo and behold, she shows up one day in Rovinj, just like us, except that we used a ferry, which proved to be much quicker. She is adopted as the patron and placed in the church. Sometime afterward, the Venetians, who made their money in shipping and domination before they got into window treatments, took over Rovinj and tried to ferret the old girl back to Venice. The Rovinjians would have none of that, but the Venetians did manage to get away with one of her arms which we have only to assume is in a warehouse of spare limbs somewhere in Italy along with the Venus De Milo's arm and the entire penis and scrotum of an unfortunate and unidentified statue I saw in Florence. Anyway, most of Saint Ophemia is in Rovinj, and every September 16th they open the sarcophagus for viewing, in the event you happen to be there.
The official airing out of Ophemia was not on our agenda; we left immediately in our rental car. There is something really exciting about driving in a country you have never visited before, particularly if you decided to waive the insurance coverage. Cowboy up! So we left Rovinj on our way to Motovun, a beautiful mountain town in the truffle area (we have been told). Never got there. That's how we ended up in in Buzet at the town festival, enjoying stilt-walking musicians, land-based musicians, a balloon animal artist and magicians. We ate roasted pig, and pasta with truffles and drank the local beer and tasted walnut liqueur. It was a blast; however, we had a schedule. We were in a hurry to spend the night in the Hotel Kastel in Crikvenica, a former monastery. I think I can safely say that in general a monastery is not a good candidate for conversion to a hotel. We happened on Hotel Kastel by accident, and that is the last time I will ask the produce manager at a Konzum Market for accommodation recommendations. Actually, I thought the place was ok. It would have been better if the monks had not taken all the good pillows when they vacated the place.