Mer and I were trying to leave our various Balkan lands with as little foreign money as possible. We knew we needed eighty kuna to get back to the airport via tram and bus, and we did not want to take out more money. That left us with fourteen kuna to use for buying breakfast. Fourteen kuna is about two dollars, so we were not too hopeful. We did go to a bakery with the hopes of finding something, and we came away with a roll, a pastry, and a muffin. For two dollars. There are some benefits to the strong dollar. We ate breakfast in our hostel’s very nice enclosed courtyard.

On the way to the tram, we passed by an early morning musician who sure sounded as if he was singing the Croatian version of the traveling song “Five Hundred Miles.” Mer and I had been singing that the day before in the car, so that was both funny and very, very strange, and got us quietly singing along in English, but changing the “five hundred” miles in the lyrics to “five thousand miles.”

We got to the airport and then on our flight with little difficulty. I had us at the gate ninety minutes early – it only took twenty-five minutes to go from the bus to the gate. I expect we will not be that efficient at Heathrow tomorrow. Mer, in her brilliance, had remembered that our bags would be tagged to go through to Toronto, so we remembered to pack a few clothes in our carry-ons so we would have them for our twenty-three-hour layover in London.

And so we arrived in London, with one evening free to explore. We got day passes for the Tube (the subway), and away we went. And went. And went. London is huge. I had hoped to make an evensong service at my favorite church building in the world, St. Paul’s Cathedral, but it started at 5:00. I soon came to the conclusion that we were not going to make it if we went to our B and B first, so we headed to St. Paul’s, backpacks in tow. It had taken about an hour and a half to get from Heathrow to St. Paul’s. That will need to be taken into account for the return trip tomorrow.

The service at St. Paul’s was pretty well attended. I’m sure many people were there as tourists and not so much as worshipers, but the service went off well. The choir started out singing a cappella in that magnificent space, and that was amazing. The evensong service lasted about forty minutes. I do admit my mind wandered during one of the longer choir/organ pieces of music from the fifteenth century, but on the whole, I was very glad we had made time for it.

For some reason, Boy Genius had not printed out directions to the B and B, so it took a couple of Tube stops and a couple of tries to find the place, but we finally checked in around 7:00 pm. We then headed down the block to a pub recommended by our B and B – the Washington. I was sold on it since it had couches and leather chairs, and it had classic pub grub. The Washington theme was carried even to the bathrooms, which were labeled “Presidents” and “First Ladies.” It was a great place to eat and hang out.

Next on our list, after a quick return to the B and B for internet directions, was to walk over to Primrose Hill, a park about ten minutes away. Our B and B booklet said it had great views of downtown London, which it did. Meredith confided to me that when we came to the park, she was surprised, thinking that parks are nice, but that she’d thought I would do something more specific to London. She changed her mind when she saw the skyline. While we were admiring the view, I saw some strange-looking nets a little ways away, so we investigated.

I think it was bird netting of an aviary of the London Zoo, which was closed at the time, but it did help us to stumble across Regent’s Park, an enormous park of 350-plus acres that we had never seen on our previous trips. We spent a good thirty or forty minutes wandering in Regent’s Park, and we never even got to the gardens that I wanted to see. We were running out of daylight, so we headed back up Primrose Hill to admire the city all lit up, which was beautiful. There is one building that (we hope) is still going up that looks at the moment like a poor 1960s version of the CN Tower in Toronto, and it is a bit of an eyesore on the London skyline. I’m hoping it will improve as it gets finished.

That ended the London sightseeing part of our trip, and tomorrow we get to look forward to the long transatlantic flight, followed by a five-hour drive home. Still, it will be good to get home, put the suitcases away, and pet some kitties.

Oh – Meredith pointed out that we have ended up in three different capital cities in three days – Sarajevo, Zagreb, and then London. Neat!

It may be flattery, but when I pulled the car into the “garage” last night in Sarajevo, our hostess said I was an excellent driver, and that she had had guests struggle with smaller cars. When I pulled the car out of the garage this morning, the morning-shift hostess said I was an excellent driver. I’ll take it.

We met an interesting couple from the US at breakfast; they were both college professors. One taught folk tales and one taught American literature. We got along quite well and talked for much of breakfast. We like meeting other couples at B and Bs – they tend to be fun people with engaging stories.

We headed out of Sarajevo, aided by my sometimes-trusty GPS. This time it worked flawlessly. We still had some Bosnian currency left, so at the first pit stop, we bought a rather large Milka candy bar for later. As we got closer to the border, we started looking for a lunch break. I decided on a restaurant that was painted in funky purple and pink colors. Mer asked me why I chose that restaurant, and I said it was due to the large number of trucks in the driveway. Truckers know how to eat. So did we – we got enormous helpings of a Bosnian ground meat specialty, stuffed into a bread shell, all for about nine dollars total. That still left a little money, so yet another Milka was bought. I foresee some temperance required on the food front when we get home.

We got the car back to the Zagreb, Croatia airport without incident, and we grabbed the bus into the city. Then, we got onto a tram, and took a short walk back to the same hostel we were in about two weeks ago. That seemed a bit surreal to walk back into the same room – we have done an awful lot of things since that Sunday.

