Lazy day in Piran

We woke up to another beautiful morning – our last in Piran, and had our breakfast in the garden. We’d been told the day before that we would be the only guests, and it was lovely! It was really peaceful sitting in the shade. We checked out for our last stroll around the town, but left our bags in the B&B – our bus was not until 4.25pm. First, we took a coastal path we’d seen the day before down to a rocky and quiet beach on the other side of the headland. We spent the morning sitting on big rocks with our toes in the lovely clear water and admiring the views. We think we could see all the way into Italy.

As we were so impressed by yesterday’s pizza, we went back for lunch, convincing ourselves it was just because we needed to fill up before our late-ish bus journey. It was another delicious meal, Oli had bolognese pizza and Sara had vegetarian. Yummy! The sun was still shining and it was really hot so we decided against going into the aquarium or the museum. Instead, we spent an extremely lazy afternoon wandering the promenade and sunbathing, waiting for our bus.

At 3.30pm, we went to get our bags from the B&B and had a bit of a panic when no one answered the door! A long five minutes later, the lady arrived to our great relief. In the end, we retrieved our bags in plenty of time and began an anxious wait for our bus – there was only one daily so we accosted every bus driver we could possibly find to make sure we didn’t miss it. After all the worry, we found it with no problems at all as it was clearly labelled, unlike some of the others. We hopped aboard and began our two and a half hour bus ride, which was a little warmer than we would have liked. Sara was feeling quite poorly, so Oli was on full fanning duty. After arriving in Rovinj, we took a while to find our bearings, but using our hand-written directions we got to our B&B even though there were no road signs anywhere! We were greeted with a very warm welcome, and discovered we’d been given a two-bedroom apartment complete with kitchen, lounge and huge bathroom rather than the double room we’d booked. Very nice! We were both pretty tired (somehow, despite our lazy day), so we had a quick dinner by the marina and then an early night.

Piran has got his hat on (hip hip hip hooray)

We woke up hopeful that the weather would have improved and were really disappointed when it was still grey and rainy outside. After a nice breakfast in the B&B, we got wrapped up once again for our day in Piran. As soon as we had left the sky started to clear, and when we reached the Cathedral we saw our first bit of sun which made us extremely excited!

Piran was so picturesque with cobbles everywhere, but this had its drawbacks as Sara stubbed her toe really badly 🙁 Even so, we were all smiles as the clouds disappeared and the weather got better and better. We wandered around the town to see all of its main sights, and then stopped for a delicious (and enormous) lunch in a busy pizzeria. Oli’s pizza was a dream come true, with chips on top!

By the time we left, all evidence of the storm had disappeared and the sky was a gorgeous blue.

We popped back to the B&B for a quick change of clothes and then spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the sunshine by paddling in the amazingly clear sea and eating ice cream next to the marina.

We really couldn’t believe our luck, we thought the rain would never end. Piran was beautiful in the rain, but even more so in the sun – like a cross between Venice and Padstow. We seemed to get the best of both worlds – it was quiet as it was the end of the season, but the weather was like summer.

Later, we had another seafood dinner while spying on the couple next to us who managed to drink their way through their own three-course feast of beer, white and red wine. Wow! 

Stormy Piran

We had another fairly short journey to Piran, a coastal town in Slovenia. First, we caught a train to Koper which took about 2 and a half hours. Once again, we had our own compartment which was nice. On the way we saw lots of flooding, which seemed to suggest that maybe the rain we’d experienced so far in Slovenia wasn’t entirely normal. We also saw some amazing views from up high as we made our way through the mountains, but a lot of what we should have seen was obscured by cloud – once again the weather was awful. We had hoped the weather in Piran would be better, but as we got closer and closer it still hadn’t changed. Once in Koper, we hopped on a local bus to take us to Piran. Sara fell over on the bus and got stuck on her back like a tortoise – not very dignified but very funny! Luckily, our bed and breakfast was about a minute’s walk from the bus stop.

There wasn’t a safe in our room, so we needed a new and innovative way to embarrass ourselves on arrival. Within minutes we found one! We searched the whole bathroom for the flush on the toilet but couldn’t find it anywhere, so Oli was nominated to go downstairs and ask. For future reference, it was well above head height on top of the cistern, so we’ll know to look there next time! We dried off and relaxed in the room for the afternoon as the weather was so bad outside. The rain eased a little bit in the evening, so we wrapped up and went out for dinner. Thankfully, we decided on a restaurant quite quickly and were inside when the storm hit once again. We had pretty dramatic rain, thunder and lightning. We were sitting in a marquee-style extension to a restaurant on the seafront, so we could really hear and see (and feel – it leaked on Oli) all that was going on outside. We had a lovely meal of soup, seafood and pancakes (not in the same course) with a really friendly waiter, who came out with a gem when Oli asked for the bill – “if you really insist!” We think his meaning was just lost in translation. Later on, Sara finished reading The Island, and Oli finished Marley and Me while tucked up in bed as the storm continued.