A nostalgic and unforgettable trip

Yesterday was a beautiful day, even though they said it would rain and be cloudy, so we decided to go to the city of Rijeka, 350 km away, where my younger son had a karate competition.
It was a long and fun trip.

First, right after we started, actually after just half an hour, we stopped at the first gas station, filled up the tank, and grabbed some coffee and energy drinks to wake up.
With my wife and me were our older son and two nephews.

We left quite early, and instead of taking the highway, we took the old road through various places, including the town of Crikvenica, where we stopped and took a short walk.
I must say it's beautiful because it's much more developed since the last time I was there, which was 25 years ago.
I barely recognized it—benches everywhere, flowers, parks—just lovely.

We sat down for coffee for about half an hour and then continued on to Rijeka.
When we arrived in Rijeka, it was extremely hot, even though the forecast had said it would be cooler, so most of us were dressed in long clothes, haha.

The sports hall was nice, air-conditioned, and beautiful, much bigger than the ones where they had competed before.
There were almost 500 competitors from nearly 40 clubs and 4 countries: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro.

My son's club once again took first place as the club with the most medals won and received the biggest trophy as well as a cash prize of 300 euros, which they decided to use to treat all the kids at a local restaurant.

My son won bronze, but as I told him, not everything that shines is gold, so he shouldn't worry—there will be golden medals, even though he missed out by just one point.

While they were at the restaurant, we went to a nearby fast food place located not far from the sports hall and had flatbreads with meat and all the toppings—it was delicious.

The kids had an amazing time, and so did we, because I hadn't traveled this route for over two decades, and it was both unforgettable and quite nostalgic for me.

I hope there will be another competition here soon so we can take the same route again and maybe stop in some other places I haven’t visited in a long time, as we couldn’t visit everything this time or we wouldn’t have made it to the competition on time.

I hope you’ll enjoy the pictures of beautiful Istria!