Searching for sladoded, strudel, and sand

My final night in Zadar was great...I got mistaken for a photographer (much more exciting than engineer turned management consultant – my fancy new camera gives me much more credibility than I deserve!) and a movie star (many Europeans, particularly those in more rural areas, recognize the American accent as being from Hollywood since much of what they know about the US is from the movies – they also recognize the southern American accent which they typically associate with George Bush…not quite so positively). I laughed at both comments and confessed that, unfortunately, I was neither. It didn’t stop me from dreaming a little dream, however. How great would it be to just travel and take pictures full-time?

I headed out the next morning to catch the bus from Zadar to Split, and had another (predictably, at this point) maddening encounter at the bus ticket counter. First, I stood in the “ticket” line (not the “information” line as I had done the previous day) only to find out that for this particular route I actually had to stand in another line. Of course. I then moved to the other line which already had several people in it all of whom had different issues to contend with which ended up taking an exorbitant amount of time to resolve…people didn’t know how to read the schedules, didn’t know exactly where they wanted to go, didn’t have cash or the accepted credit cards, did have the right credit card but didn’t know the PIN number (for this one all of us in line had to wait for the woman to run outside to find her husband so he could come in and enter the PIN for her…she was apparently not to be trusted with their money but was good enough to run the errand of buying tickets). In the middle of this madness, an old Croatian couple decided to get in line…attempting to insert themselves right in front of me at the point at which I was probably number five in a line of ten. Having had enough of this game, I looked at the woman, shook my head “no,” and gave her the thumb to the back of the line. She looked at me in apparent confusion (unclear if it was legitimate or not!) but I wasn’t going for it that day and I just kept on going, this time adding the verbal, “No. Back of the line.” to my non-verbal cues. I have no idea if she understood me or not but, whatever it was, I finally got the message through and she moved to the back of the line. This didn’t stop her husband, however, from practically standing on top of me in an attempt to cut in the line. He played dumb and I played ‘no way” and held tight to my spot, using myself and my bag to keep him out of the line. I think I actually rolled over his toes with my bag at some point (that part was not intentional!) and he finally gave up. Victory!

I had arrived quite early but after two lines and all of the inefficiency and mayhem in the second, I was cutting it close with respect to getting on the 10am bus. I finally got to the front of the line and would have made the bus had the woman at the counter not received a personal phone call exactly at that moment and then decided to take it…for 10 minutes while I stood there fuming. Having already spent a week in Croatia I knew better than to try to fight it and just accepted the fact that I would have to kill an hour at the bus stop, found a shabby café, and camped out with a coffee until it was time to leave. (Incidentally, as we all boarded the bus yet another older Croatian woman started bulldozing her way through the line and cutting in front of everyone when a British girl grabbed her arm to stop her and said, extremely annoyed, “Excuse me! There is a queue!!” I felt a bit better that this wasn’t only happening to me…and that I wasn’t the only one fed up enough to start challenging the local senior citizens!)

I arrived in downtown Split which, now officially in the most touristed part of Croatia and one of the larger cities, was crazy and packed with travelers. I had already planned on making this day a throw-away given that I was clearly on the ragged edge and needed a little break. I got off the bus, grabbed lunch (pizza and sladoded from a couple street vendors – yummy and cheap!), and grabbed a taxi to my hotel. I arrived at the hotel to exactly what I needed at that point…beautiful, modern, spacious and clean hotel rooms with air conditioning, glorious air conditioning. I have definitely gotten spoiled over the past few years by staying at nice hotels when traveling for work and I was so happy to be back at one after the previous ten days of less than stellar accommodations (I am admittedly too cheap to pay for the nice ones so was only there because I got it for free with my many accumulated hotel points!). I spent a few hours relaxing in the air conditioning and getting back to being a relaxed, appreciative, and tolerant tourist.

I wanted to go to one of the nearby islands the next day and tried work out all the details the previous night. Consistent with everywhere else in Croatia, planning what should be a very easy day trip was not quite so easy. I decided that I would go to nearby Brac Island to see the famous white pebble beach of Zlatni Rat (Golden Cape) and climb Vidova Gora which is the highest point in the Croatian isles at 778m. To do so, I would need to get a transfer from the hotel into town (I was about 10km out), take a ferry to Supetar on Brac, and then catch a bus from Supetar to Bol which would be my starting point for the day. The hotel ran shuttles into Split every hour starting at 9am and they advised me to take the 9am shuttle and the 10:20am ferry. I thought everything was settled and then, just to be sure, started checking into the timing of the ferries, buses, etc. If I were to leave when was recommended, I wouldn’t get to Bol until 1pm at the earliest and then would have to catch the bus back to Supetar at 2:30pm in order to make my other ferry and shuttle connections. (Again, none of the logistics in this country have been optimized for convenience or logic!) I was finally able to figure out that there was a 7:45am ferry and that if I left the hotel at 7am I could get to Bol by 11am and then catch the 4:10pm bus back to Supetar. Still not a lot of time but much better than 90 minutes!

I walked out of the elevator the next morning at 7am and asked the concierge to call me a taxi. All of the hotel staff were staring at me like I was some sort of zoo animal or something…I guess their typical guests don’t get up that early! I got in the taxi and told the driver that I wanted to go to the ferry to Brac. He asked me if the concierge had told me that there was a ferry this early in the morning, also very confused. I told him, yes, I knew there was a ferry at 7:45am and he just shrugged the “whatever, lady” shrug and drove on. I arrived at the terminal 20 minutes later and, to my great relief, there really was a ferry to Brac at 7:45am (given the typically poor quality of transportation information and the cab driver’s disbelief in the early morning ferry I was a little nervous!) and I was on my way.