After we got settled, we headed up into the hill above the main old town square, near the colorfully-tiled church in the upper square. There, we visited the Museum of Broken Relationships, which is a small museum displaying mementos sent in by people whose relationship with another person had ended, and they gave the story of the item as well. The relationships were usually lovers, but a few were about parents or children who had died or broken off contact for some reason. The museum was tastefully done, with exhibits in Croatian and in English. It was thought-provoking and fairly sad. There was a lot of pain on display in there – some very short (one day) relationships and some long (twenty years or more), but almost all of them expressed anger or regret of some sort. I left the museum very, very glad that I have a happy and fulfilling relationship with someone I like as well as love.

We wandered past the colorfully-roofed church on our way to supper, when we heard music. We wandered over to investigate, just in time to see a bride and groom get into a car together. That was fun, but it was also pretty fun to see a large group of Croatians all dressed up – they were pretty classy, on the whole.

We made our way down to the main food area, which was very lively on this Friday night. We settled on a burger joint, where many cultures collided. We were on a busy street in Zagreb, at a burger joint, eating a burger with Italian-style toppings (olive oil and parmesan), listening to live Irish music from some street musicians, while talking to a young couple from Oregon. As one does.

After supper, we strolled in the lovely twilight air, heading over to the cathedral to see it in fine weather, since it was about to rain last time we were here. We walked down to the main square, where we stumbled across two young men playing violins very well. We ended our evening in our B and B’s courtyard, happily munching on a Milka while chatting about our trip. We leave Zagreb tomorrow, and I am starting to miss home. I find living out of a suitcase and moving every two days to be a bit wearing. But I know I will miss this part of the world. We have had a wonderful time and met lots of pretty great people. Well done, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, and a tiny sliver of Italy!

This was the first of two days of long drives. We started the day in Plitvice, where we basically packed up the car and left around 10:00, and we headed to Sarajevo, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which should be about five hours away, but, after two pit stops and some tense we’re-lost driving, took us about six hours. And since we did not have any money yet, in the local and suspiciously named “konvertible mark,” we did not stop for lunch. Another moment for the marital bliss book (actually, we both did surprisingly well, considering, as I put it, “I’m a stupid American in a Croatian car in Sarajevo. How does this happen?”).

Anyway, we landed in Sarajevo. We found our B and B only after one of the more amazing acts of kindness I have ever seen: we overshot the area likely to hold our B and B after thirty minutes of tense I-can’t-read-the-signs-that-I’m-not-seeing, and we pulled off at an exit to another road. The car behind us pulled after us, even though it seemed a minor road. The man pulled up next to us and said something we did not understand. We told him we only spoke English, so he pulled ahead on the road and got out of his car and came back to ours to explain in broken English how to get to the main square our B and B was near. He then drove ahead of us to show us the road back into the main part of Sarajevo. That was impressive kindness, and it helped diffuse the tension in the car significantly, until I saw my parking spot.

We found our B and B, and I was directed to the “garage,” which is a Bosnian word meaning “storage shed.” Meredith got our stuff out of the car, and I did manage to fit the vehicle in the space provided, but it was a near thing. Once I was parked, it was all the gut-sucking action I could manage to get out of my door.

The first order of business after getting checked in was to get some konvertible marks from the local ATM, quickly followed by supper. We wandered into the market square area, which had the feel of a Turkish bazaar (or at least my TV-fueled version of one). We found a Rick-Steves-recommended restaurant specializing in a local dish called burek, which is a wonderful pastry, stuffed with potatoes, and then wood-fired. Yum. That was followed by cheap pastries from a bakery (prices are low here). Finally fed properly, I was ready to tour.

We saw the newly finished town hall (the original was destroyed in the war in the 1990s), wandered the market street a little bit, and got to note where it changed from eastern-style Turkish buildings from the Ottoman Empire days to the newer Austro-Hungarian Empire days, and it really changes on a line – they even have it marked in the pavement (an “east meets west” kind of line). We finished up our solo wanderings down by the river, stumbling on the Latin Bridge, which is within a few feet of where Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated, which helped start WWI.

We walked back to our B and B, where we met a local guide – a retired teacher who had lived through the war in the 90s. She took us on a three-hour walking tour of the city, and was very informative. She showed us a bunch of things; some things that stood out to me:

– Sarajevo is a tolerant city. Within a few blocks, we saw several mosques, a large Catholic church, a large Orthodox church, several synagogues, and a Protestant church. When Pope Francis was here a few weeks ago, he was given a chair carved by a Muslim family.

– Our guide filled in more details of the sharp east/west line, saying it was unique in the world as a place where you could stand in one spot and see such a sharp architectural divide.

– She took us up to a ninth-floor lounge with outdoor seating to show us the whole of the city at twilight (Meredith loved it; I was scared of the height).

– Our guide filled us in on the details of the assassination of the archduke. One attempt was made on his life that failed, but wounded a guard. Thirty minutes later, the archduke was heading back from city hall and wanted to visit the guard. No one told his driver, who turned down a street as originally planned. A general told him to reverse and go back to the first street; when the driver tried to do that, a second assassin saw his chance and shot the archduke.

