I had been told that ‘must sees’ in Istria (apart from the obvious, Rovinj) were Motovun and Hum. Motovun because it is a beautiful elevated walled city and Hum because it is officially the smallest town in the world!
It took us a while to get going in the morning – had to visit the green market here in Rovinj, had to have coffee and brioche, had to wait while the car was groomed, so eventually set off at about 12, armed with mineral water ,cherries, smokva and flat peaches. Rovinj is circled by a ring of one way streets so it took a while to get out – a few false starts.
Let me just walk you through the things that you have to get used to when you are driving on the right hand side of the road – the rear view mirrors take a while to work out, the safety belt doesn’t need to be pulled from the right hand side, the gear stick is on the right hand side not the left, the roundabouts don’t roundabout on the right side….. it took a while to get used to driving – a bit of concentration!
So, first to the town of Bale because that was where big Eddie said that there was a funny church –
still unsure what he meant – the church of St Elisabeth was a beautiful Catholic Church with a crypt underneath it. The town surrounding it was quaint. The lovely thing about this trip is that there are not crowds of tourists and so this little town was nearly all ours.
As was Motovun which is a captivating town perched on a hill in the Mirna River Valley – the Venetians decided to fortify the town with a wall in the 14th Century. We parked the car half way up the hill and walked to the main gate – a narrow cobbled road leading up to the centraltrg/ piazza (and these things are all named in two languages, Italian and Croatian). The gorgeous old church (Sv Stjepan) was deadly quiet apart from the quiet working of four young artists renovating the friezes in the central altar area.
We did a fancy bit of circumnavigation to find Hum (nearly drove to Slovenia) because it isn’t on the maps, and we almost gave up when we saw a spray-painted sign on the side of a bridge. Hum has become famous for being the smallest town in the world, although we are not sure of the criteria that they have applied to wear this laurel. It is a walled city in that entry is through a massive set of bronze doors depicting the 12 months of work in the year. There is a beautiful chapel, St Jerome, which has frescoes in unusually bright colours – which we managed to glance at as the old woman doing the vacuuming blocked our entrance. We asked if we could go in and look at the crke (church) but the lady wielding the vacuum said ‘no’. Never mind, we saw a bit of it. The local people were preparing for a party tomorrow – they were expecting about 1,000 people which is a lot of extras in a small place! The population of Hum is currently 24. Each year a mayor is elected and so the people currently living in Hum have each had a few turns at being mayor. There is a lovely stone table underneath the trees where matters of town importance are discussed by the residents.
The town is manicured and groomed – we decided that someone with a marketing degree who lives there decided that they must put Hum on the map to generate an income to make the continuity of the town viable. We supported that concept by buying some beautiful truffle pag cheese from the souvenir shop.
And then somehow the co-pilot managed to find the direct route back to Rovinj in time to return the rental car by 8 o’clock. Fantastic team work – no accidents, only a few wrong turns, only one pedestrian had to scarper off the road because I was intent on hugging the curb (it still makes me giggle to think of it) – well done us!
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