Slovenia

Monday, July 3rd

We had bad traffic on the way to Slovenia, but we finally got to our hotel in Bled. The view from our hotel room was stunning!

We were at a standstill for almost an hour. All the traffic pulled to the side for emergency vehicles!

 

The view from our balcony!

We quickly got back on the bus and went to a nearby small resort town called Radovljica. It was raining again, but not too badly. Our first stop was a gingerbread workshop. We got an interesting talk from the person there about this historic gingerbread recipe and how this part of Slovenia has become known for its gingerbread. We did not get a free sample. But the tour guide there was very entertaining and enjoyable.

In the gingerbread workshop with the fun guide

Next stop was a restaurant (thank goodness, it was getting late and we were hungry). Before we got served our mushroom soup (delicious!) however, we watched an older couple perform a traditional dance to the music of the accordion. I actually quite liked it. 

Nice dancing; empty bowls

 

The meal was good and then there was more entertainment! They taught us a wedding dance/game and Bert came in second! Then we did kind of a conga-line dance around the restaurant to accordion music. It was fun, but it was late. We didn't get back to the hotel until 10ish. Straight to bed!

Bert about to come in second place at the wedding hat dance game

 

View from our room at night (photo by Adam)

Tuesday, July 4th

We had a bit of a later start today, so Adam and I had time for a walk partway around Lake Bled after breakfast. 

 Here's what happens to me at these amazing breakfast buffets. I walk in and find the hot food. Yum! Scrambled eggs please! Put some on my plate. Then I turn and see the egg station!! Oh, I will actually have one of those freshly made sunny-side up eggs! Put one on my plate. Then I'm wandering around and find Deviled Eggs! Put one on my plate! Then I end up with three kinds of eggs. Same thing happened with the bread, then the crepes, then the waffles. Also I had a chocolate croissant. This breakfast also had sushi, and it was good! I ate some fruits and veggies too, probably. 

It was a lovely morning and the walk was peaceful and everything felt fresh. 

 

The morning walk could not be beat

Today we toured Ljubljana, the capital. I wasn't too excited about another walking tour of another capital, but I really liked Ljubljana. In 2007, the mayor made the entire city center (more than 10 hectares! [whatever a hectare is!]) a pedestrian zone. It's pretty interesting actually and you can read about it and see other pictures here. They also have pay-by-weight trash disposal for residents but free composting and recycling. It's a very tidy and lovely city. The tour guide showed us around and then we had free time. 

I liked the architecture

Here's our tour group in Ljubljana

Pedestrian area; castle

The five of us walked around together for a bit, and got some lunch/snacks. Then Adam, Ben, and Bert walked up the hill to the castle at the top. Dianna and I took the funicular, because why do a hike when there's a funicular?!

I'm having a bread snack called Dragon Bread, waiting in line for the funicular

 The castle was so-so. We looked out over the city, then walked down. 

When we got back to Bled, we had just enough time to hire a boat to take us out to the church on the island in the middle of the lake. Adam wasn't feeling great, so he stayed back. A guy rows this big boat, gondola-style, with about 20 people on it, out to the island, and says, be back in 40 minutes. We walked up to the top of the hill, checked out the outside of the church (too expensive to go in) and then the boys went swimming and I went bird watching. I saw a bird I'd been hoping to see but had been elusive so far- the European Goldfinch! 40 minutes later, we got back on the boat and were rowed back to the mainland. 

The rowing guy stands at the back and rows a boat full of people out to the island

The church on the island in the lake

 

We had a going-away dinner at the castle on the cliff! This was pretty neat. We took the bus up there and then had about half an hour to explore. Many people walked around the edges, some folks went into the museum, but Adam and I spent most of our time watching something amazing! Just below the edge of the castle (looking straight down the cliff from the castle wall), a Eurasian Kestrel would pop out from a nest or ledge or something, and hover in place. It wasn't moving in the air at all! The wind was just the right strength to keep the Kestrel in place, without it flapping its wings at all. And it was just below us! You rarely get to see a bird of prey flying in one place from above! Adam tried to get a photo, but just when he would get the settings right and the shot lined up, the Kestrel would pop back into its hiding place. We gave up on getting a pic, but it was still super cool to watch, and we got some other neat photos from that height. 

There's the Kestrel!

 

Ta da! Slovenia!

The view of the lake and island from the castle on the cliff.

Then we had dinner and said goodbye to our tour group and our tour leader, Vlaho. Dinner was tasty, but too small!

After we got dropped off back at the hotel, Adam and I decided to walk around the lake. There is a walking trail all the way around, and it is 6km. Having just run a 5k a couple weeks earlier, I felt confident that I could walk 6km, though I anticipated not enjoying it much by about kilometer 4. 

It was a beautiful night, and the walk was lovely, and we saw lots of interesting things and had some great views. The only bird I saw was mallards. Mallards everywhere! Boring!