– There are still shrapnel holes around the city. The bigger holes are filled in with a red cement to mark where shells fell. No house in the city escaped some kind of damage over the 1,400 days of the siege.

Our walk took us from daylight hours, to twilight, to evening in Sarajevo. Evenings are special in cities, especially when it is a pedestrian area. I enjoyed our brief time here in the city. It firmed up some older and newer history for me, and also made me happy at a vibrant city that seems to be getting along well.

Tomorrow is another long-travel day of about five hours, assuming I can get my car out of the “garage.”

Plitvice (plit-vee-sha) National Park is one of the main reasons we are here in the Balkans. For Christmas a couple of years ago, my brother got Meredith the complete one hundred episodes of the Rick Steves’ Europe TV show. We went through the entire collection over the course of a year, and two shows jumped out at us – one on the river valleys of Austria, and one on Croatia and Slovenia. In particular, the I-have-to-see-that moment for me was when Rick covered Plitvice.

It looked like somewhere out of South America – lakes that looked more like lagoons, lush vegetation, and waterfalls cascading everywhere. I never would have dreamed that such a place existed in Europe. Since Meredith gives me much say in what European country we will go to the next summer, we began to talk seriously about Croatia and Slovenia back last fall, and we finally booked tickets in early January.

To say I was looking forward to Plitvice would be an understatement. It seemed as if it would be magical. So, I was delighted this morning when we woke up and, despite forecasts saying otherwise, the rains of the previous night had stopped. It was still cool (in the mid-fifties) and cloudy, but it was dry. After a fine breakfast in our fabulous B and B, we drove the two or three miles to the park.

I pulled into parking lot two (of two). We would later find out that we were halfway along the recommended path that Rick Steves gives, since he starts at parking lot one. It also turned out by the end of the day that we thought we had made the right choice – we liked exploring the more expansive upper lakes region first, and we liked finishing the day with the largest waterfall in the park, which is at the end of the lower section.

The park is made up of fourteen (our count) lakes or sixteen (Rick’s count) lakes. They are separated into the upper lakes and the lower lakes by a large central lake that has tourist boats running on it as a sort of water taxi. As mentioned, we started with the upper lakes. The upper lakes area has more and longer hiking trails, more lakes, more waterfalls, and more boardwalks that are built right over running water.

It was magical. As soon as we got off the short boat ride to the first upper lake boardwalk, I was hooked. There was rushing water everywhere – even under the boardwalk (and in a few cases over it as well). The plants were lush, and the falls were breathtaking in their variety – some were tall, some fell over many steps, some wound through plant life.

The magic had some slight curses, though – with such beauty came tourist crowds, even on a poor-weather day like today. Tour groups were particularly hard to navigate, since the boardwalks and walking paths were generally only two people wide, and tour groups tended to take up both lanes for ten or twenty people deep. Still, we found stretches of the park where groups were thin or even absent, so that was okay.

The rain was harder to deal with. It started to sprinkle and then rain pretty steadily after the first half hour or so, and it continued to rain for about an hour and a half. Since it was only in the upper fifties or lower sixties, getting wet was a big deal. We both had umbrellas, but a cold rain has a way of working into a body. By the time we were getting close to the tops of the upper lakes, all I could think about was the snack bar – I wanted a hot chocolate and a dry place to get warm.

The snack bar did have hot chocolate and was dry and was warm. And was crammed with people. Meredith grabbed a seat at my urging when it opened up next to her, and I went and got us lunch, since it was about 1:00. Happily, by the time we had finished eating, the lunch crowd had lightened and the rain had more or less stopped. In fact, by mid-afternoon, the sun started peeking through, so the magic returned.

We made our way down a less-used path on the far side of the upper lakes, which gave us fewer crowds, but also gave us some up-high spectacular views of the lakes and falls. We took our time, and eventually made our way back to the dock of the main lake, to take the longer ferry boat ride across the whole lake to the top of the lower lakes.

The lower lakes got off to a bit of bad start for me when Meredith and I got separated by a few mere feet that I could not politely cross as we waited for at least two full follow-the-tour-umbrella tour groups to get past a good photo spot. Once they were past, Mer and I were reunited and able to take our time along the bottom path.

The lower lakes area is not so spectacular on average as the upper lakes, but it does have some amazing small falls full of vegetation – the water weaves in, around, and even through the growth. The lower lakes finish up (on our tour) with two enormous falls, one of which is a river-fed falls of 250 feet. We made our way back up out of the lower canyon area by climbing through a cave/sinkhole, and then walking along a path back to the park bus, which would take us back to near our parking area. The upper path we were on had several overlooks that gave great bird’s-eye views of some of the lower lakes and falls.

We got back to our B and B around 7:00, having put in seven hours in the park, most of it on our feet and most of it spent walking. We were pretty tired. Happily, our B and B offered dinner, which was a multi-course meal on an enclosed and heated patio, with a Croatian guitar player who also sang. It was a nice wind-down for the day.

So, Plitvice did not disappoint me; I took over eighty pictures in seven hours. Plitvice was a huge reason that I have now seen amazing parts of Slovenia and Croatia, and we still have two full days of touring the Balkans to go.

