Pula Food Walking Tour

I'd give this tour about 3 1/2 stars. Our guide, Dolibar (sp?), was clearly quite knowledgeable, but I fear the tour was a bit doomed from the start. It was, at first, cancelled due to a lack of participation, but then they revived it -- pulling in a guide who had not done this tour in some time - and who had already been on an all-day tour around Istria that day. He was noticeably exhausted - poor guy - and 15 minutes late because he said he had to drop one previous guest off at a separate location from the others who had been on the tour. We had, as a consequence, very little time outside the amphitheater and didn't go inside (the itinerary says 20mins at the amphitheater, but we were only there about 5). We hoofed it to a restaurant w/ a nice starter course for us - 2 slices of bread, one w/ prosciutto/cheese on top, the other w/ anchovies on tomato. We had a white wine spritzer. There wasn't really any discussion as to how the food related to the area, as we expected (maybe that wasn't the plan?). We then hit various sites, the twin gates, Temple of Augustus (again - not going inside), etc, alternating brief dining experiences in between --- but our guide was really scattered in his explanations. He just seemed fairly unprepared for us, though he had the bank of knowledge, again. The beef pieces at one restaurant were unusual - marinated in teriyaki (?) - and the pork sausage on sauerkraut was ok. The truffle w/ an Istrian pasta was good. Gelato was the end course -- and it was clear the folks at the shop wanted us to take their least-used option (our guide just said, "That's the way it goes." ??). The 2 other couples on the tour (one couple, one friend duo) -- we all agreed the tour was ok on its face but very disorganized. I felt bad for the guide who just seemed so spent -- he kept talking about how he had to drive all the way back toward Motovun, a near one hour trek, but he didn't cut our time w/ him short, to his credit. My friend and I didn't really care that much for Pula (it seemed pretty touristy & not very pretty, though the Roman monuments are impressive) -- so perhaps that informed on our experience?

Eine großartige und individuelle Tour durch Pula. Unser Guide war äußerst engagiert und hat sich viel Mühe gegeben. Die inkludierten Speisen und Getränke waren hervorragend ausgewählt.

This is a great tour, Denis was a lovely host who had tons of knowledge and facts to share about the food history of the region. I do think this tour could have been maybe 30 minutes shorter, but other than that, a really enjoyable experience!