When Stupid Mistakes Become an Adventure

When is the adventures mostly to happen? When we travel. And there is even bigger chance when you think you are smart and got it all. I have a funny memory from my traveling in Croatia which comes from my stupid mistake.

Two years ago I decided to create my own eat.pray.love experience and wanted to combine dancing, eating and a yoga retreat in one trip to Croatia. It was my second time of doing salsa festival in Rovinj and this time I wanted to stay longer, enjoy the town and see more of the country.

So, I booked a flat in Rovinj for a solo stay and found a yoga retreat on the island of Hvar, near Split. Yoga retreat had been on my dream list for a while and I was happy to finally do it. I asked the retreat host about the best way to travel from Rovinj to Split and she recommended me the seaplane. Croatia is a very stretched country and bus to Split would take 12 hours. While the seaplane is only two hours – from Pula, where we usually fly from and to Oslo. Without further ado I bought a seaplane ticket for a reasonable price and didn’t do more thinking about it (my first stupid mistake).

Postcards from Rome: The Food Stories

From every place I visit, I try to take with me this one souvenir: a food story. My friend even noticed once: “You talk so much about food!”” which made me blush at first (Who? Me, so cultural and philosophical? :)) But then I realized: how can one love life without loving to eat? It is the closest connection to passion, a very physical experience. So now I continue talking about food without the false modesty. And when you go to a country like Italy how can you leave the food out? That’s why my postcards this time will be part photos, part juicy memories.

I had been to Rome once before, when, on a five-day trip, I visited Milano, Florence and Rome. When my friends asked me about my plans for the trip I honestly said: pizza, pasta, tiramisu. This time my goals were not so clearly pronounced, but it was clear: it is going to be much about pizza and pasta (and sometimes risotto) again. We even hopped on a train to Naples – to eat the best pizza in the world (which I still need to test more, because, ironically, I was not in the pizza mood and was eating pasta instead. To be precise, spaghetti vongole (with seafood) with the sea view to match it and the Capri island in the distance). Mind you, I am not the kind of travel blogger who does useful posts like “what to do” and “where to eat”. Mine are just stories that make me smile, little practical information included. Hope, it is ok with you, as it is very ok with me 🙂

Stories that Save Our Lives

Do you have a story or a hero that has changed your life? Can you say that some of them have saved you? I think, I have, and I am lucky to have it.

Two days ago I watched the movie “Julie and Julia”. It is a history of two lives, both real: one is of Julia Child, an American lady who lived in France, fell in love with cooking there and wrote a book “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”. The second one is of Julie Powell who seems unhappy about her work and moving to Queens, so she starts a project of cooking all the recipes in Child’s book during a year while blogging about it. Her story becomes a book too, and a movie, as we see. According to Julie, Julia Child had saved herself from falling into bored expat wife in Paris by discovering her passion, and she saved Julie. While Julie’s husband says: “No, you have saved yourself”.

Dreamer in Rovinj

Once I had a dream to rent a flat in Italy and pretend I live there. Just for some weeks. Cook pasta, open a bottle of white wine and eat my dinner on the balcony. And just now I realized – I don’t need that anymore. Here I am – back in Rovinj, melting with happiness. Renting a flat. For some weeks. Cooking my pasta. A bottle of local liquor stored. No balcony though, but there is an amazing sunset show just outside of my window. So I open my windows and sit with my pasta on the window sill. Which restaurant has a view compared to mine from the flat under the roof? 

Split, Spritz and Spagetti. Eating in Croatia

In this post I continue telling the story of my “eat pray love” project that I did in Croatia last summer. This is the “eat” part and the rest of the story you can find under the tag eatpraylove on this blog. I know, I have promised my report of the yoga retreat, and it is going to be that last part, just to make sure you are intrigued and waiting 🙂

The week of  salsa festival was over after the Sunday night party. We didn’t sleep that night because my friend was catching a bus to the airport at 7.30 in the morning. So we decided to dance that night away, but no one was really dancing, not us at least. We were wandering from hall to hall, tired after the week of partying, observing how empty the space was getting. After I walked my friend to the bus station, I slept 4 hours, got up and hurried to the last event: the party boat with Cuban music. That was a great end to the week, such an exclamation mark instead of a full stop.

Dancing Salsa in Croatia

Last summer I spent three unforgettable weeks in Croatia which I call my personal “Eat pray love” project. There was one week of salsa festival, a week of relaxing, eating and taking pictures in the beautiful town of Rovinj, and a week of yoga retreat on Hvar Island. Yoga would be the pray part, eating and relaxing speaks for itself, and dancing is definitely love. I have shared reasons to love Rovinj here and here, and the time has come to tell its stories. This is going to be the post about the dancing part aka love (you will find more posts about this story under the tag eatpraylove).

I came to Croatia for the first time in summer of 2015 for the salsa festival and it captured my heart forever. On the night of our arrival we were pulling our suitcases through cobblestoned streets, the stones reflecting the light of the lanterns, the old houses towering around us, the laundry hanging from the windows – I felt like I was instantly placed in the setting of a romantic movie, and soon the cameras would roll. The town of Rovinj in the Northern part of Croatia is known as the most Italian town of that region Istria which used to be a part of Italian Veneto for ages. That’s why Italian atmosphere is luring everywhere, in the colorful facades, in the cuisine, in the smiles and jokes of local waiters. And what can be more romantic than Italian atmosphere in summer?

our street is to the right

Reasons to Fall in Love with Rovinj

If you ask me about the best time to visit Rovinj I would say the end of June, of course, when the salsa thing is going on 🙂 The energy is unique, it is like a all-night and all-day celebration going on. But in this post I want to share my reasons to love Rovinj, even if you don’t own glittering dancing shoes and don’t tremble at the sound of the Afro-Latin beat.

door into summer

easy living

Romance with Rovinj

Do you know this feeling of falling in love with a place? Yes, you do, I am sure. And do you know that the same feeling is still there in your heart and it is easy to get in touch with it? I’ve just discovered that going through my last year’s pictures made me nearly as happy as when I was there. I used to watch my old photos with a sigh “I wish I were there now”, and there would be a taste of sadness in this activity. But today, maybe, because it is a sunny day in Oslo, or because I know I will be there this summer – revisiting the photos of my beloved Croatian town made my heart beat with joy and love, no note of sadness in it.  And I just cannot keep this love to myself! So let’s share it!

Rovinj and its most famous view of the old town