When Croatian road crews hand you lemons, you can always try to make limunada. We were supposed to leave Motovun, which, if you remember, is a hill town, late yesterday morning and drive, which, if you remember, requires a car, to one of the world’s great natural wonders, Plitvice National Park. What I did not know is that the single road up to Motovun, where both our car and we were located, would be closed at 7:30 am to resurface the road. Crud.

We had some warning in the form of a note taped to our door the night before, so I parked the car below the city where I thought it would be beyond the construction. I was wrong – the car needed to be parked at the bottom of the hill, a good mile or so away. Meredith had mentioned that possibility, which is a good reminder to always listen to the wife.

We had multiple reports of when the road would open – 1:00, which came and went, 2:00, which came and went, and then we were told 7:00, which turned out to be about when we did leave, although I think the road was open closer to 6:00.

So, what to do with a day of enforced stay in a small hilltown? We explored the one lane we had not yet gone down (and I do mean down – quite steeply), where we met huffing bus tour groups walking up from the stairs below, groups who no doubt were about as thrilled about the road closing as we were.

That little bit of touring done, we got lunch, which we ate on the terrace of our B and B, the workers of which were very kind and let us hang out there. We went in search of a CD recording of the klapa music group we had heard the night before, which took some small effort and a fair amount of time. Finally, when it looked as if the road was not going to open until 7:00, we walked over to the town hotel/spa and got massages. Lemonade indeed – the spa was incredibly nice, and it only cost about $45 for an hour massage. When we had one last failed attempt to get out (with talking to a Croatian man who told me, “Big machine block road – this is sh**”), we walked back up to town in the rain to get supper. After supper, we finally were able to leave, about 7:00 pm.

It is about a three-hour drive to Plitvice, but ours was closer to three hours and forty-five minutes, since a) we were driving in varying degrees of rain, and b) our GPS once again decided that seventeen miles toward the end of the drive, in the dark, in the rain, would be on the most winding road I have ever seen, given that there are no mountains in this part of Croatia. We finally, happily, got to our B and B around 10:30, where we were very warmly greeted by a young woman who made us feel much better with her hospitality. We got into our room and pretty promptly went to bed.

Meredith’s motto for travel is “Everything is either a good experience or a good story.” Indeed.

We travel to expand our souls. Whether it be because of the beauty of God’s creation, the encounter with different cultures and customs, or examples of kindness from total strangers, travel makes our souls grow. Some moments are spectacular for this enlargement, and we had one of those tonight.

Croatia has a national folk tradition of men’s a cappella singing. We briefly heard a group singing in the square in Zagreb the first day we were in Croatia, but tonight was very special for us. On a tip from our guidebook, we got to hear the Motovun group practicing in their church, here on a soft evening in the twilight. It was just a practice, not a show or a concert, and it was still magical. The harmonies were tight and often in four or more parts, and the dynamics of the songs moved fluidly. The melody lines were usually slow moving, which added to the swelling and ebbing of the music. All of this happened in a church with great acoustics – the final notes would hang in the air for a couple of seconds after the singers were done. We got to hear six or seven songs over ninety minutes, what with the group’s going over parts of the songs and having one break for the singers. We sat quietly at the back of the church and tasted a very small part of the divine. What an amazing night.

We did do some other things today as well. We explored the Istrian Peninsula, which for us was by car, covering several hill towns and the beautiful coastal old town of Rovinj. We got launched today around 9:00, with the goal of seeing some of the other hill towns in the area. We managed to get to:

– Buje – Buje is a large hill town that is more about working people than tourists. We wandered the town for about thirty or forty-five minutes, seeing a square with a good vantage point of the Adriatic Sea, an old defensive tower, and an old church and its graveyard.

After Buje, I got whimsical and followed signs to a sculpture garden. We found it, and the sculptures were interesting, but the setting was intriguing. The sculptures were set up in the middle of nowhere, next to a (at the time) closed café. Someone had still been taking time to mow the grass, and there was a large stage area next to the garden with a few dozen stored chairs up at the front of the stage. I have no idea what the story is behind all of this.

– Groznjan – Groznjan was a delight. It is a small hill town with a labyrinth of small cobblestone streets. We enjoyed wandering around them with glances into the many stores selling art of various kinds (mostly glass). I grabbed a hot chocolate to drink on a small square, and we finished the visit with fresh donut holes eaten next to the main church.

– Zavrsje – Zavrsje is a small and mostly deserted hill town, with some of its homes caving in. Only about forty people live in it now, down from the pre-WWII high of a few hundred. We walked up the main street and came back around the edge of town on the main new road.

– Oprtalj – Oprtalj has a nice and functioning main section facing the road that passes along it, but we got back into the back sections of town, and again some of the buildings were caving in. Oprtalj was very near a scenic pull-off of the road that had a commanding view of Motovun.

We saw cats of all kinds in all of the hill towns – they seem to be everywhere. As cat people, we are rather fond of that.

We headed back to Motovun, where I decided to beat the hottest part of the day with a siesta – a nice midday nap. It worked, too – by the time we were ready for the evening around 5:00, it was much cooler than it had been at 3:00.

