Two years ago I wrote my initial impressions of Rijeka from while on a Rick Steves Best of the Adriatic tour. The tour guide did a good job of pointing out the highlights of the city through the bus windows. But the bus did not stop, and things went by very quickly. I resolved to go back some day for a closer look, and did so recently.
The (morning) view above is from Trsat, from a point a few hundred feet southeast of the castle. Overall in Rijeka there is a long hill that closely parallels the Adriatic. But at this spot a river flows through a narrow canyon. As it approaches the Adriatic the river has been channelized, creating a bit of an estuary and harbor for smaller boats.
The evening view above, looking toward Trsat, seems not to have changed much in over 100 years. The main difference: these boats have motors; in 1904 they were using sails.
Just northwest of where the channel meets the Adriatic there are larger ships docked.
In the background left is the boat-hotel, where I had a pleasant stay. In the area between the boats, on Palm Sunday afternoon they were having some sort of celebration. Before the celebration ended, loudspeakers were blaring Bohemian Rhapsody up into the hillside. A few blocks up that hill is the Maritime and History Museum of the Croatian Littoral.
The museum has a central atrium, with galleries wrapped around on two floors. Some of the gallery rooms are furnished as they would have looked around 1900, when Rijeka [then known as Fiume; Rijeka = Fiume] was governed as a Hungarian city in Austria-Hungary, and today's museum building was then the governor's mansion. But most of the rooms in the museum are dedicated to special exhibits. One of the highlights on display is a life jacket from the Titanic. The display case holding the life jacket is flanked on either side by scale models, of the Titanic itself on the right, and of the much smaller Carpathia on the left.
The Carpathia in April 1912 picked up survivors from the Titanic and took them to New York. More significant for me is that my Hungarian grandmother had embarked from Rijeka on the Carpathia on 28 October 1905. I learned from the information in the exhibit that the Cunard Line had reached agreement with Hungary to transport emigrants from Rijeka starting in October 1903. After that every two weeks one of the ships from Cunard's fleet [15 ships made for Cunard from 1900 to 1914] set sail from Rijeka [stopping at ports in Italy] to America filled with people who emigrated from Italy, Croatia and Hungary.
So when my grandmother chose (or had chosen for her by whoever paid for the trip) to travel from Rijeka in 1905, that route was a relatively new option. (My grandfather, traveling that same year with his experienced uncles, took the long-established route from northeast Hungary through Hamburg.) My grandmother's younger sister, Elizabeth, followed in December 1909, also traveling aboard the Carpathia, also sailing from Rijeka. (The Carpathia served the England-New York tourist trade during the summer, returning to the Mediterranean/Adriatic emigration service during the fall, winter and spring.) There is much more about the area's long sailing history on display in the museum.
The bus station is almost all parking lot, blessed by the facade of the Capuchin Church. There is a small ticket office near the corner on the right. Buses constantly arrive from and depart for the more touristy places in Croatia. Underrated Rijeka is well worth the bus trip.