I got to Brac, caught the public bus 30 minutes later, and arrived in Bol as predicted at 11am. I only had five hours for fun on the island so headed straight for the tourist info center (as instructed) to get information on the hike to Vidova Gora…but, of course, the tourist info center was closed as it was Sunday. Bummer. Undeterred, I stopped in a couple other tour operator shops and asked if they knew anything about the hike. The first guy understood what I was asking but didn’t know how to help me and pointed me down the street to another shop. The guy there raised his eyebrows and clarified, “You want to climb Vidova Gora? By walking?” Um, yes. That was the plan! I had read about this hike multiple places so wasn’t really sure what all this confusion this was about. He added, “It takes three hours to go up.” and then looked at me questioningly as if to say, “Are you really sure you want to do that?” I said, “Yep. That’s ok! Where do I start?” He looked at his colleague next to him, shrugged like “Well, I tried to warn her.” and pulled out a map of the local roads, directing me to the starting point of the hike. I said thanks and took off down the road. A Croatian woman at the hotel desk had told me the previous day, “Being active isn’t really part of the Croatian culture yet. Most Croatians just want to lie around in the sun.” No kidding!

The simple map and directions were perfect and I was soon on the trail up Vidova Gora. I ran into a wire gate blocking the trail with a sign hanging on it stating “ZATVORI LOZU” in red paint. I figured that it said something like “trail closed” and even tried to translate it on my phone which came back with “destroy vines” which wasn’t particularly helpful. At any rate, no flimsy little wire gate was going to stop me when there was no obvious reason to close the path so I opened the gate and kept going. (I passed a few of these gates and signs along the way and was starting to get a little concerned until I ran into some people coming back down and knew the trail must be ok.)

The hike was steep but I love climbs and it was well marked so it was an enjoyable hike up to the top. Once I got to the top of the mountain, I had a more gradual climb to the actual peak and happily continued up enjoying the spectacular views of the surrounding islands and could even see the Italian coast in the distance. As is probably clear at this point, I really like hiking and I especially like it when I’m rewarded with a view that you can’t get unless you put the work in to get there. I think this makes what you find at the end of the trail even more special, knowing that not everyone will find it.

Unfortunately, on this day I was to be grossly and unexpectedly disappointed if I thought I was going to someplace unique and special. I rounded one of the last “corners” on the mountain only to run into a road and parking lot packed with vehicles and tour buses. No wonder the guy in Bol thought I was crazy for wanting to walk up…everybody else and their brother had taken one of the fifty vehicles in town up to the top! I had thought I was doing something unique and I had really just spent 90 minutes climbing up a mountain which was a 5 minute drive up the other side. So annoying! There was even a restaurant at the top. I wove my way around the tour groups and cars, shooting “cheaters!” at them with my glare as I passed. At least the views were amazing even if the summit was not quite as sweet and peaceful as I had hoped. I snapped some pictures and then turned around to head back down. I wanted to go to Zlatni Rat before heading back to Split that evening. Since the path up only took 90 minutes, I expected I would be back down in an hour which would give me a couple hours at the beach.

Had things gone according to plan, I would have had two hours at the beach but – surprise, surprise – I got twisted around on my way back down and it ended up taking longer to get down than I had anticipated. A lot longer…as in around three hours instead of one. I’m not entirely to blame considering it was really rocky on top so the trail was hard to find (and I didn’t have a peak to guide me forward like I did on the way up) and I was following markings on the rocks which ended up being for another, apparently unknown, trail (see, this is what I get when I actually try to follow the marked trail for once!). Regardless, I ended up spending an extra two hours trying to get down a rocky mountain face which I would climb down (making my own path), get stuck, climb back up, move 100m another direction, and then try again, and again, and again. I finally decided to backtrack and walk back towards the summit to make another go at finding the legitimate trail instead of just trying to free climb a descent but not before I had gotten myself pretty scraped up (think long scratches up and my down arms and legs, and stickers poking out from my ankles and calves) and extremely sunburned. (I had sunscreen with me but in my severe frustration with getting lost again had forgotten to put it on until very late. Bonus…mad and sunburned.)

I walked back near the summit, realized I had walked way farther across the mountain than I should have, ultimately found the right trail again, and practically ran down the mountain to try to make up some time. Unfortunately, I had spent too much time scrambling on rocks and no longer had time to go to Zlatni Rat which was a bit of a walk away. I grabbed a snack and hung out in Bol for a bit less than an hour as a consolation prize and then caught the bus back to Supetar to start the journey back. It was a fun if a bit frustrating day even given the seven hours of roundtrip travel including six separate modes of transportation for only five hours on the island but I’d still do it again (although maybe not the getting lost part).

I hurried back to the hotel where I’d scheduled a sports massage and, without going into too much detail, let’s just say that the Croatians are quite a bit more liberal with respect to massages and modesty particularly given that my masseur was male. (I told my friend Ron about it later that night and he replied with, “Wow. Did you ask him to tip you afterwards?”) Ron was coming from San Francisco (via Barcelona) later that night so I figured I better get things in order before he arrived. Namely, I really needed to do some laundry but was not going to pay the $5 for a pair of socks or underwear that the hotel was charging so made due with what I had, which was a bathtub and shampoo, and shampooed my dirty clothes. (Admittedly, I was getting a little desperate.) Let’s just say it got me through but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it.

Ron’s flight arrived late that night and we caught up for a couple hours at the hotel bar. I hadn’t run into a single American in the past almost two weeks of travel and then I got to this hotel to find an army of them. While waiting for the bill, Ron and I got to witness some of them at their finest…a bleached blonde, practically orange-tanned, woman in a skin tight minidress and five inch heels, clearly having had some *ahem* quite obvious plastic surgery, arguing loudly with the waiter over her bill. “I am NOT paying for his drinks. Let me just tell you what happened. That guy, Carl, was hitting on me and I wasn’t interested so he put his and his wife’s drinks on my tab and I am NOT paying for it. He is, after all, a billionaire. I think he can afford it.” She and her entourage (another bleached blonde couple) made some additional hand waving and finger snap points before sashaying away down the lobby. Shocker, they were from Laguna Beach. Such an unfortunate confirmation of the So Cal stereotype when there really are some normal people down there (so I’ve heard…)! We laughed along with a Brit and two Australians who had just watched the same thing and Ron defended his So Cal roots. I felt like we had just been caught in the middle of a reality TV show. (And seriously, besides the fact that this guy was married and hitting on other women…what kind of guy does that while sitting with his wife and then, when turned down, has the audacity to put both of their drinks on the other woman’s tab? Maybe it’s a billionaire thing…unbelievable!)