We hopped back in the car and drove an hour south to the old town section of Rovinj. Rovinj used to be a small island only a few feet from the mainland, and it had two sets of walls. What that means for today is that the interior of the old town is wonderfully claustrophobic feeling, with random lanes winding through multistory buildings, all leading uphill to the Church of St. Euphemia. St. Euphemia was a Christian martyr around 320, and the church is supposed to have her body in a tomb behind an altar (you can see the tomb, which is certainly very old).

We wandered the harbor front, and into the maze of streets, up to the church, and then back down to the Adriatic Sea again, even going down to the rocks that border the swimming area. Mer was hungry after our no-lunch afternoon, so we swung by a bakery for a small cheese roll for her to munch on the hour-long drive back home.

We drove back to Motovun, where we once again got take-out pizza with the hopes of eating it in the square where we could hear a klappa singing group. We did, and then we moved inside the church, and you know the rest.

We were up and ready and had eaten breakfast by about 8:30 and checkout was not until 11:00, so I thought we would have just enough time to walk to Lake Bled and get a pletna boat out to the small island in the lake. A pletna boat is unique to Lake Bled – it is powered by a standing rower in the rear of the boat, and there is no rudder – the entire boat is steered and powered by the one man.

It was a beautiful, if slightly cool, morning, so the half-mile walk was quite pleasant. We got to the boat dock and did not see any boatsmen around. Then, a bus pulled up and a group of about thirty Asian tourists got off. On cue, two boatsmen showed up and got the group on board two boats. The second man indicated he had room on his boat, so he let us on, which was very kind of him.

Our boat trip was very quiet for most of the trip, with the exception that the Asian tourists were laughing and chatting some. As we got toward the island, they all wanted to take pictures in the front of the boat, which involved a lot of shifting around, which caused one fairly exciting listing of the boat. That incident settled everyone down.

We got off the boat at the foot of the main stairway to the church on the island. There are ninety-nine steps, and tradition holds that a man should carry his bride up the stairs on his way to get married to prove he is ready for marriage. I told Meredith we would do well to walk up them, but as that is where the tour group went, we took the quiet path to the left of the stairs that led around to the back of the island. It was just a little after 9:00, and it was very quiet. The Olympic rowing center already had rowers on the lake, but they did not make any noise.

We made our way to the back of the island, where we found a smaller staircase, which we took up to the church. Since the tour group was in line to get in, we ducked into the souvenir shop that had a small art gallery on the second floor, which we had all to ourselves. The art was mainly modern religious art from the 1930s-1960s, which I enjoyed very much. They also had a room full of handmade clay dolls, each sporting a folk costume of a country in the European Union.

We headed back outside, and we thought we did not have enough time to tour the church and bell tower (the boats strictly give you forty minutes on the island), so we walked down the main stairs in front of the church. In a nod to our forty-something bodies, I did not carry Meredith up the stairs, but we did hold hands as we walked up them without stopping. That makes us as ready to be wed as we need to be after almost seventeen years of marriage.

We were rowed back to shore at a slightly different place from where we started, and the tourists disembarked. Mer and I were left on board and got a short private trip back to the original docks. On the way, the main town church chimed out its bells for the 10:00 mass, and it rang out over the lake. It was peaceful and beautiful.

We walked back to the tourist farm, where we packed and checked out. We were headed to Motovun, in Croatia, a little over two hours away. We stopped about an hour into the drive at a rest stop to spend our remaining seven euros in change on three candy bars, which we thought was an excellent investment.

Most of the trip to Motovun was along a major highway, but happily the GPS won out again, taking us off the highway in order to take us along the shortest route, which ended up being a winding road followed by a more-or-less one-lane road. I’m glad I can count on some things being consistent, even when we left the mountains behind.

Motovun is a hill town on the Istrian Peninsula, which is very close to Italy, and in fact was part of Italy from the end of WWI to the end of WWII, when it became part of Yugoslavia and then Croatia. The area has a very Italian feel, with lots of vineyards and olive farms.

Being a hill town, the town is (wait for it) on a hill. It is also a walled town, so our guidebook warned us parking was limited. We told the man at the bottom of the hill we were staying at a small B and B just inside the lower wall, and he let us in for free. Then, at the end of the road at the top of the hill, we were waved on again, this time going up a medieval cobblestone street which was about twelve feet wide, in a car, with pedestrians everywhere. More happy nerve-wracking driving. We made it to the lot just outside the wall and parked, but later I moved the car out of the town so I would not have to face the tourist crowds in the morning. Yikes.

Our B and B has a terrace with a spectacular view of the western valley. We grabbed lunch from a restaurant and got it as take-out so we could eat it on the terrace. I had warned Meredith that today was going to be low-key. After lunch, we wandered the walled town and then the road up to the town, including the small cemetery outside the walls. That all only took about an hour, even in strolling mode. We went back to our little terrace so I could plan my next move. I read about a lot of cool-sounding things, but they all sounded tiring. That was my clue we should take a nap, which is what we did. On our trips, I have found that a nap about halfway through the vacation goes a long way to keeping the energy up.

