Good morning Rovinj! As soon as we got ready, we walked across the street to the pier with our tripod for photos. We were too early that the sun hasn’t completely risen yet and the sky was a little bit gloomy. The good news was that it got cleared up fast.

Instead of venturing into town, we went back to our hotel to have breakfast while waiting for the sky to clear up. Not many hot items at the breakfast buffet except for the free-range eggs. We check out from the hotel, stored our luggage, and continued to explore the old town.

Our view of the beautiful old town was blocked by this shipyard…

After breakfast, we walked across the town to get to the other side of the peninsula to get photos before daytrippers and tours arrived. As we walk through the main street, the shops were still closed, and not much people.

I lost count of how many times we tend to stop and photographed this building! This photo was taken from Jason’s Samsung S21 phone, it turned out better than my camera in terms of balancing the exposure as the sky was too bright and the buildings were in shade. Plus, he got the super-wide .5x to capture the three streets!

This is from my camera, the sky was washed out! I could’ve done a HDR but we were in a rush to get to the harbor.

We got there and no one yay! We set up our tripod and took photos of us two 🙂

The picturesque peninsula at day time, I like the other side better – it’s more colorful and layer I think.

Right near the harbor, there’s an open-air market that sells local products:

And a water fountain in the middle. We bought a kilo of cherries and the owner gave us free figs! All the vendors in Rovinj take both Croatian Kuna and Euro so we don’t need to exchange Kunas for small purchases and short stay.

The side street into the peninsula but mostly residential houses, cafes, bars, and hotels.

We walked out to the other side of the peninsula where there are more things to see. The Balbi’s Arch:

One of the streets filled with restaurants and colorful houses:

A connecting balcony in one of the side streets of residential houses:

Back to the main shopping street where shops have opened. The shops are mostly sell clothes and quite expensive.

A pink building of a dental office.

The buildings were more colorful when the sky was clear and the sun was out, I love this view!

Back to the harbor where there are vendors selling handmade souvenirs! Aren’t those pretty and creative? We bought one for our daughter!

Restaurants along the harbor side.

For lunch, we went to Balbi, it was hard to find even with Google Maps as it was tucked inside the old town. We ordered mussels again and a bowl of fish soup. The mussels were cooked almost perfectly and the taste wasn’t as good as the ones we had last night at Tavern de Amicis.

Jason ordered seafood pasta and it was okay. They really don’t have the big king prawns 🙁

The waiter recommended the local specialty pasta that has squash and shrimp. It was refreshing but too much of the squash flavor, I am not a fan of squash but Jason is so we traded!

The lunch was 440 HKR (~$58) for two mussels, a fish soup, and two pasta!

After lunch, we continued to explore the side streets of the old town. I like this street’s pink and orange hues.

The stone staircase and building really has the old medieval feel.

The street leading up to the Church of Saint Euphemia is filled with art galleries!

We got those colorful magnets, easier to bring home and add to my magnet board in my home office:

The bike that matches the door color.

Up, up, up, we finally got up! The famous Michelin-starred restaurant – Monte is also located here.

Church of Saint Euphemia:

Jason took a peek inside as I didn’t have a shawl to cover my shoulders, he said nothing special. The views of the sea were mostly blocked by trees as well. We went back down to the street of pink and orange hues.

Back to the harbor side again and the restaurants were filled with people for lunch.

The houses were lit up by then so we took more photos before we leave Rovinj.

We headed back to the hotel, waited for the guy to pull up our car, and loaded the GPS to the post office that the receptionist gave us. We couldn’t find the post office, it looked more like a pickup and drop-off point 🙁 We then continued our 2.5 hours drive to Ljubljana. Goodbye Rovinj, we enjoyed our short stay!

By the time we got to Ljubljana, it was raining yikes. There is an underground parking lot right across from Intercontinental Ljubljana, where we stayed with our free night certificates from our IHG credit cards. We didn’t know where to exit and ended up taking a long way dragging our luggage to the hotel in the rain, thankfully, it wasn’t pouring rain!

Intercontinental Ljubljana is really nice and a great value to use with the free night certificate or points. We were upgraded to a suite as a platinum member! The room was spacious, modern, and luxurious. There’s a sofa along the hallway from the entrance past the bathroom to the bedroom.

Robes and slippers were provided:

The bathroom was huge and luxurious!

I like that it has a walk-in shower and a tub. The toilet is separated by a glass.

The spacious bedroom with seating area and the bed was so comfortable!

Behind the seating area are a desk and chair.

Complimentary nuts, dried fruits, and a big bar of chocolate…I love chocolate!

I made a reservation at Restavracija Cubo at 6:30 PM and since it was raining, we decided to take a taxi instead of taking our car out. The taxi was around 5-7 Euros.

Cubo has this dark and romantic atmosphere. It was the first time we got vegetable dips, it was definitely healthy!

Cubo is a seafood restaurant and Jason is a seafood lover so we ordered seafood dishes. As a starter, we ordered the mixed grill seafood salad, those cuttlefish were so flavorful! I wish they have grilled Mediterranean shrimps!

Lobster soup, more like a lobster bisque that was rich and creamy.

Those scallops were so yummy!

I ordered the seafood spaghetti – I like that it has a seafood flavor with a little creamy sauce but is not too heavy.

Jason ordered the shrimp risotto and it was good too.

It’s funny that every time when we were at a seafood restaurant, the waiters/waitress think we ordered way too much and they were shocked by our appetite LOL! As Jason said, he will never get full with seafood! Our wonderful seafood dinner was €91 and we rounded up to €100 as tips. It was such a great value when the Euro was almost the same as the USD, that saved us a lot!