Thankfully, Ron had made it safely and we were now just hoping that our other friends, Paul and Amanda, would also make it into Split that night. They weren’t sure they would be able to get a seat on the bus from Zadar where they had flown in from London and then still had to find a place to stay once they arrived. The only thing I hate worse than staying somewhere less than stellar with no air conditioning in a hot climate on vacation is walking around in the middle of the night to try to find a place to stay which invariably less than stellar and without air conditioning in a hot climate on vacation. Given that Paul and Amanda had gotten in so late (we heard from them by email at 3:30am) and everyone was already pretty tired, we decided to take it easy the next day and spend some time in Diocletian’s Palace (basically, the old town in Split which is called a palace but is a series of small cobbled streets and beautiful old buildings) and at the local beaches.

We met the next day around noon and decided to grab lunch before heading to a nearby beach. Thus, we began the first of what would end up being many “restaurant finding expeditions” over the course of the next week during which Paul charged ahead of the group with Ron close behind, racing up to every restaurant, pulling out the menu, doing a quick evaluation of the options, and then always arriving at the same conclusion…“Let’s keep looking.” I was usually in the middle trying to bridge the gap with Amanda trailing behind taking pictures. The funny thing is that, especially in heavily touristed areas (like Diocletian’s Palace), all of the restaurants are almost exactly the same so the menus never really changed. This didn’t stop Paul from looking at each and every one for sometimes up to an hour while the rest of us followed behind in single file like baby ducks only to decide that we should just go back to number two or number three out of the last fifteen. Then we had to attempt to remember where number two or three was actually located…

We finally ate and then walked along the water for a few kilometers to one of the local beaches which had been recommended and found a spot to camp out. We spent a couple hours reading on the pebble beach and swimming before heading back to clean up and go to dinner. Ron had picked out a great seafood restaurant in another neighborhood in Split and we were all looking forward to a good dinner after all the water and sun (and sladoded!) that afternoon. We bought some drinks including a local rum for a bit of a pre-game and headed back to Paul and Amanda’s to shower before going out.

Ron opened the rum, smelled it, and immediately made a disgusted face. “This stuff smells really sweet, like a hangover in a bottle. I think it smells like egg nog!” He handed it to me. I smelled it, made the same face, and said, “No, I think it smells like cotton candy! I can’t drink that!” Amanda mixed it with Coke, made the same face, and took a drink. Her conclusion? “It smells like cotton candy but it tastes like bubblegum!” We all agreed on it tasting like bubblegum and between the egg nog and cotton candy smell, Ron started saying it was like Christmas and a carnival in a bottle. It was henceforth called “Carnimas” and we drank it for the next couple hours before dinner while they caught me up on US politics and news…ok, ok, it wasn’t exactly news. They caught me up on US pop culture including new (non-country) music and gave me an introduction to the very classy reality show Jersey Shore. For those of you who know the characters of Jersey Shore we each got Jersey Shore nicknames for the trip…Paul was, of course, Pauly D (particularly appropriate since his last name really does start with D), Ron became Ronnie (obviously), Amanda became Manni, and I got AWoww. The things you think of when you’re drinking bubblegum rum…

We finally left for the trek to dinner and, a couple kilometers away from the hotel, Ron realized that he didn’t know the name of the restaurant and nobody had brought the guidebook. We were too far gone to go back and all I could remember was “konoba” was in the name which means something like “small, family-run restaurant” so wasn’t particularly helpful as anything could be a konoba. I had also previously looked it up on Google Maps so remembered roughly where it was but not exactly. (I know you’re thinking that this is a recipe for disaster!) Shockingly, my vague recollection was enough to get us there without even getting lost! Not sure how the one time I really don’t know where we’re going is the one time I am able to direct everyone there without a problem but it actually worked out! It had been quite a hike out to the restaurant but the food was excellent (I had cuttlefish ink pasta which was black…and very good!) and we had a great time.

We had started pretty late and had walked quite a ways so it was nearly midnight when we made our way back to the Palace. We stopped by a convenience store on our way back to buy drinks and Ron began to open them as we stepped back outside, using one bottle to snap the cap off the others. He finally got down to the last bottle and, as there were no other bottles with caps intact to use, asked for Paul and Amanda’s room key as his bottle-opening tool of choice. It suddenly became a slow motion movie…Paul handed Ron the key while saying, “Be careful and don’t bend it…,” Ron grabbed the key and put it to the bottle, Amanda reached out with a frantic, “Don’t bend the key! Don’t bend the…,” Paul reached out and said, “NooOOOooo….,” as I just stared like a dope with another bottle (with cap intact) in my hand that Ron could have used, while Ron proceeded to crank down hard on the key…bending it to the point I think we all thought it might break.

Paul snapped, “Man! I told you not to bend the key!” He grabbed it, wedged it into a crack in the wall of the building we were standing next to and aggressively tried to bend it back the other way. Amanda jumped in, “Paul, let’s just try it first. Let’s just try it first. Don’t you break it!” Ron apologized gratuitously, we got Paul to calm down (and forfeit the key to Amanda, clearly the more trusted key guardian of the two), and decided to go back to their place first to try the key and then, if needed, call their landlord. The rest of the walk back was fairly quiet as we all just hoped that the key would work. This night was going to get very ugly very fast if not! We reached the door, Amanda tried the key, jimmied it around a bit and jostled the door, we all held our breath, more jostling, and…voila! The key worked! Ron let out a huge sigh of relief. Paul bounced back into typical Paul mode and was already thinking about the next stop and the next drink, and Amanda was just relieved to have a place to sleep for the night. Thank goodness for small graces!

Ron, Amanda, and I attempted to call it a night – it was already late and everyone was tired given the late night before – but Paul would have none of it and we all went out for one more drink in the Palace. It turned out to be really fun and was just a beautiful place and gorgeous evening in which to hang out a little longer. We stopped to take pictures in the street which, with Paul involved, weren’t just “stand and smile” pictures so got us lots of attention, and then all made it back to go to bed. It was a great, if slightly stressful at times, first night out for the group.



