November 20, 2016 - New Kid on the Block

Rijeka is the new kid on the tourism block. It may not even be on the tourism block.  During socialist times Rijeka was an industrial city. The first thing you notice as you approach from the sea is a large number of bleak 10-story apartment buildings built in the socialist era. As you get closer you notice some more ornate buildings from the Hapsburg era, and you notice that they are moldering and peeling. The closer you get, the worse it looks.  

Our guide, Ana, is 31 years old. She is bright and witty and speaks very good English. She tells us that 5 years ago her job in tourism didn't exist. She is one of the many young Croats who find work wherever they can. It is not a steady 40-hour-per-week job, but as long as the tourists come there will be work.  

It is Sunday morning and it is still quiet downtown. Ana says most of the locals leave town if possible on the weekends. For one thing, there is no place to park. We use a taxi for our tour. The driver drops us off and we walk around for an hour or so and then Ana calls him and he picks us up and we go to the next place. There is graffiti, but maybe not as much as some of the other places, particularly Greece. There is trash on the ground - more than a little, but not a horrible amount. There are some people hanging around but it is hard to tell if they are homeless. It is the buildings that seem most depressing to me. They are just slowly decaying and withering.  

   

Basilica

Typical deferred maintenance

  The history of this land is: Ligurians, Romans, ________, Hapsburgs, Italians, Socialism, independence. After downtown we drove up a big hill to Trsat. This is a neighborhood and also the name of a 13th or 14th century fort. Not much has been done with the fort and it is not as interesting to see as it looked from down below, but the view is nice. A block away we see a church that was visited by Pope ______.  

  A 30-minute drive takes us to another world - Opatija. Opatija is pretty. It was built in the 1880's as a planned resort for the rich. There are Habsburg-style villas everywhere, and a few grand hotels and other large buildings. The waterfront has a promenade several miles long connecting a number of nearby coastal towns. There are modern statues everywhere. The "Girl with a Seagull" was really nice.  

We wandered into a tiny "museum of tourism." I don't think the name fairly describes it, because the name creates an expectation of something about tourism. Though we didn't pay to go to the upstairs part, because the downstairs part, which was free, was so uninteresting, the museum wasn't about much of anything. We saw old architectural drawings of some of the buildings in Opatija and a trompe l'oeuil mural, and an old table. Yeah. After all this hard work we needed coffee, so we stopped at a promising-looking coffee shop and Ken, Dom, Ana (Ana from the ship, not Ana, the tour guide) and I had macchiato and some outstanding cheese strudel. I don't think strudel like that can be found anywhere in Anchorage.  

Translation?: Ice cream is kugelicious

Back on the ship we enjoyed dinner and a show by "contemporary ventriloquist" Kieran Powell.