After the nap, we grabbed more food as take-out, and we ate on the terrace and watched the sun go down – spectacular. Once it was quite dark out, we wandered the thirteenth-century walls, which are beautifully lit, and on which we only met two pairs of people on the entire fifteen-minute walk. I did meet a fluffy kitty on a wall, whom I stopped to scratch his head. He was super friendly, and then he walked away a bit and marked his territory, part of which now seemed to include my right hand. Happily, Mer had water and hand sanitizer with her.

So, I guess today was all about letting quiet and beauty seep into our souls, along with a little needed rest. Tomorrow the touring can start again.

Meredith and I like using local guides where we can find them and afford them. I also knew I did not want to drive in the Alps, even if “only” the smaller Julian Alps, so we arranged to have a tour guide drive us around them. That was a very good decision, since the drives I have done this week were easy compared to some of today’s roads.

Our guide was one recommended by Rick Steves’ tour book – his name was Gorazd, and he was in his late fifties. He was a native of Slovenia, but had traveled extensively while with the Yugoslavian national hockey team, including participating in three Olympics in the 1970s and 1980s. He lived for many years in Italy, playing and then coaching hockey, and he moved back about seven years ago to help with his daughter and son-in-law’s tour company (and to be with his grandchildren). He never remembered his father until he met him when Gorazd was thirty-two years old – his father had escaped Yugoslavia during the Communist years and was afraid to return. In short, Gorazd is an interesting man, and he took us all around today for about eight hours.

Gorazd picked us up at our B and B at the tourist farm, and we set off in his car, with Meredith in the front. I wanted her up front because a) she saved for the trip, b) she is more social than I am, especially with non-native English speakers, and c) I knew I might have trouble with my fear of heights in the Alps, so I thought it better to let her enjoy the best views.

Our first stop was Slovenia’s ski-jumping center, where they have eight different jumping hills of different heights, including a bigger-than-Olympics monster hill where jumpers fly close to 250 meters (820 feet) in the air. We actually got to see some jumps on the intermediate training hills – they water down plastic grass on the landing area to make it slick, and the launch hill tracks are made of porcelain, so the track is always slick. We saw a boy and a girl about ten or twelve years old making some pretty impressive jumps.

We then got diverted from the original plan to go over the highest pass in Slovenia, because there was a bicycle race over the pass during the morning. Gorazd decided to do his tour in reverse, and that worked out perfectly. The morning weather was on-and-off rain, and we had steady rain while we were at lunch and while we were in a museum. The last few hours were gloriously clear, and so the reversal of the route worked out perfectly.

We went over a smaller pass that led us briefly through Italy (score another country for this trip!) and then back into Slovenia. Slovenia is a full member of the European Union, so they have open borders with other full-EU states like Italy, so the border crossing was almost non-existent, except for the old guard stations and one police car (that I think was there to check cargo in trucks – they never gave us a second look).

The drive was very pretty, and Gorazd told us how a landslide took out half a village and the road a few years back, but because Slovenians do not like to move, they rebuilt the homes. We stopped at a World War I fortress. Not much happened in this part of the world in World War II, but the Soca river area was a much-contested front in WW I. Slovenia fought with the Austro-Hungarian Empire against Italy (and Italy’s allies, the French, British, and Americans). This area of Slovenia was heavily fortified, and many of the mountain roads and passes were built because of and for the war effort. The fort at which we stopped had a lookout post on top of a cliff that was reached by a staircase-ladder that was mounted in the cliff face. Men had to climb that ladder every two hours for guard duty. It looked as if it would’ve been hazardous in the best conditions, let alone in the winter.

We continued on to a cute town called Bovec, where we ate on a covered patio, under a beautiful grape arbor. On the recommendation of Gorazd, we both ordered local specialty dishes, which were excellent.

We moved on to the next town, Kobarid, where we got out of the rain by spending about ninety minutes in a World War I museum. We saw a short film on the Soca front, which I had not even known about before this trip. Italy started WW I as a neutral country, but then after ten months of war, Italy launched a surprise attack on Slovenia and their allies, pushing into Slovenia. Much of the fighting in this region was in very difficult mountainous terrain. After a few months, Slovenia and Germany launched a massive surprise counterattack, winning back the territory and pushing a little ways into Italy, where they reached a stalemate.

The exhibits of the museum included passages from diaries of the soldiers, which were gruesome and moving. They had many photos of the war, including showing tunnels and trenches in the ice and snow in the mountains. There were weapons and other artifacts from the war. Gorazd later told us that when he was a teenager (which would have been in the late sixties), when he went hiking in the mountains, he could still see lots of old equipment from WW I lying around. He was told never to touch it in case it was still able to explode. The museum was very moving and was a sobering reminder of how many people suffered and died in WW I.

After we came out of the museum, we found that the rain had stopped and the sun had even come out. That was a happy thing, as we were headed to the Vrsic pass, which included twenty-five switchbacks on the ascent as we climbed to 1,611 meters (one mile). Here I was very glad that Meredith was in the front seat and Gorazd was driving. I got a bit sick looking out at the sheer mountains all around us. I was very happy to see them on foot when we pulled off at one point to see two different valleys, and again at the top, but the ascent was quite dizzying for me. Meredith loved it.

