Family day out: Hum in Istria, Croatia

Hum, Istria, Croatia

Family day out: Hum in Istria (Croatia) is a travel blog post about our first family day trip after the spring lockdown last year. I can’t believe it’s been almost a year and we are all still in the midst of the pandemic. On that day trip to the beautiful Croatian region of Istria we visited the smallest city in the world-Hum. We also visited village of Kotli and another small hilltop town-Roč. It was our baby girl’s first proper day trip. We went with our friends who have a young daughter so our kids had company.

Glagolitic alphabet letter monument

On the way to Hum you will find an interesting monument. These big stone blocks are actually letters of the old Croatian alphabet, glagoljica (Glagolitic alphabet) which was used in Croatia from 9th to 19th century but the Latin script basically took over in 16th ct. There are many Glagolitic monuments around Istria.

Hum-the smallest city in the world

Hum is considered to be a city in Croatia even though there are only 22 inhabitants. Hum is a city-monument today and almost every other house is a holiday home. There’s a small car park just outside the city walls. It takes only 30 minutes on foot to see whole of Hum. Of course, you’ll take many photos as you walk along the cobbled streets and admire the views of green landscape so you’ll spend far more than half an hour in Hum. There’s a small church cemetery to the right of the car park. You follow the path on the left to enter the city through the old door under the bell tower. The main attraction in Hum is the parish church of the Assumption of Mary. There are many small souvenir shops in Hum. They mostly sell locally made edible and drinkable souvenirs such as biska ( a brandy spiced with mistletoe and made according to an old recipe). There are also a few restaurants. After we walked around Hum we decided to have lunch. Because of Covid-19 measures not all of the restaurants were open on the day of our visit and those that were had a smaller capacity for guests as to comply with the epidemiologic rules. We had luck and chose a great restaurant called Humska konoba. I never mention the names of the hotels or the restaurants we choose but I have to make the exception here. I was very satisfied with the quality and the quantity of the dishes and the price of our lunch at Humska konoba. We had a very enjoyable meal and the kids played in the ¨garden˝. It started to rain lightly but it didn’t spoil our outdoor meal. There was also the local cat prowling around us and we fed her with some typical Istrian sweet pastry called kroštule (angel wings).

images from Hum

Charming Kotli village

After our delicious lunch we drove to the nearby village of Kotli. My baby daughter managed to take a short nap while we were having lunch so she was ready to experience Kotli. Nowadays a village full of charming ruins and a couple of holiday homes and restaurants. River Mirna flows through the village forming waterfalls and strange hollows in the stone. Since it was the dry season there wasn’t much water and we didn’t see the lovely waterfalls. There was a surprising number of people walking in the dry riverbed. Of course, being adventurous (or plain reckless or even stupid) we decided that it was a great idea to head down through the thicket to the riverbed and then to climb the rocks back to the bridge with a toddler and a baby (but no baby carrier). Our friends did the same. 🙂 It even started to rain again. It was fun and everything went well.

images from Kotli village

Hilltop town of Roč

Our last stop of the day was the small hilltop town of Roč. It’s known in Croatia as a town of music and Glagolitic alphabet. We wandered around this beautiful old town and admired its sights. The entire place seemed deserted and we only saw a few people around (it was the last Sunday of May 2020). Roč was an Illyirian settlement and then a Roman castrum before it became the center of Croatian literacy in the 15th century. Every year school children from Croatia can participate in Glagolitic script workshop here. You can see well-preserved medieval town walls with two entrances, a Roman lapidarium, a Venetian cannon and a functional watchtower and two churches.

images from Roč town

The kids were tired after a full day of sightseeing so it was time to go home for dinner. It was a rather lovely day trip, made even more special by the fact that it was our first day trip after lockdown.

landscape around Hum

Istria is full of small hilltop villages and beautiful seaside towns. I do encourage you to visit Istria some time. Click here for more posts from Istria.

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Linking up with Museum Mum for Cultured Kids 63

29 thoughts

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  6. It’s great that you could explore your country more with the lockdown! A -inhabitants city sounds so cute, and the pictures really show how picturesque and pretty these towns are! Thanks for sharing your lovely adventure 😊

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  7. What three beautiful towns. And they sound the perfect size/pace for visiting with young kids. I’d be very tempted to try that spiced brandy drink. I would love to visit Croatia one day. Thanks so much for joining in with #CulturedKids

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  8. We’re glad Hum was more humming than ho-hum! It’s a region that has been touched by so many countries and civilizations and that’s what makes it appealing. We’ve only ever scratched the surface, so these sorts of articles get added to our wishlist when we next venture to Europe.

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    1. We are in another lockdown since the end of November. This spring lockdown lasted a month and a half, bit then everything was closed including daycare and schools. Now a least the daycare is open. That was our first day trip after the first lockdown finished and we managed a few more in the summer but I blogged about those already

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      1. That is a long time. We have been so lucky to have only one month of lockdown on one occasion and three days on another. A southern state had 111 days and found it really tough.

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  11. I think stopped here years and years ago on a family holiday. I remember the tower and the church.

    I love that last picture! Hope to see some Croatian and Bosnian hilltops this or next year.

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  12. This sounds like the perfect post-lockdown outing. Hum in particular looks lovely – I would really enjoy taking photos there. I remember that feeling of finally being allowed to go somewhere a bit further from home after the spring lockdown and I’m hoping we’ll be able to experience it again soon. Things are currently very restricted in the UK but the vaccine rollout seems to be going well 🙂

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  13. So true Tanja, I cannot believe it has been an year. This looks like a lovely place for a day trip. I would someday like to visit Croatia, when thigs get better. Until then I will do a bit of armchair travelling with you. Take care and say safe.

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  14. I agree, I can’t quite believe that it’s been almost a year of this now. It looks like you had a lovely day out though, it’s good to get out in the fresh air. Kotli looks like a very pretty place! I hope to get to Croatia one day, a beautiful looking country!

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