Slovenia....Who Knew???

Island on Lake Bled and Bled Castle

Domestic Bliss

Sunset in Piran, Slovenia

We spent the past four days in Slovenia, and it was pretty awesome. Who would have guessed that? Before this trip, I had a vague fuzzy sense that Slovenia existed somewhere in the world, but obviously wasn’t worth my (or anyone’s) time. Well, I’ve changed my tune. Note to everyone: go to Slovenia ASAP. We started our trip at the northern border, coming from Austria. This part of Slovenia is full of mountains. These are the Julian Alps, I guess they are kind of mini-Alps. We went to Lake Bled, which is a tiny lake, and got a room instead of camping since the forecast was terrible (as usual). It was the best choice ever – we had our own kitchen and bathroom as well as bedroom since there was no one else staying there at the time. The only caveat – we had to step into a time machine and transport ourselves back to the sixties. Or maybe the apartment had been transported into the future because it was still 2010 in the outside world. It was like a trip to Grandma’s house, and we loved every minute of it. We cozied up in our little wood-panelled hideaway while the wind and rain howled and watched the made-for-TV movie of the story of Shania Twain (no joke). After the movie, we switched over to a replay of a Canada-Italy World Championship game (no joke). I think Slovenia has a secret crush on Canada.

We then headed for the coast of Slovenia on the Adriatic Sea (again, who knew??). There is only 45 km of coastline, with Italy on one side and Croatia on the other. It’s pretty wild that within 200 km, we had gone from the chilly mountains to the warm winds of the Adriatic. With such a small coast, the tourist trap density is sky-high. The coast was nice, but overpriced, we jetted after only one night.

On to Croatia!!!

Welcome to Croatia, Gully and Elise – not one hour into the country, and the tollbooth guy tries to scam us poor Slovaks (according to our licence plate, we are Slovak of course) by charging us a ‘special price’. Gully with his quick wits says “No Thanks’ to that. Vergully 1, Croatian toll collectors 0.