Happy anniversary to my best friend! It has been seventeen years of much fun and lots of joy. I love you, Mer!

(Picture from Central Park,New York City)

Dad died on July 14th, after a six-month battle with cancer. Here is the excellent memorial my sister Kelly wrote for Dad.

We lost my dad today. He did not want an obituary, but we wanted to put something in the paper to let the many people who’ve known him over the last 7 and a half decades know. The following is my effort to adhere to his aversion to the orthodox practices surrounding one’s passing and my attempt to capture his unique essence. I hope it brings a smile and a knowing nod to those who knew him and does not offend.
—–
John Peter Riordan, 75, of East Livermore, left this world on July 14 to join the Great White Buffalo in its happy hunting grounds. Peter was born on April 7, 1940 in the East Livermore home of his late parents, George and Serena Riordan, in sight of the home he later built and in which he resided for the last 26 years of his life.

Peter was a meat and potatoes kind of guy – especially potatoes, a love that was perhaps genetically predetermined by his Irish heritage. As for meat, for him, it came in only two modes – well-done or shoe leather. He appreciated a glass of wine with his meals, but only if the wine came from a box. He was not much for pretensions.

Peter prided himself on being handy and self-sufficient. His years working as a truck driver demanded those skills. No one rivaled him in his ability to string together colorful curse words while working on his truck during the weekends, but he respected that there was a time and place for such language and kept his talents to himself when the occasion demanded it.

As anyone who struck up a conversation with him knew, Peter had strongly-held beliefs, particularly in the matter of politics, and was never afraid to express his views and stand his ground. Those traits may not have served him so well in the Army and he often mused that his penchant for speaking truth to power may have been behind his transfer from the desert of White Sands, New Mexico to the frozen tundra of Fort Churchill, Manitoba. The latter assignment, however, fostered a life-long love for, and appreciation of, polar bears.

Peter’s strong sense of justice was matched only by his willingness to go to court to be vindicated. Notwithstanding frequently being out-lawyered, he never lost a court case because he only chose this route when he knew within his bones that he was right and that he had been wronged. The more esteemed and powerful his opponent, the more he relished his victory. If there is a next life, he’ll undoubtedly be back as a lawyer who is focused solely on fighting for the underdog..

His mother frequently observed, “One drop of Riordan blood spoils generations.” It is clear that Peter’s stubbornness, love of an argument in the pursuit of justice, and fair complexion live on in the two generations which survive him. They are proud to be so “spoiled.”

He is survived by his wife of 33 years, Kellee, his daughter, Kelly Horwitz, his sons, Shannon, Matthew and Jeremy, his grandchildren, Samantha and Isaac Horwitz, his brother, O’Brien, his sisters, Rose Orcutt and Rita Mynahan, and many nieces and nephews.

He was predeceased by his parents, George and Serena, his brothers Joseph, James, Patrick and Hugh, his sister, Jane, and his beloved St. Bernard dog, Dudley.

Per his request, there will be no funeral services. His remains will be interred with Dudley in the family cemetery he built overlooking the home where he was born.

Those who wish to honor him are asked to raise a glass of boxed wine or Bailey’s Irish cream and do something for the underdog.

Somehow, shockingly, it has been six weeks since we got home from Europe. I’m never sure how and why I let  my little blog languish, but life seems to get busy and I lose track of time and ye olde blog. I wanted to jot down a few final thoughts about our trip that may not have made it into the daily entries.

– Our little “Fabio” – The little red car we rented was a great little car. Clean-burning diesel cars are common in Europe, and I have found them to be efficient and to have decent power. Our rental car was a Skoda, which is made in the Czech Republic, and since our model was called a Fabia, Mer took to calling the car “Fabio.” The car could get 500 to 600 miles off of a tank of fuel, and the rental on the car was only $250, which included special insurance to drive in Bosnia, which is required since Bosnia is not yet in the EU.

– Tattoos – I’m always interested in obvious differences between America and Europe, and at least in Eastern Europe, the tattoo fad has not taken off like it has in the under-30 set here in the States. I saw a few tats on young people, but it was far from common.

– Nice people – In almost two weeks of being in Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia, I can’t remember running into a rude person. The people we met were all friendly and helpful, culminating in the amazing man who stopped his car to help us in Sarajevo.

– Pedestrian zones – One of the things I love about European cities are the pedestrian zones. I love how people come out to people-friendly streets and eat and visit and people watch. We visited the pedestrian-only zone of Zagreb on both ends of the trip, and it was a marvelous way to see Croatians milling around. We do have a few such areas in the U.S., but they do not seem as central to urban life here as they do in Europe, and I think that is to our loss.

– Natural beauty – Mer and I have become unofficial parts of the Balkan tourist board. We enthusiastically pitch the beauty of Slovenia and Croatia to anyone unfortunate enough to ask. We also liked what we saw of Bosnia, but we were only in Bosnia for about twenty-four hours, so we temper our advice there. Slovenia especially struck me with its amazing beauty, which is all crammed into a very tiny country. It has rivers, lakes, mountains, a pretty-looking capital (that we did not get to, sadly), and even a small stretch of scenic coastline, and all in a country that can be driven across in just a few hours. Big thumbs up to Slovenia and Croatia, each of which could easily demand two week of touring.

– Mer’s mantra for touring, “Everything is either a good experience or a good story”, is a great way to travel. That typically got shortened to simply, “Adventure!” whenever we hit snags or difficulties.

– That about wraps it up. Many thanks to Meredith, who is the driving force (and forward looking money manager) behind our trips to Europe. Here is looking forward to more adventures!

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.