We left the next morning at 9am for our bus ride to Dubrovnik, the world-renowned “jewel of the Adriatic” and I was excited to have friends with me for this trip given all the previous Croatian and Slovenian bus rides I had already done solo. We were only going around 175 miles but the trip was expected to take four hours, largely because of the fact that the coastal two-lane highway was narrow and wound tightly to every curve of the coastal rocks. We also had to cross the border into Bosnia and Herzegovina and drive through the “Neum corridor,” a 22km long section of the coast which belongs to Bosnia and Herzegovina (bordered by Croatia on either side – bizarre!), meaning we would have to go through Bosnian passport security which would also extend the trip time.

At this point, I had been on seven different Croatian buses and the drivers had always, and sometimes annoyingly, stopped for 20 minutes of snack time and bathroom break for every 90 minutes of travel. We get on this bus, however, and after three hours the bus hadn’t stopped. I was getting a little desperate (my punishment for starting out the day with coffee and a diet Coke!) as was much of the rest of the bus. We finally stopped for gas and 70% of the bus jumped up. There was a little scuffle at the front of the bus and it didn’t seem like they were letting people off, but then it subsided and I tried to get off out the back door with some of the other passengers also ready to make a run for it. I stepped off first and the bus “ticket collector” (not the driver but just the ticket checker and “order keeper” on the bus) who was standing outside the door took one look at me and shouted, “Sit DOWN!” as he pointed me back to my seat. The girls behind me shuffled backwards and we all got back in our seats (and crossed our legs).

Those that had gotten off for a smoke jumped back on (not sure why smoking was an approved activity but we weren’t allowed to use the bathroom!) and we took off, now very close to the Bosnian border. The same jerk who yelled at me walked the length of the bus rather forcefully pulling the window curtains across the windows and snapped at Ron and Amanda who were sitting by the windows, “Police CONTROL!” We stopped at the border, the Bosnian border official got on the bus, briefly checked passports (hardly even glancing at those from the US – a US passport buys you access and exemption from the typical border-crossing questions in some of these countries!), and we went on our merry way. Given all the drama about police control from our bus ticket jerk, it was really anticlimactic. We all agreed that our 20 minutes in Bosnia had been wonderful as we exited back into Croatia.

We had previously been talking about passport pictures; all of us complaining about how bad ours were and how chubby they made our faces look. I have always called mine “plate face” and when I referred to it by that name at one point Paul asked me about it. I told him that I called it plate face because my face looked as big and as round as a dinner plate. After the Bosnian passport check, he asked to see it and immediately started laughing. Plate face, confirmed! Of all the bad pictures I have taken in my lifetime (and there are plenty), it figures that the one I actually have to live with, show at every country border, and be scrutinized against for ten years is plate face. I still don’t understand what happened – I never really had a plate face! (And no, I will not scan it and post it on the blog. There really are limits to self deprecating humor and plate face is it for me!) Turns out plate face came back to haunt me in Montenegro but that story is still to come…

We finally rolled into Dubrovnik, a full five hours after leaving Split, and got off the bus (and I, at least, headed straight for the restrooms!). Ron and I went to check-in to our place while Paul and Amanda went off to find theirs, and I think we all were pretty worn out and hungry from that bus ride. I had been feeling car sick for a couple hours for the ride and just being stuck on a bus for five hours had left us all pretty drained. We didn’t know it at the time but a bottle of red wine had broken in another passenger’s bag at some point during the ride and had leaked into Amanda’s so she also had to deal with red wine soaked (and some ruined) clothes when she opened her bag. Such a bummer! We met up for lunch, had another baby ducks following mama Paul restaurant finding escapade, and finally settled on grab and go pizza and sandwiches. (Definitely not worth the long search for that!)

Paul and Amanda wanted to spend some time on the beach before dinner and Ron and I opted to explore Dubrovnik for a couple hours instead. I went picture crazy and Ron was a great sport, following me around down every side street, alley, and stairwell without complaining. I think we probably covered 80% of Dubrovnik’s old town in only two hours (and it really is a jewel) and we had a lot of fun exploring. We all then met up again near sundown to walk the Dubrovnik city walls and this ended up being one of my favorite parts of my entire trip. The light was perfect for pictures of the old town and the temperature was actually pleasant instead of suffocating. Dubrovnik is truly captivating and absolutely gorgeous with all the orange tiled roofs and marble stairs and side streets. Unfortunately, the old town was severely damaged by Serbian and Montenegrin bombings in 1991 (for which members of the Yugoslav Federal Army and Navy, the Bosnian Serb Army, and Montenegrin paramilitary units were later indicted for war crimes in connection with the three months of artillery attacks targeting the old town and its surroundings) and much have the city had to be rebuilt or repaired afterward. Although the city took great care to maintain as much of the old town as possible and to repair the rest as carefully as they could using old style building techniques and materials, the war wounds are still visible in much of the city. The extent of these bombings was most apparent to me as we walked along the city walls as it was quite clear that many of the rooftops were new and in stark, sad contrast to the old originals. Dubrovnik remains the jewel of the Adriatic, however, and I got some of my pep back from the city tour from above. By the time we all went to dinner that night it was clear that we were all back on the upswing.



Again, we followed Paul for too long looking for a dinner restaurant and again we ended up going back to number two or three out of fifteen. The restaurant we finally settled on didn’t seem like anything special but we had some great Balkan food and just a really fun evening. We, of course rounded it out with more sladoded and strudels (apple or cherry are the Croatian specialty) and a few drinks at some Irish pubs. (We never could figure out why Irish pubs were so seemingly popular in Dubrovnik but there sure were a lot of them!)

