6 Aug – 16 Aug

Lots of beach days and we both have quite a tan even though we spend most of the time at the beach under the shade. The beach at Cologne has clear water and is lovely to swim in, so each visit I swim across the bay and back for exercise and with goggles explore the seabed for large Adriatic clams and sea cucumbers that live about 6 metres down and often follow amazingly large schools of iridescent fish as they swim above the rocks.

Out of the water I have taken to to the art of constructing piles of balancing rocks. It takes patience and I see lots of little crabs too as I hunt for the next perfect rock. The other day as I lay on some of the big rocks drying I felt something tickling my belly, when I sat up a crab quickly scuttled away and out of sight! I’m not sure who got more of a start!

Amongst our many beaches days Rob and I continue to explore Istria. It feels like a big beach holiday but when I look through our photo journey we are still packing in quite a bit of exploring.

On 8 August we visited Medulin near Pula and specifically the remains of a Roman villa. The archeogical park was fascinating with the ruins of quite an expansive Roman villa on the waters edge of two thirds of the park. With fantastic views across the bay and back towards Pula it is obvious the the original owner was someone of wealth and influence in the area.

On 11 August we visited Fazana again for another Sardine festival. This one turned out to be a competition for the best filleting!

No gourmet sardines as part of the fiesta so we went and found dinner at a restaurant that looked good and Rob found Grilled Sardine heaven!

14 August – Umag

Rob’s cousin Sylvia and her husband Andre and daughter Ilaria were holidaying in Umag so we travelled up to spend the day with them. We had lovely time with them enjoying the delights of Umag which included a train ride from Stella Maris; an amazing, sprawling holiday water park on the coast, into Umag and back, a swim and energetic game of Frisbee with Ilaria and a very relaxing dinner before returning to Bale.

Ilaria is learning English at school and as I am learning Italian we had interesting conversations about grammar, Italian articles and gender in language. A very smart, well mannered and lovely young lady, it was a delight to spend time with her.