Our good friend from graduate school has been working in Geneva, and married a woman from Croatia a few years ago.  We took the chance to visit them in Pula, Croatia, on the Adriatic coast. The first pictures are taken in front of some of her paintings.  They found an amazing vacation villa for us to stay at, in a nearby fishing village.

Pula has some remarkable ruins from Roman times, including a large coliseum. We were there over the Easter weekend, and the main activity in town seemed to be chatting with friends in the many cafes, a pastime which suited us just fine!  We wandered the farmers’ market and shared memorable meals of seafood together.

We visited some nearby towns together:  Rovinj is an old stone town filled with visitors.

Vodnjan is further inland. Nearby the Kažun park displays an old and uniquely Istrian type of structure, constructed by stacking the stones leftover from clearing fields.

On the way back, we had a hard time passing by Venice without stopping, so we stopped. We took the vaporetto down the Grand Canal to St. Mark’s square, which was quite crowded on Easter Sunday.

We sped back through Italy to Zurich, and admired the Alps from the highway instead of up close this time.