Savudrija

Savudrija sits at the very tip of Istria, the last bit of land before the coast bends south toward Umag, and it has the feel of a place people pass on their way to somewhere else rather than a destination in its own right. That’s exactly why I liked it. We drove out on a whim after a few busier days on the coast, following signs for the lighthouse without much of a plan, and found a village of maybe a few hundred people, some fishing boats pulled up on a narrow beach, and that lighthouse standing white and solid against the water.

The lighthouse itself dates to 1818, which makes it the oldest still operating on the Adriatic, and there’s something satisfying about a piece of infrastructure that old still doing its original job two centuries later. You can rent rooms inside it now — it doubles as a small guesthouse — and even if you’re not staying the night, the base is open enough to walk around and get a sense of the scale of the thing up close. I liked that it wasn’t roped off or over-explained with plaques every meter; it just sits there being a working lighthouse that happens to be very old.

We spent the afternoon doing very little — walking the shoreline, which is mostly flat rock shelves rather than sand, good for laying out a towel and bad for anyone who wants soft footing. A few local families had staked out spots with the confidence of people who’d been coming here their whole lives, kids jumping off the rocks into water clear enough to see the bottom from well above the surface. There’s a small cluster of restaurants a short walk inland, unfussy places serving grilled fish and calamari, and we ate dinner at one with a view straight down the coast toward the lighthouse as the light started to change.

By the time we walked back out to the point it was near sunset, and the lighthouse beam had started sweeping in slow rotations against a sky that was doing all the dramatic orange-to-purple things Istrian sunsets do without fail. We stood there longer than we needed to, not really saying much, just watching the light turn and the boats settle for the night. Savudrija doesn’t have a long list of things to do, and I think that’s the whole point of it.

When to go: Late afternoon into sunset, any time from May to September, timed so you’re at the point when the light turns gold.