We had previously decided to go to Lokrum Island the next day which is a tiny island very near Dubrovnik (maybe a 15 minute boat ride) instead of taking a two hour ferry rides to some of the larger islands. The real deciding factor was that the long ferry rides departed from the ferry terminal which was a $20 taxi ride away and required that you show up at 7am for an 8am departure in the hopes that you would get a seat as no reservations were allowed. (What kind of crazy system is that?!) Lokrum, on the other hand, left hourly from the small port in the old town. None of us were feeling like waking up at 6:30am on vacation so figured that Lokrum was a happy island medium. We decided to meet the next morning at 10am and called it a good night.

Ron and I wanted to have breakfast before we left for Lokrum (more specifically, strudels) so headed out that morning to pick up our goodies. We stopped at the local market to buy some snacks for the day and Ron went into muscle-man protein mission mode…settling on a can of tuna (for breakfast?! is that really necessary?!) as his best bet. We grabbed strudels and coffee on the way back from the market and then gorged. Ron forced himself to eat the tuna first saying, “I don’t want to end breakfast on a tuna note. I’m going to end with something good!” I can’t really relate but definitely the right call! From this point onward, Ron was an apple strudel eating machine. I credit the fact that he forced down a can of oil-packed tuna immediately before the strudel with his apparent new found love for apple-filled pastries. Dirt would have probably tasted pretty good after that let alone a fruit-filled strudel! Choking down tuna fish for breakfast definitely shows a lot of dedication (and stamina to get it down!) but…gag a maggot! Dedication, schmedication…pass me another cherry strudel, please! (I do have to give Ron credit though for eating the strudel...had he stuck with tuna-only for breakfast I would have been really worried!)

We met up with Paul and Amanda and got on the boat to Lokrum. We were all really glad we’d chosen the lazy day option and didn’t have a lot of travel and transport craziness to contend with. We arrived at the island 15 minutes later and set off to find a beach for the day…and once again began the duckling walk behind Paul for an hour as I think we actually may have hit every single beach on the island. (It’s a small island but still.) This time we settled on the very last place we checked so maybe the search was worth it (I still think probably not though). Ron and I wanted to get something active in during the day so decided to hike up to the fortress on the island which we did…in a grand total of 20 minutes. Not much of a hike but beautiful views of Dubrovnik so well worth it. We had already traipsed around most of the island on our beach search so there wasn’t really much more to explore. We rounded the northern end and both agreed that one of the main beaches was probably better than the one we had settled on for swimming and spending the day. We got back to where Paul and Amanda were holding down the fort and Paul said, “We were thinking that maybe one of the first beaches might be better for swimming. There are a lot of sea urchins here.” Ron and I smiled and agreed and we all grabbed our things and headed back to beach number one. Classic.

We spent the rest of the day swimming and reading on the beach. The weather was perfect and Lokrum was a great choice for a relaxing day. We headed back early evening and began the night out with wine on the rocks outside the city walls before heading to another fun dinner and night on the old town, this time including live jazz on one of the squares. Again, we had a great time and I at least was really loving Dubrovnik alongside and despite all the other tourists.

After our low key day on Lokrum, I was feeling really antsy and had decided to go to Mljet Island the next day to go biking through the national park. Ron, Paul, and Amanda were more interested in another local beach day and weren’t excited about the two plus hour boat ride (one way) so we split up for the day and I was on my way to Mljet, supposedly one of the most “captivating” Croatian islands, the next morning at 9am. The yacht ride to the island the next morning was actually fantastic. For one, it was on a small (but not fancy) yacht instead of a big ferry and, for two, the ride north along the Croatian coast in the morning was absolutely beautiful and really relaxing. I don’t think I moved for the two and half hours it took to get to the entrance of the national park but just enjoyed being outside in the wind and water with such fantastic views of the coast.

One reason Ron had decided against Mljet was that he wanted to be in Dubrovnik for sunset and the boat back from Mljet was supposed to arrive around 8:30 or 9pm, too late for sunset (unless you’re in Finland!). I got off the boat at the port in Pomena (on Mljet) and they told us to be back at the boat at 4pm. Surprised as I thought I had until 6:30pm, I clarified to make sure I had heard correctly, “We are leaving here at 4pm, 16:00?” “Yes! Leave here 16:00!” Ok. Well, slight change of plans but what can you do? (Also not surprising at this point…I don’t think anyone involved in tourism in Croatia knows the actual details of anything he or she is selling.) The sad thing is that Ron could have come and still made sunset in Dubrovnik if only we had been given the right information! So frustrating.

With only four and half hours on the island, I hurried to rent a bike, paid the park entrance fee (around $20), opted not to buy the park map (also almost $20 – highway robbery!), and took off on my bike. I had an awesome day biking around the lakes on the island and taking swimming breaks in the gorgeous water. I passed through a small village with a speed limit of 5km/hr (3.1miles/hr!) in which you had to actually walk your bike because you would (clearly) be going over the speed limit. It was exactly what I needed and although was much too short (five hour roundtrip boat ride for four and half hours on Mljet – can’t they figure these things out a little bit better?!), I got the “I want to move and explore!” out of my system for the day. Mljet and Rab Island were my strong favorites out of the islands I visited and they were definitely the most beautiful (Mljet, specifically) but I think the fact that I biked all day on both of them made a big difference. I got to see so much and it was really relaxing to be so independent and free in such beautiful places.

I hopped up from my rock perch on the far end of Veliko Jezero (“Big Lake” of the two there – the other is called Malo Jezero, or “Small Lake”) at 3:30pm, jumped on my bike, and got back just in time for my boat back to Dubrovnik. I arrived back in Dubrovnik at 6:30pm, showered, and was still able to make sunset drinks with the group. It was perfect (although I would have preferred to leave at 7am that morning to have more time on Mljet)!



This was our last night in Dubrovnik – our three days there had really flown by – and we had an awesome final night with drinks on the stone pier and then dinner (and I don’t remember following Paul for an hour looking at menus so I think someone else must have taken over this time…which I may have had something to do with!) and more Irish pubs. We were leaving the next morning for the final part of our trip together, and the final part of my trip overall (the other three would head on to Prague when I left to go back “home” to Helsinki).

Zbogom Hrvatska, Crna Gora halo! (Farewell Croatia, hello Montenegro!)