On the descent, we stopped at a small Russian chapel near the road. In WWI, the road on which we were driving was built partly by Russian prisoners. An avalanche occurred, killing some Russian prisoners and some of the guards. The friends of the victims built a small wooden chapel to commemorate their friends.

We then made our way back to Lake Bled, where we said goodbye to Gorazd. He was an excellent guide, and we were pleased with the day. We grabbed some pizza for supper, and then walked around part of the lake, enjoying the evening sunshine. We passed near the entrance to an adventure park that had an alpine slide, so I decided we should try it. We got to ride a slow and peaceful chairlift to the top, where we could look down on the lake, the town, and even the castle. Mer then got into a car, which was mounted to a single track all the way down the hill. I was much amused by her enthusiastic verbal manifestations of, well, fear, as she rocketed away. It was then my turn, and after getting situated, I was off. It was fun – it was fast, but the braking system worked very well, and the track was laid out with lots of curves to keep it interesting. Meredith and I both agreed it was a kicky little ride.

We walked back to the B and B, where we were greeted by a busload of Italian tourists eating supper. We also got to pet two of the ten farm cats, and then we headed up to our balcony to eat some chocolate we had purchased, while watching the mountains – a fine ending to an alpine day.

To go from Logarska Dolina to Lake Bled takes about an hour and forty-five minutes. If you use Google maps, it sends you southwest on major highways through the capital Ljubljana. Rick Steves’ guidebook sends you southwest on major highways through the capital Ljubljana because “mountains get in the way.” If you are clueless, mapless American tourists totally dependent on a GPS, you go OVER the mountains on one-and-a-half lane roads with numerous switchbacks! Fun!

Before we left Logarska Dolina, we did swing into the tourist center to say goodbye to Nina, our museum friend. We stayed and chatted with her for about an hour and exchanged e-mail addresses. We hope to stay in touch in case we come back or she comes to the United States. She is a bright, fun, and cheerful girl.

The over-the-mountain with-some-woods drive was made more exciting at the start by the fact that our GPS kept losing signal with the satellites. Once we got out of the looming Logarska mountains, it settled down. My theory was that we were getting nearer and nearer the satellites as we drove up and up.

We arrived at our tourist farm Bed and Breakfast around 2:00. A tourist farm is a working farm that also happens to have a few rooms for rent. Our farm is about a half-mile walk to Lake Bled, a small but beautiful lake that is admittedly a bit of a tourist trap, but it is a pretty one. It has a small island with a hill on it, and on the hill is a cute church. The town is presided over by a very impressive cliff with a castle on it, and the town itself is fairly cute. What we did not know but know now is that Lake Bled is also home to the Slovenian rowing teams who have done quite well in the Olympics.

We dumped our stuff in our room and started walking to the lake, in a gentle but steady rain. In a rare moment of sense, I had listened to Meredith a couple of days ago and bought an umbrella. It came in very handy today. The lake is about 3.5 miles around, and the whole way has a path, which is public. We turned right when we reached the lake, and started toward the town of Bled, about a mile away. Happily, about this time, the rain stopped. We got to Bled and went to a restaurant right on the lake, but we chose to eat inside (facing windows) because of the bugs that had come out after the rain.

We had a very good late lunch and dessert, and we took our time, since it had started raining again, and this time a bit more steadily. Finally, we decided we should just brave the weather, so out we went with our umbrellas. Meredith put me “in charge” for the next few days, so rather than trudge around the lake in a steady rain, I decided to change plans and climb up to the castle, which offered some indoor diversions. We climbed a steep path that became a series of stairs, and made it to the castle, just in time for the rain to start easing up. Ah, well.

The castle is interesting as a castle, with a proper wall and towers and arrow slits and such. It offers a working model of an early printing press and a history of the importance of the press in Slovenia (it was used to print church books in the then-outlawed Slovenian language). We got to see a small photography exhibit on the Bled area that was very good. There is an iron-working shop that sells hand-made iron items. They have an extensive museum about the history of the Bled area, the castle, and the geography and geology of the region. All well and good and interesting.

But the winning reason to go to the castle is to climb as high as possible and admire the view. You can see the lake and the island. You can see the cliff face of the castle. There are small and big mountains (up to about 6,500 feet tall) in every direction. It was spectacular.

After we toured the castle, we headed back down to the town in a misting rain. We ducked into a market and grabbed a couple of sandwiches and candy bars for a supper later back at the B and B, at which point the rain finally stopped for good. We found where we left off on the lake trail, and we continued on our way.

Some of the highlights of the trail included seeing the island from all angles, and seeing the lavish few homes allowed on the lake. We got to see the rowing center, and saw some crews out rowing. There are even some small grandstands set up near the finish areas for the scows. There was a boardwalk built over the lake at the shoreline for about two hundred yards. And all the while, the weather kept getting better and better, with some patches of blue sky peeking out. By the time we finished our lake walk and were headed back home, the sun had come out, and the sky was beautiful with the sun shining off the clouds and the wispy fog on the mountains.

We got back to our farm and were greeted with the happy vision of two kittens staring at us from a stack of railroad ties. Very cute. We headed back to the room for a late supper and called it a day, one that was mostly dry for us.

