A boat waits in Rovinj at the hour you choose, and the coast is yours for the day, the coves, the islands, and lunch on the water, yours alone.
Rovinj is thirty minutes from the house, a working harbour of tall houses gathered below a hilltop church. Your concierge holds the boat for the weather and the mood of the day, so nothing is fixed until the morning it happens, and the sea decides the rest.
From the harbour the water opens south to the Rovinj archipelago, fourteen small islands in a protected reserve. Sveta Katarina and Crveni otok, the red island, sit a few minutes out, their pine shade and clear water made for a long swim before anyone thinks about lunch.
North the coast folds into the Lim fjord, a green channel cut ten kilometres inland from the sea. Its still, brackish water is farmed for oysters and mussels, lifted the same morning they are eaten, and a table on the water there is one of the quiet pleasures of this coast.
A day tends to find its own slow shape. An anchorage for the morning swim, lunch aboard or in a konoba on a quiet bay, the light turning gold as the boat comes back into Rovinj for the evening. The children remember the jumping from the deck, and the grown ups the stillness of an empty cove.
The sea is warmest from June into September, and the coves are emptiest early and late in the day, which is when your concierge sends you out.