Day 3 - Porec Croatia - " Millionaires Alley" !

With the windows closed that damned rooster didn't get much of a chance to disturb our beauty sleep which was most needed by KH after sitting up and watching the US open followed by the Swiss Cycling tour for 4 hours not in itself a problem until he mentioned he hadn't had time to check whether in fact he had been "dudded" that 1,000 euros yesterday !

Another fab breakfast and with bikes packed and stored we journeyed back into Venice with a bus load of American tourists straight off the plane doing a great job of successfully stopping people from getting on or off with their 3 storey high suitcases !

We had time for a quick last look on this warm sunny day with a slow cruise down the Grand Canal taking in the magic ambience of this place and just feeling a tad jealous of those sitting back in their hotel restaurant chairs doing nothing more than supping on a drink and watching the world go by

Disembarking somewhere near San Marco we wandered back to Piazza La Roma taking different exploratory routes through the beautiful piazzas and laneways.

We timed it perfectly to reach our return bus just in time for a tremendous thunderstorm which disappeared almost as quickly as it came.

Back at our hotel we boarded our luxurious mini van with our bikes and drove to San Basillo on the Western side of Venice and went about the complicated process of boarding our Venezia Lines Hydrofoil to Croatia.

To get through security we had to remove everything from our bikes and then painstakingly put every bag through the security scanner before going back to then take our bikes through the metal detector or in Kev's case go back a 3rd time after he'd forgotten he'd left his down tube bag on his bike ???

After then placing everything back on our bikes we walked to our Hydrofoil where once again we took everything back off our bikes for stowage prior to boarding - I'm sure it made sense to someone !

In our floating sauna (no air con until the engines were started)we waited and sweated until finally getting underway just after 5.00p.m.

For the first 30 + mins it was gentle cruising until we passed outside of the Venice Lagoon and then Boris let her rip putting us on a high speed "vomitron" for nearly two hours to the Slovenian coast where after a quick passport check (because we were leaving the Schengen area ) we headed a further 40 minutes down the coast to our destination at Porec.

As for first impressions ... Wow !

A beautiful harbour lined with restaurants and million dollar boats that would have put Greg Norman to shame !

After checking into our Hostel and being repeatedly told by the staff how they love Australia seemingly because so many Croatians live there, we journeyed out in to the streets where it appears that life doesn't start untill around 10.00p.m

It was Pizza, Pasta and a late night Ice Cream (at least for me) as we wandered the beautiful streets of the old town before retiring to our private 4 bunk hostel room !

With bikes at the ready we hit the saddle tomorrow working our way inland to Motovun a gentle 30 km opening ride !