Meltdown

I spent most of my half a day in Rijeka, Croatia sitting in the local McDonald’s before finally catching a bus to my real destination of Rab Island. As you may remember, I had figured out in Slovenia that I wouldn’t be able to make it all the way to Rab Island in one day given the poor and rather limited transportation options from Ljubljana to Rab. Luckily, I had been able to adjust my travel schedule and leave Ljubljana on Sunday night instead of Monday morning so that I could catch a bus from Rijeka to Rab the next morning.

I had looked up bus schedules from Rijeka to Rab Island the day before and had decided on the 10:30am bus given 6:00am, 2:30pm, and 5:30pm as other options. I arrived at the bus station to buy my ticket around 10am that morning, having just checked out of my hotel and dragged all my things across town in the already uncomfortable heat to find out that the 10:30am bus doesn’t really go to Rab Island. It only goes to Jablanac where you then have to catch a ferry and another bus to get to Rab town. Worse, the bus doesn’t even go all the way to Jablanac but just drops you off at a bus stop off the main highway from which you have to hike three kilometers down the side of the mountain to actually get to the ferry port. No thanks! I went with the recommendation to wait it out for the 2:30pm bus which would take me straight to Rab town accepting that I’d just have to kill four hours until then which is how I ended up in McDonald’s. Sometimes you just can’t beat a fountain diet Coke with ice, air conditioning, free internet, and decent bathrooms.

It was finally time for my bus to leave and after fighting my way on (you really have to get a little aggressive with the older Croatian women who consistently push their way to the very front of every line, apparently uninformed about how the concept of a line usually works), I settled in for my first of many Croatian bus rides. It took us three hours to go 120 km (75 miles) given the winding and snaking two-lane highway along the rocky coast. I had heard that Croatia was rocky but I hadn’t expected it to be so desert-like. The coast was mostly brown with rocks and small stones and had only small patches of green bushes scattered throughout, not really the lush landscape that I was expecting to find. The Adriatic was as I expected though…absolutely gorgeous blue, almost black, fading into turquoise near the rocky coast. It was really very beautiful if also very different than what I had expected.

Rab island itself was also very unique, starting out with brown desert on the south end where we arrived by ferry but then gradually becoming greener and more forested as we drove northwest to Rab town. Because of the way the island is shaped with a large mountain in the middle running northwest to southeast, the western side of the island gets and “holds on to” most of the rain and is protected a bit from the intense sun which results in a milder climate and more vegetation. Unsurprisingly, Rab town sits at the most protected central cove and is not only in a gorgeous location but is a treasure when it comes to old towns (and, believe me, after this trip I think I may qualify as an old town expert).

Rab town is famous for its four picturesque bell towers which rise above the city and extend along the narrow peninsula on which the old town sits. The old town itself is very compact and largely intact, seemingly unscathed from the WWII and Bosnian War bombings which decimated some of the other cities I visited. As with many of the old towns once under Venetian rule, the city “streets” are made of shiny marble and the homes, restaurants, and shops create a lovely labyrinth in which to get lost. I spent most of that first day roaming the Rab town streets and taking pictures. This is definitely one of those places where just when you think you’ve seen the most beautiful thing ever you turn the corner and see something that trumps it. It was really gorgeous and besides the German and Austrian families who vacation there every year, it was not nearly as crowded or touristy as I was expecting.

I was pretty hiked-out at this point given all I had done in Slovenia and really wanted to see more of Rab Island so figured I would rent a bike to go exploring. The entire island is about 60km long from end to end and I was really only interested in seeing the northern half (the southern half being the dry, desert moonscape), more specifically some of the more remote beaches and coves and another city called Lopar in the most northern branch of the island. I took off that morning and my first plan of attack was to ride to the highest point on the island to check out the views of the mainland and of all the neighboring islands. I started pedaling up the mountain roads and they just continued to get steeper and steeper…to the point that even standing on the bike on the lowest gear I wasn’t able to turn the pedals. I kept trying for a while but then couldn’t bike any more, it was just too steep. I got off the bike to walk it for a bit thinking that this might just be a very steep section and I could get back on a bit later but, no, the only option up was the steep road which just got steeper and the hiking path which was a long series of steps. I thought about carrying my bike but then thought that would sort of defeat the purpose so decided to bag the highest peak for the time being and save it for later when I wouldn’t have to climb in addition to carrying my bike. Needless to say, the ride back down was much easier (and more rewarding – I finally felt like I was getting somewhere!).

I started pedaling northwest along one of the main island roads and besides the fact that there was a decent amount of traffic, the ride was amazing. This part of the island was lush and diverse and I had a view of the sea and of some neighboring islands as I rode. I ran into a Franciscan monastery on the way and took a short break to take some pictures before heading on toward one of the more remote branches of the island. I kept cycling until I reached the end of the road, literally, and then walked my bike for a few kilometers around the farthest end of the peninsula I was on, around which there was basically a small sidewalk built right on the water. Families were sitting on the decks of their vacation homes enjoying coffee and fruit, playing in the shallow, turquoise water, and napping under the cover of trees on the walkway. I walked around the peninsula, winding my way and my bike around all of the sunbathers, until I got back to the other side and met up with another road. It was really great to get off the road for a while and see how vacation is really done on islands like these. I only wished I was staying at someone’s home on the beach instead of at my hotel in town!

I hopped back on my bike and got back on the main road, now making my way north to Lopar which supposedly had one of Rab’s nicest beaches and also a very nice nudist beach which I wanted to check out. (Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, right?) Before I could even think about beaches, I first had to get up and over the large mountain that runs along the length of the island. Thankfully, there was a bike path for most of the ride and it was a bit less steep than my first ride that morning so while it was a lot of work, it was a fun and rewarding ride. There were also some amazing viewpoints along the way from which I could see islands in every direction. After a good, long climb up I got to the top and then coasted in to Lopar and headed for the main beach.

