Oh, hi! Anyway, here's a bit about my trip to Slovenia and Croatia with Emily Marron. We really had a blast and are still friends after (she didn't kill me). A few very odd things happened on the trip which I try to list below. First, here's some pics:
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AZMnLlm1atGPH¬ag=1
We flew into Ljubljana, which is the capital of Slovenia. It's a really neat city with a castle smack in the middle and a few canals which add a lot of charm. Slovenia's economy is doing quite well and they have joined the EU, so life is good there since the fall of communism. Not what everyone thinks of when they are thinking of a holiday, but I get the feeling it will be soon. After a loooong night of fun in the bars and clubs there, we ended up renting a car and driving down to the Istria peninsula right near the Slovenian/Italian/Croatian border -- didn't know there was one until this trip! Here's a pic to help explain it a bit better. If you look at Trieste, Italy, you can see the Istria peninsula directly below it:
On the way, we stopped at a gas station and I started chatting with the Slovenian attendant there. He asked where we were from (in excellent English) and when I said New York he responded, "Holy f*ck!" Not quite what I was expecting, but he seemed pleased to meet me but surprised we were there. He then asked if I had a Slovenian girlfriend. Ah, no. He also got a big kick out of my response when he asked if our rental car - a VW Golf - was expensive, "Less than in New York."
Anyway, since Istria has been owned by Italy and Croatia at different points in history, Italian is the main language and culture in many of the towns. How cool! We went down to the town of Pula that has a huge Roman amphitheater and back up to the beautiful little town of Rovinj. Remind me a lot of Venice with the houses built right up to the water. There's more pics in the link above. We watched arguably the most amazing sunset from the foot of the church you see below:
We also headed over to what was supposed to be an incredible "national park" on the island of Brijuni. The former Yugoslavian dictator Tito (they called him the president) had a big house there and built a "safari." I keep putting these things in quotes because it was really just a big brown island with a a few deer, zebras, and two elephants. Not sure what this whole safari thing was about, but an bizarre experience for sure. Plus, a museum dedicated to Tito was there with a bunch of bizarre animal displays. No explanation or clue as to how they fit in, but interesting to see I suppose. Not sure what these monkeys are doing there....
After all that, we headed back up to Slovenia to the perfect mountain town of Lake Bled. It's in the foothills of the Julian Alps and had Slovenia's oldest castle and it's only island. Huh. But the highlight of that town was our accommodation. We had trouble finding somewhere because we didn't get the chance to book anything. So since all the inns told us there was no room, we headed out to see if any of the Sobe places could help us out. These are private individuals who rent out a room or a small apartment in their house for visitors. We stumble across a woman who has an apartment which turns out to be fantastic and really cheap. But when we tell her we are from New York, she get so excited she nearly has a heart attack. Apparently, her nephew lives in NY and is a computer engineer. Well...I'm a computer engineer. That one statement made us instant celebrities. She was more excited about us that if Tito himself had come back from the dead and asked for a room. And to make our stay as comfortable as possible, we were even shown the secret cabinet containing the instant coffee. Wow. I think Emily wanted to take her home. Here's the house. Too bad we didn't get a picture of her. :-(
Then, after all that it was time to fly home. But we made one last stop at a really small town near the airport which had "the most idyllic Slovenian town square" and a really nice castle. I'll post the name of the town when I think of it (or when Emily reminds me). The castle had a fantastic museum with a great mixture of old timey stuff and WWII stuff. It was amazingly well done for a town which I'm sure doesn't get too many visitors. Bravo Slovenia!
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