Getting My Feet Wet

We arrived in Venice in the dark.  We retrieved our rental car, also in the dark.  My brother-in-law navigated the two and a half hour drive to the house he and my sister bought near Porec on the peninsula of Istria, also in the dark.  Consequently, the first Croatian sight I gained was a grocery store!

I loved it.  I loved the incomprehensible signs.  I was fascinated by the labels on tins and packages.  I was delighted at the furtive (or open!) glances in our direction when we casually spoke English among ourselves.  I loved paying using kuna, the local currency.

I loved being in Europe!

When morning kissed the sun awake, the delights tripled.  I loved the stone walls that guarded the tiny, twisting roads.  I drank in the way the olive trees in their silver dresses tried to out-do others dramatically clad in gold, bronze, copper, and crimson.  I thrilled to the way the gentle hills and the valleys separating them painted so lovely a backdrop.

And then we got to the sea...

My sister and her husband both had some errands to run - would it be all right if I wandered by the Adriatic on my own for  a while?

I would have loved to see them try and stop me.

The sea was tranquil and smooth.  The waves lapped at the pebbles on the beach in a teasing invitation to play.  Clear and dazzling in the warm sunshine, reflections gamboled and jostled for position.  I wandered about in this dream-world, getting my feet wet, contented to the core.

A sea-haze obscured my view of the 'old town' across the bay, but soon, as it cleared, I could see a herd of sails, white and ethereal - a class of sailboarders - take to the waves.  The spire of the Basilica, built in 586, towered over its compatriots on the shoreline behind them.  The spell was complete.  I was hooked...