The beach was very crowded and at this point I was starving so decided to break for lunch before figuring out where I might be able to camp out for a bit. It was hot and I had been biking all day so while I was hungry I didn’t want anything warm or too heavy. I settled on a Greek salad and then as I was ordering I noticed a bowl of fruit in the café refrigerator. I asked my waiter how much the fruit was and he told me, “Oh, no. Fruit is not for sale. That is only for to be put into desserts.” Ok. Strange, but whatever. He then said, “But we can make fruit salad. You want fruit salad?” All I wanted was something fresh and healthy and I didn’t care a bit if they cut it up, so I said, “Great! Yes, please bring fruit salad too. But no ice cream on it, right?” (They put ice cream on almost everything with fruit.) He said, “No, no ice cream. Just fruit salad.” Perfect!

I got my salad and it was great – wonderful tomatoes, fresh feta cheese, and crisp cucumbers. It was perfect. Then they brought out my “fruit salad” which I think might have actually contained some fruit if you could wade your way through the mountain of whipped cream and strawberry sauce to find it. Needless to say, it was definitely not what I expected. The “only for to be put in desserts” comment came back to haunt me as did the “just fruit salad” assurance. Don’t get me wrong, the whipped cream and strawberry sauce didn’t stop me from eating it but it wasn’t exactly the light and refreshing mid-bike expedition snack I had anticipated!

I rode up and down the boardwalk a couple times and decided that the beach was too crowded for me, and the water too shallow (which is why this place is perfect for families with small kids). I decided to try to find this remote nudist beach which I had read about and was another bike ride and a hike away. It took me a couple attempts to figure out which random, remote, residential road to take but I finally found what I thought must be it (still requires a bit of faith as nothing is marked) and muscled my way up another steep hill. I got to the top and ran into a sign pointing me to Sahara Beach – I was so excited and surprised that I had actually gone the right way for once that I didn’t know what to do with myself! I locked my bike to a tree and set off for the 30 minute hike down the back side of the mountain. This hiking path was actually relatively well marked and after 30 minutes I popped out of the forest and stumbled onto a rocky beach to find a rather large middle-aged woman’s butt staring back at me from a beach towel. I know, I know. What was I expecting?! Still, it was a bit unnerving!

The beach was on a secluded cove which you can only get to by hiking through the forest or by boat so was pretty low key. The beach goers ran the continuum from nude to “normal” (for an American) and included every possible variation in between which I will refrain from describing. There were old couples, young families, groups of friends, single travelers, you name it – every shape, size, and age was there. My impression after going was that topless is fine. You avoid the bad tan lines and uncomfortable neck ties and everyone seems happier for it. But bottomless, I’m not quite such a fan of. Babies have cute buns but besides a handful of adults who have managed to keep good looking derrieres (most of whom are employed by Victoria’s Secret), the rest of humanity really should keep it covered up. Think about what the skin on your face does as you age…and then translate those effects…do you really want that on display? Secondly, and I thought of this as I noticed a middle-aged man standing front and center in the middle of the cove in water up to his knees happily flashing the entire beach (for quite many continuous minutes – clearly quite the exhibitionist), Speedos are bad enough and the removal of them is worse. Keep your junk covered up! Joking aside, nobody looks at or cares about anybody else’s naked buns in Europe and I was able to spend a couple great hours relaxing and reading on the beach before heading back up the mountain. The obvious question I get about this is, “What did you do?! Did you get naked?” and all I can say is that you’ll have to check the photo albums to find out. (Just kidding!) Some things are better kept between me, the Rab island locals, and the Austrian tourists.

I had had enough of the sun (and of the nakedness) and also had to return my bike so jumped up to make my way back to Rab. I was supposed to return my bike by 5pm, it was already nearly 4pm, and I had a hike plus a decent bike ride back including a long climb over the central mountain. I grabbed my things and headed back up the trail. It was very well marked in comparison to other trails I’ve been on but while it would point me back in the direction of Lopar very clearly when I came to fork in the road, it would often leave the other path unlabeled which drove me crazy. What if the other path was really the “much cooler hike to Lopar for locals” and I was just on the boring one for tourists? While curiosity killed the cat it (thankfully!) only gets me lost but at this point I am very aware of this fact so, for once, I stuck to the main trail. Subsequently, I had an uneventful if successful trip up the mountain and back to my bike and was on the road in no time.

It was now 4:20pm and I had about 15 kilometers, mostly a single, long climb, to do in 40 minutes if I was going to return my bike on time. I was much more confident going back as I knew the island and the roads much better this time so I just went for it and besides nearly getting bumped off the road by multiple cars, made great time and had a really fun ride (I love long, steady climbs!). I came screaming into town, cut off a couple cars on my way back to the rental office, and hopped off my bike at 5:10pm. I arrived hot, a little sunburned, and a lot dirty but very happy after such a fun day of exploration. I returned my bike (they didn’t even look at the time) and left for the showers. I knew that my normal face was under all that salt, dirt, and sweat somewhere!

Finally looking and feeling like a normal person again, I had a great dinner of cuttlefish stew (an island specialty) and then spent the evening enjoying the old town again which included many more pictures and, of course, more sladoded (Croatian gelato). The weather was perfect and the main square was packed with people listening to live music and eating street food as part of some sort of festival. It was a great way to end my stay in Rab before I left the next morning for Zadar.



In keeping with the bizarre transportation schedules and bus routes which I have come to associate with Croatia, the only way to get 120 km south to Zadar was to first go 60 km north, and to leave at 7:00am. Ugh. I left Rab on the 7am bus and was in Senj, Croatia by 8:30am. I sat at an outdoor café for a couple hours eating a Croatian cottage cheese pastry and coffee before catching my next bus at 10:30am which would take another three hours to get to Zadar (retracing my path south again). I loaded my bag into the hold and then boarded the bus, found an empty couple of seats and settled in. An old Croatian woman boarded the bus and started talking to me in fast bursts of Croatian which I was finally able to interrupt with, “I’m sorry, I only speak English.” She said a couple more sentences then shrugged and sat down in the seat in front of me. Her friend then boarded, there was an intense discussion between the two of them in front of me, and then the friend started babbling / yelling at me in Croatian, pointing to my seat and then to the seat numbers above and then to the seat she was sitting in. I said again, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” and she just kept right on going. It became very clear that they thought I was in their seats (which was interesting since there were no seat assignments, no luggage, purse, or even magazine there to hold the spots, and plenty of other empty seats) and realizing that this was an argument I was not going to understand let alone win, I grabbed my things and we switched. I rolled my eyes as I took their seats and they took the pair that I had been sitting in. All I can figure out is they had been sitting in those seats for the previous portion of the trip and wanted to sit in the exact same seats for the rest of the way. Thankfully, my switching with them seemed to bring harmony back to their world and the frantic Croatian ranting stopped. They were happy until I leaned my seat back into them and tried to nap part of the way…I hate to say this but you asked for it when you made me move in front of you, lady. Sorry!

