Exploring the Adriatic Sea: Pula, Croatia.

I met Phil in Pula, Croatia for a 4-night mid-week holiday. He'd been traveling through South East Asia and up through Asia Minor for the preceding 3 months.

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Below is the Pula Arena (coliseum). The Arena is the only remaining Roman amphitheater to have four side towers and with all three roman architectural orders entirely preserved. Karen and I will be going to Rome next month. We can't wait to see that coliseum!

Here's a movie I took from inside the arena. The ring is almost completely intact and in really good shape.

I was able to catch some pretty good sunset pictures. I forced the shutter closed quicker than normal to deepen the colors. Didn't turn out too bad!
Phil and I rented scooters the second day we were there. We got about 10km north of Pula and broke one 3km out of Fazana. Phil tried to push it alone for about 15 min, then I found a solid spot on the back of his scooter and tried pushing it from behind. We found we could go about 30km/h if I straightened my leg on the back of his scooter and hit the gas on mine.

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We made it into Fazana, called the scooter people, had an espresso and waited for them to come. It took about 45 minutes before they brought us a new one, didn't even try to start the dead one, just gave us a new one and tool the old one away.
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We ended up continuing north to the town of Rovinj a total of 43km north of Pula. We read in our Lonely Planet guide where we might get some great seafood. Sure enough, I had about the best seafood sample plate I've ever ordered. It was the sample of the day's catch.

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Here is the view down one of the cobbled streets. That's Phil down the road a bit.

The next day, we spent some time touring the Pula Arena. Phil actually waited outside and I went in for the full look around.

This arena was built by the Roman Empire between 14A.D. and 41 B.C.
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Yeah, Floyd is in the HOUSE!!!

This is a view of Kamenjak Nature Park. It's at the southern tip of the Istrian peninsula. This view is looking north. Pula is NNW of Prementura at the north end of the park.

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Phil and I rented bikes on our third day and rode south to this nature park. Took us a while to get here... we took a few sight seeing detours and a few wrong turns.

Here I am in the Kamenjak Nature Park sitting on a ledge over looking a water cave that opened up 80 feet below me. We were going to try swimming into it, but the water was too cold. Here's one last picture the long way through the arena. This place is just killer!

Here's the last sunset picture with Phil. This was actually the last traveling sunset Phil spent outside of Ireland. The next morning, Phil and I left Pula got Dublin. Phil actually decided on the bus into town that he wasn't going to Eastern Europe, but back to Dublin instead.
And here is Pula on the way out. You can actually see the arena from the plane. This was a great trip. There are some socio-economic observations Phil and I made about Croatia. I hope the economy gets some good help and maybe future membership in the EU. A lot of the people hope EU membership will improve the economics.