Croatia trip May/Jun 2026 - Part 1 Piran, Slovenia

4 weeks and 4,691 kms to Dubrovnik and back. It's a long way to the Balkans! After two nights en route, we first visited Piran in Slovenia, which nestles on a short strip of coast between Italy and Croatia. Slovenia and Croatia sit on the Adriatic Sea and the northern peninsular is known as Istria. Both countries have a long history of being ruled by the Republic of Venice, so there is an Italian influence in the towns, particularly the coastal ones. Each town has a Slavic and an Italian name.

We had to park a fair way out of the town and despite Google saying the walk was mostly flat, it was actually very hilly! I learned not to trust Google after that.

As we got closer we walked down alleyways and under archways; the arch above had this sign saying it dated from the second half of the 15th century. It's a part of the old city walls.

Coming into the medieval alleyways.

How cool to match your paintwork to your cactus flowers!

The main square in Piran, Tartini Square, with St George's Cathedral overlooking it. The square is named after the violinist and composer Giuseppe Tartini who was born here in 1692 and the statue is dedicated to him.

The Town Hall, built in 1879 replacing a former C13th building.

The centre of Piran is small so it wasn't difficult to walk around. This little harbour was lovely, overlooked by the cathedral clock tower.

Walking in the other direction towards the end of the town, which juts out into the sea.

With no town beach, people sunbathed on this concrete area and there were steps down to the sea in many places along this stretch for swimming. It was a bit choppy on this day though!

Lots of restaurants here facing the sea.

Our Lady of Health church and yours truly.

Venetian Gothic arched window, influenced by Islamic architecture.

We walked up the hill to the cathedral and had lovely views over the town, including a glimpse of Tartini Square and the harbour.

St George's Cathedral. We couldn't enter the building as it was roped off, but at least we could look inside. What a gorgeous ceiling - a surprise really as the outside of the building was rather plain.

Another view down to Tartini Square.

When we got back to the moho, we discovered that we had received a parking ticket. This was our fault really, as en route to a car park which I had found where we could park, we passed another one that had a number of mohos parked in it. This was a bit closer to the town, so we thought we'd park there. However, there was a sign saying 'No Motorhomes'. Well there are other mohos here, we thought, so sod it. A big mistake!

And then we drove on to Croatia, and our destination for the next few days, Novigrad.