They do look somehow more rough-and-tumble than Mallards in the US

 

As anticipated, I was tired by kilometer 4 and did a fair amount of complaining for the last 2 km. Adam refused to give me a piggy back ride. 

We got back to the hotel and went to bed because we had a 2am wakeup (uuuuuuugggggggghhhhhhh) for the van to take us to Venice to fly home the next day. 

I really liked Bled, Slovenia, and also Ljubljana and would recommend Slovenia to anyone!

Wednesday July 5th

Van to Venice. Plane to London. A good breakfast at a restaurant in the airport, though nothing compared to what we'd become used to at our hotels. Plane to Denver. Home and bed!

Croatia

Thursday, June 29

We entered Croatia and got to our hotel in Dubrovnik around 7pm. Our hotel was up on a bit of a hill, with another hotel owned by the same company, just below; and just below that is the Adriatic Sea. When we got to the hotel we had dinner, then we wandered down to the lower hotel and watched the sunset on the Adriatic. Wowsers. 

Friday, June 30

Today we went to old town Dubrovnik.  This is what you go to Dubrovnik for. It's a medieval walled city right on the water. About a 15 minute drive from our hotel. 

 

We had a local tour guide who took us around to some museums and historic sites within the walls. First we went to an old Franciscan apothecary. This apothecary opened in the 1300's and is still in operation today as a modern pharmacy. It has been operating for 700 years! 

A 'street' in old town Dubrovnik

I loved the interior courtyard of the monastery. Old town Dubrovnik is hot and crowded and it is stone streets, stone walls, stone everywhere. Inside the courtyard was a lovely, quiet green space. 

The museum inside talks about the history of the apothecary and the Franciscans who run it, and our guide also talked a lot about Dubrovnik's place in the history of the Turkish empire and later, Yugoslavia. 

After the apothecary, we went to the Rector's palace, which was fine. It is a museum about the politics of Dubrovnik from the 15th-17th centuries. 

Not only a Rector's Palace, but also a location from Game of Thrones!

Then we had several hours of free time in the city. Adam and I split off from our travel friends and went to find a letterbox nearby. Success! This was the only letterbox I was able to find on the whole trip. 

Then we walked along the city wall. The city wall encompasses the entire old town, and you can walk the whole thing for a few Euros. It gives great views, and was really neat. It was also scorching hot. After a bit, I started to wilt. Then I started to melt. Then I started to whine. Then I started to complain. Ultimately we did not make it all the way around the city, because I was worried I would pass out and Adam would have to carry me along the city walls and then down a staircase and then to a morgue. But I'll tell ya- it wasn't the heat, it was the humidity!

The view from the city walls

We climbed down from the wall and went to a nearby cafe and got cold drinks and sat under their umbrellas. This was a wonderful respite except so many people in Europe smoke, and there was someone smoking nearby. Also the restroom was on the fourth floor. 

I took this picture of Adam from the sanctuary of a cool turret of the wall

 After I recovered, we wandered around Old Town. A lot of it is packed tourist areas with shops, but we found our way to the far end where the streets were broader, there were fewer people, and we just wandered around. 

Back at the hotel that afternoon, we all changed into swim suits and went for a swim in the Adriatic. It was pretty great, cool and refreshing. Not too many sharks or anything. 

After swimming, we got cleaned up and went on the bus out to a countryside olive oil farm and learned about how olive oil is made, had a wine tasting, and then had a local-style meat and cheese dinner. I think the wine tasting included a prosecco (but not what you think of when you think of an Italian prosecco), a white wine, grappa (they call it brandy) and a red wine. I asked for the vegetarian option and got some great grilled vegetables, and a party-sized bowl of mediocre spaghetti. But Adam said the meat and cheese dinner was his favorite meal of the whole trip. I assume he means non-breakfast meal, because every breakfast was more spectacular than the last. 

Cured meat, cheeses, breads, dates, almonds...

 

The guy running the evening was the kind of person that I couldn't decide if I found him hilarious or really disliked him. He was kind of a comedy bully. Came back to the hotel late and tired.

Saturday, July 1

Rainy day! We left Dubrovnik and drove to Ston, which is an old town with an ancient saltworks. The salt pans get irrigated from the ocean, then they evaporate and the salt is harvested. Because it was bucketing down, we stood on a covered porch instead of by the saltworks, and the 'tour guide' gave us some facts about the saltworks in heavily accented English. He did have prizes at the end, though, and I won a bag of salt! The trivia question I won on was "how many salt pools are there?" and the answer was 9. 

Ston Saltworks (photo by Ben)

Look at this amazing bag of salt I won!!

Then we got back on the bus and went to Split. Fortunately it was nice and not raining when we got there. Cool, and mostly overcast. We had a great local guide, Vedrana, who was funny and informative. She took us on a tour through part of Diocletian's palace, who was the only Roman emperor to retire. His palace was mostly destroyed, but we got to see bits of it, particularly the underground parts, which for hundreds of years served as the trash pit and septic tank for the people living above. Now it's been excavated and cleaned out for tourists to walk through. 

