A vacation from Romania

Sometimes when you're in Romania, you need to leave Romania. So, in the last few weeks of living in Cluj, I took a week long trip with another Fulbrighter and we saw some interesting places.

The Istrian town of Rovinj in Croatia. Very charming, and edged with clear turquoise waters.
True Roman ruins in Pula, on the tip of the Istrian peninsula. Here is a country that can claim a real Roman heritage....
Servus from Pula's colosseum
These photos are out of order.... here is a church in Trieste (right on the border with Croatia) were we caught the bus to Pula. We spent about 4 hours wandering around this rather scenic coast town. This church had excellent Byzantine-style mosaics which I am, of course, always intrigued by...
An amphitheater in Trieste...
The borderlands between Slovenia and Croatia. The train ride involved changing trains three times to get such a short distance...
Bringing our combined 'hours spent on a train' tally well over 500....
Eating breakfast at our hostel in Pula
The incredible waters off the Croatian coast are also home to sea urchins ....
The views around Rovinj
Kim likes art. At the Biennale in Venice.
Our much delayed arrival in Venice
BLED (sorry about blogger photo upload it's all out of order). There was a castle museum which talks about the earliest settlement of this area. Here, the Romans had established outposts, but the Slovenians fully admit that this was a rustic outpost that was overrun by the Slavs in the following centuries, and don't claim any sort of real Roman heritage. Perhaps Romanian historians could take a page out the Slovenian methodologies book. Nevertheless, Slovenia, formerly part of Yugoslavia (as was Croatia) has its own difficulties in recent history, and I'm not fully versed it it, so I imagine it, like most of Central/South/Eastern Europe, Slovenia has its identity issues.

Lake Bled. Definitely worth a visit, it was an incredibly scenic place.

So, since the photos uploaded in the wrong order, let me reiterate the itinerary: Cluj-Verona by plane, Verona-Trieste by train, Trieste-Pula by bus (day one). Pula, including a run in with a sea urchin (not by me...)(day 2), Rovinj (day 3), travel to Bled (day 4), Bled (day 5), trip to Venice, with unanticipated long layover in Villach, Austria (day 6), a morning in Venice, spent running frantically and hungover, to the bus, then arriving at the Cluj airport to find my friend was not allowed back in the country. We spent 2 hours dealing with immigration. She was ultimately allowed back in on totally arbitrary terms...

It was, in many ways, a series of unfortunate events, but resulted in some great photos!