Sometimes, Rick Steves’ guidebooks are not clear. I quote, for example, his saying that one of the smaller valleys in this area is “more gentle and accessible with better and more level roads.” Ha! Either we missed a turn, or Rick was smoking something. But I get ahead of myself.

After we got ready and had breakfast at our hotel, we jumped in the car. Logarska Dolina is the major valley in this region, but there are two smaller valleys here as well. One, we explored yesterday on the end of our drive on the Panoramic Road. The other was the morning’s destination, and Rick boldly proclaimed it as easy to deal with, which was good after the logging road we seemed to be using yesterday.

The road up into the valley started off a bit intimidating. It was paved, but was certainly only one car wide, with no turnoffs. We got through that well, and the road widened out. Well and good. After a little distance with great views, the pavement ended. Odd, but still okay. Then the road took a major hairpin turn and narrowed. Then it had another hairpin turn. Soon, we were driving way up over fields and other drop-offs, with no guard rails, no sight lines, and very few places to pull off. The views were spectacular, but the driving was white-knuckle in many places. We kept driving up and up and up, hairpin curve after hairpin curve, until we came to a grouping of three farms and a dead end. Drat – we’d have to drive down that same road. Happily, Meredith asked me how the brakes were, which reminded me that in the standard-shift vehicle we had, I could leave it in first gear and not use the brakes much. We made it down safely, but I was very glad not to have to do that drive again.

After the Fun Drive (and the views were amazing, I have to say), we drove over to the major valley, Logarska Dolina, with its major roads, biking trails, walking trails, some hotels, and some restaurants. I was pleased to pay seven euros to get in if it meant I could drive normally in the park.

Meredith wanted to start with the major waterfall in the park, Rinka waterfall. You can drive almost to the waterfall, about five miles into the park. You need to walk the rest of the way along a decent, if somewhat rocky, trail that takes about fifteen minutes to get to the falls. They are worth it. The falls do not have a heavy volume of water, but that makes it more interesting. They are very high at three hundred feet, and the water breaks up some as it falls in waves and is blown around by the wind. The short of it is that the falls move left and right as the wind gusts, and it is fascinating to watch. You can hike right up to the edge of the falls, and there is an observation platform with a small store. Meredith and I took advantage of both by having the world’s most scenic ice cream stop – falls on one side and towering cliffs all around.

The cliffs in the park are amazing. They are almost all grey, with very steep sides. They are around 6500 feet tall, and they seem to loom over you if you get close enough to the bases of the mountains.

When we got back to the car, Meredith wanted to drive halfway down the valley to a tourist information station, and then walk the hiking trail back to the parking lot of the falls, which would be roughly a two-mile walk, which would take about an hour each way.

Three small issues. One – the tourist information station was closed. Two – the stopping spot was more than halfway to the entrance. Three – the walk took us two full hours, one way. But I get ahead of myself.

The start of the trail was very peaceful – it seemed deep in the woods, even though the road was never far away. In the full two hours and twenty minutes we spent on the trail in the park, both before and after supper, we never saw another soul on the trail. My theory, which Mer likes, is that bikers use the road and the serious hikers hike on the alpine trails. At any rate, we had the place to ourselves.

The trail was quite varied over the length of it. We had smooth, pine-needle soft footing, heavily rooted trail, gravel parts, and steep, rocky sections. It started out flat, but slowly rose for most of the trail, ending with some heavy-breathing sections of trail. It was not always perfectly marked – we had to guess at several points, and made one serious mistake that, if we had not corrected it, would have had us hiking up to a mountain hut. We caught that one after only a couple of minutes. Generally, the trail was engulfed in trees, but that made it very dramatic when they would open up and you would see the mountains looming over you. We crossed dry stream beds full of gravel, and we came up toward the falls in such a way that we could see them from a distance, which you can’t do if you take the road.

By the end of the trail, we were both pretty tired – it had taken two hours over some rough terrain. By mutual consent, we took the road back toward our car, which was still a forty-five-minute walk. Our car was parked across the street from a farm/hotel/restaurant, so we grabbed supper there even though it was only 5:00. We got to eat at the most scenic table on the planet, and the food was farm fresh and pretty healthy.

After supper, we checked out the waterfall behind the hotel, which was not a free-fall waterfall like the bigger one, but was still impressive and came down over the rock face in several channels. Mer wanted to walk a little more, so we walked another ten minutes down the walking trail, away from the falls. It was more of the same with lots of trees and some glimpses of mountains, but it was pretty and super quiet. We felt really isolated.

We drove out of the valley and toward the small village next to our hotel. We were going to grab some dessert, but before we did, we ran into Nina, our young museum guide from yesterday. We wanted to show her a picture of a rare flower we took. She was impressed, but informed us it wasn’t the flower we’d thought it was. Ah. Still, we talked with her for thirty or more minutes, about multiple topics, from where she goes to school to Slovenian politics to the breakup of Yugoslavia. She was warm and friendly, and we love talking with locals.

We missed all of the stores in the village closing, so we drove back to the smaller valley to see if we could find where we had missed the “easy” road. We could not, and rather than get stuck on that nail-biter road again, I turned around. We went back to our hotel, where we had dessert from their restaurant, on the deck, overlooking the mountains as the sun went down. It was a fine evening (and day).