Can you see the latrine holes in the ceiling?

A bit of Diocletian's Palace

We then had free time. Split was mobbed with people, and I was tired. Ben and Bert climbed the clock tower (of course) and Adam and Dianna and I went in search of a quiet meal. Instead, we found a staircase up to a massive city park. We only got to basically the entrance of the park, because Dianna and I are the founding and only members of the Gentle Hikers Club, where we don't do strenuous hikes. But we still had a nice view of the city. Dianna went off to do some shopping, and Adam and I went back down to the main tourist strip, which is the promenade along the sea, and got a bagel sandwich and sat and people watched. 

The Gentle Hiker's Club- because there wasn't a funicular

 

The bus came back at 4:30 and took us to the hotel, which was quite nearby. We rested for a bit in our underwhelming hotel room. Most of the group went off to an optional dinner, but Adam and I went back to the palace/old town to find dinner. We went to a sushi restaurant that our guide had told us served local oysters; unfortunately they only served 'much better, much bigger' oysters from France, but we got some sushi that was truly excellent. On the walk back to our hotel we got some local savory pastries called Burek and sat out in front of the hotel to enjoy them. Then to bed!

Sunday, July 2

Got up, had breakfast, got on the bus. Our first stop was Trogir, another very cute, old walled city. To be honest, by this time, we were kind of over cute old walled cities. Our tour guide was uninspiring. But at least it wasn't crowded or too hot. 

The Trogir Elementary school

My favorite part of our time there was seeing the elementary school. It's like a literal palace. 

A farmer's stand we stopped at during the bus ride. Adam took this picture; I bought sugared almonds

 Back on the bus for a long drive to Plitvice Lakes National Park.

Boardwalk, lake, waiting in line

I was really looking forward to Plitvice Lakes. We had a guided tour again, which felt a bit weird, to be walking through a National Park with a tour guide speaking in your earpiece (we all had these audio devices with headphones, which are actually great for tours in big palaces and such, the tour guide can just speak at a normal volume far from where you are standing and you can hear everything). 

The problem was that Plitvice Lakes National Park was PACKED. It was absolutely packed with people. First we went to the big waterfall overlook, which was truly beautiful. Just stunning. The park is a series of 16 lakes that flow down over cataracts and waterfalls. The sides of the cliffs next to the lakes are made of limestone and there are caves and such in them. 

WOW

Then we took a switchback down to a boardwalk that crossed one of the cataracts and then we waiting in line to see the big waterfall up close and get to a beautiful scenic overlook. 

I mean, beautiful.

We waiting in line for a long time on this small boardwalk. Probably half an hour. The scenic overlook was amazing. The waterfall was fine. 

 

 

Then we walked on to another boardwalk trail and walked along the lakes. They were so beautiful, an amazing azure blue color. But the staying in a line, walking along in a crowd, was pretty unpleasant. 

Finally we got to a section of the park that was less crowded, more of a forested dirt path. The guide kept on trucking, but Adam and I slowed down- I was looking for birds and he was taking pictures of flowers. I was surprised on this trip to not find very many interesting birds. The main birds I saw were pigeons and mallards. But I did see a few cool ones. At this park I saw a Eurasian Nuthatch, and a Great Crested Grebe. One of our traveling companions, Priscilla, was lagging very far behind too, because she is a very slow walker. So the three of us very slowly made our way to where the group was sitting at a rest area. We all refilled our water bottles, used the restroom, and then we got on an electric ferry to go back across the lake. 

The lakes are so pure that no activities are allowed in them. No swimming, no boating, no fishing. But the park runs these electric ferries for visitors. 

This is a stick just under the water as I look down on it from the boardwalk

We walked back up to the entrance and got back on the bus. We went to a hotel nearby that I really liked. It was called the Lyra, and was in teeny hamlet next to a forest. We had dinner in the hotel restaurant, and it was one of my favorite dinners. Lentil soup which was very good, chicken and mashed potatoes, and a tasty local dessert. After dinner, Adam and I took a walk along the single street in town and looked at the mostly deserted buildings. 

The view from our hotel room!

Monday, July 3

Another delicious breakfast buffet, and then Adam and I had time to take a little walk around the forest area to look for birds and snails. Saw the very cool Eurasian Jay, a White Wagtail, a Great Tit (tee hee), and some small European Blackcaps and European Serins. 

Honeycomb at breakfast!

On the bus to Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. We took another walking tour, but this city felt so different. We were now in the Austro-Hungarian area of Northern Croatia. The buildings all felt very European, there were tram lines, beautiful parks, wide avenues. The weather was warm, but not brutal. The guide took us all over the old city center and then we had free time, which we spent most of waiting for a pizza at a pizza and beer place. I liked Zagreb quite a lot.

A park in central Zagreb

Friends in Zagreb!

Back on the bus, and we crossed the border into Slovenia. There was a lot of traffic, and light rain, so not the best bus ride ever.