Something to Declare

September 26-27, 2024. Rijeka, Opatija.

Yesterday, Thursday (September 26), we left Zagreb (below, upper middle) for the Gulf of Kvarner, which separates the larger portion of Croatia from Istria (the small triangular peninsula, below, middle far left).

We stopped off first at the port city of Rijeka. Going back to Roman times, it is now a European Capital of Culture. We visited Gradina Trsat (Trsat Castle), believed to lie at the exact spot of an ancient Illyrian and Roman fortress.

We learned about the influence of the Irish-born military commander Laval Nugent of Westmeath.

After serving in the Austro-Hungarian army against the forces of Napoleon, Nugent married into the Croatian noble Frankopan family. Nugent completely reconstructed and renovated Trsat Castle, establishing a residence, a museum, and a Frankopan family mausoleum.

Rijejka is also the home of the Church of Mary of God of Trsat.

The church is on the site where, in the year 1291, the original Nazareth barn, year 0, c.e. (think “manger”) miraculously appeared. (It then miraculously –tragically–disappeared in 1294.)

Then off to Opatija (pronounced “oh-PAHT-i-ya” by most Croatians, and “Oh-pa-TEE-ya by native Opatijans). Go figure. Opatija has the rep of having been the “Newport, Rhode Island” of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the resort where all the noble and wealthy Vienna crowd summered (think “Gilded Age”). The place still is chock full of 19th century grandeur, along a stunning Lungomare (7-miles sea walk) and harbor:

In Opatija, we are staying at the Heritage Imperial Hotel. Its original name was the Hotel Stéphanie (ahem!), named for the Crown Princess Stéphanie Clotilde Louise Herminie Marie Charlotte (daughter of King Leopold II of Belgium, and married to Crown Prince Rudolf, the son of the emperor Franz Josef and his wife Empress Elizabeth a/k/a “Sissi” (see previous blog posts from Vienna). Rudolf was Franz Josef’s heir until he carried out a suicide pact with his last mistress in the hunting lodge in Mayerling, in the Vienna woods (Ibid.). This left Rudolf’s cousin Franz Ferdinand to be the heir, until he was assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914 (see previous blog post from Sarajevo), launching World War I. You know the rest.

Anyway, Stéphanie was born in Brussels in 1864. She had an unhappy marriage with Crown Prince Rudolf (as noted, he was something of a philanderer, and gave her venereal disease, which left her sterile). After the Mayerling murder/suicide in 1889, Stéphanie remarried in 1900, to a Hungarian, Prince Elemér Lónyay of Nagy-Lónya.

Here’s the spooky part. Stéphanie died on August 23, 1945, twelve days after MY Stefanie was born. My theory is that her spirit was magically transmitted into the new, American Stef. See any resemblance?

Anyway, we were the only ones who didn’t go to today’s additional tour of the Hill Towns of Istria. Instead, we played hooky and spend the day on our own in Opatija, walking 6 miles on the Lungomare, where the surf crashed against the sea wall in dramatic fashion and the vistas were incredible.

Dinner was fabulous, at a place called Vongola, where Stef had tuna steak and I had grilled scallop, with a view of the Gulf of Kvarner.

An altogether exquisite day. Tomorrow we cross another border, into Slovenia, for a visit to the caves of Postojna, and eventually to the capital, Ljubljana, for the final three days of our OAT adventure.