On the Adriatic

SewDiva trying to get only her fingers wet
typical Opitija hotel

"beach"

Wednesday was a rainy day in Zagreb. And I don’t mean the drizzle we usually get in Seattle, or the rolling through thunder showers of Budapest. It was RAINING! Torrents of great big drops falling, buckets and all. The weather at the coast appeared to be slightly better so we went of in the direction of Rijeka. For those of you following on your maps, go to the coast and at the northern end of Croatia there is a big peninsula that sticks out. Rijeka is at the top of the bay formed by that peninsula. The weather was better once we got over the last mountains guarding the coast. Now it was partly cloudy and with intermittent light drizzles. But warm, and just fine for sightseeing. Rijeka turned out to be another city with lots of old churches and municipal buildings. It is the largest port in Croatia so the waterfront was all business. We saw it on the fly from the car windows at went to Opatija (just to the west) instead. It looked like we expected a Mediterranean resort town to look like. Villas built in the baroque style now turned into hotels, bars and restaurants along the shoreline and swimming “beaches”. The beaches weren’t really beaches, they were concrete docks built over the water (just barely over the water, the waves were washing up onto the lower steps) with beach chairs and umbrellas. The water was warmer than Puget Sound but not warm enough for me to want to swim in. If we had remembered a towel I would have gone wading though.