I arrived in Zadar in the early afternoon to find even more scorching heat and my first task was to lug my things a couple kilometers into the old town where I was staying. Zadar is an “up and coming” Croatian hot spot, mostly because of its beautiful old town, proximity to more modern cities and nice beaches, and its vibrant night life. The old town here is especially tiny and as I looked for my “hotel” for the night, I felt like I was going down hallways instead of streets. I missed my street the first time I walked by as it looked like a tiny back alleyway. A couple “streets” later I realized that everything in this little city was a back alleyway. I dumped off my things, was ecstatic to find a fan in my room (I’ve learned to take what I can get and smile about it!), and headed out to check out Zadar.

Zadar is also a beautiful old Venetian town of marble streets, gorgeous stone architecture, and lovely bell towers, churches, and towering clocks. It is also famous for its one of a kind Sea Organ which is literally an organ which has been built into the promenade on the water. There are different lengths of pipes built into the promenade which fill up to different levels as the water ebbs and flows beneath them and then make beautiful, almost hypnotic music as the wind blows over the top of the pipes. I had heard about the organ and was walking along the promenade looking for it, thinking it would be some ornately decorated instrument built into the side of the walkway with tourists surrounding it. It took me a few minutes to realize that the reason I could hear it but not see it was because I was literally standing over top of some of the organ pipes (holes in the promenade). I camped out near the organ for a couple hours and jumped off the cement promenade into the Adriatic with the locals for a while before heading back within the city walls.

Zadar was also great and, again, much less touristy than I had expected. There were certainly tourists and vacationers around but not in overwhelming numbers. It also helps that there are very few places to stay within the city walls so while the old town is bustling at night, most of the tourists have to go to one of the neighboring cities to sleep. I had another great night of good Italian food (this coast was under Venetian rule for hundreds of years after all!), loaded up on some snacks for the next day (I tried to buy a handful of apricots from an old Croatian man at the street market and had a lost in translation moment and ended up with the whole tub – oops!), and rounded out the night with my new staple food group of sladoded.



I woke up the next morning for a day trip to Plitvička National Park and, as there was only one outgoing bus for the day at 9am, hurried to get to the bus station early that morning but got a little sidetracked (what else is new?) and got there around 8:40am. I wanted to be sure I got a seat on the outgoing bus but, even more important, that I got a return ticket for that evening as again there was only one option and I didn’t want to get stranded at Plitvička if I could help it. There were three windows with three women manning (womanning?) them with a cluster of confused tourists standing in a blob in front of them. Seriously, has no one in this country ever heard of a line? Getting used to the European push your way through to the front mentality, I elbowed my way through to one of the desks. The Croatian woman behind the glass took her sweet time acknowledging me at which point I blurted out (thinking they might be sold out already), “I’d like a return ticket to Plitvička, please!” She slowly looked up at me and scowled, “You want ticket to Plitvička?” “Yes, a return ticket, please.” She shook her head, “No return ticket here. You must buy on the bus.” Um, ok, but that seems a little risky given there is only one bus per day and that it could be full from Zagreb before it even reaches Plitvička. I clarified, “I can’t buy a return ticket here? I can only buy it on the bus?” She nodded. “Ok, then I’d like a one-way ticket to Plitvička.” She pointed to another woman at another of the three desks. “Tickets there. No tickets here.” Are you kidding me? I had happened to go to the “information” desk instead of the “tickets” desk, between which there was absolutely no distinction, and she refused to sell me a ticket. Ugh. I said a sarcastic, “Thanks.” as I made my way into one of the other desks.

I had the same conversation at the next desk just to verify that I really could not buy a return ticket and the woman there confirmed that I could only buy it from the driver when I boarded the bus. I said, “But what if there are no seats?” She shrugged and said, “You must buy from bus driver.” Great, thanks so much for your help. Guess I’m chancing it! I got my ticket to Plitvička, boarded the bus, and camped out for the next two and half hours. (Of course, I was now going 90km back north to get to the park – the bus routes in Croatia really are baffling!).

We arrived at the park at 11:30am and the bus back to Zadar was at 5pm. I wanted to make the most of the short time I had in the park so I practically ran to the ticket office. I bought my ticket and there was a kid there, maybe 18 years old, helping everyone decide what route to do that day. They had multiple routes up on a board ranging from basically a day of bus and ferry rides (i.e. little to no walking) around the park to the “intense” route K which was a full tour on foot. Of course I didn’t look at anything else but the “intense” route and started asking the boy about it, “How many kilometers is route K?” He replied, “I would recommend that you do route C if you only have five hours. It is a very pleasant tour and you begin with a bus ride around the northern part of the park…” I interrupted, “I’d like to do route K. How long is it?” He replied, “Route K is very aggressive and takes from 6-8 hours. You need the whole day to do it and you only have five hours before bus. I would recommend route C if this is your first time in the park…” I repeated, “How long is route K?” The woman selling tickets next to us jumped in, “It is very long. It is 23 kilometers. Route C is much better; it is only 8 kilometers of walking.” I looked at her and blinked. You expect me to do only five miles in five hours?! I’ll finish that in one hour and then what am I going to do?! I repeated myself again a bit more forcefully, “I’m going to do route K. Does it start down here?” I pointed down the path. The boy responded with, “To begin route C, you should wait here in the parking lot for the bus…” Good grief, this kid was driving me nuts! We were having completely separate conversations and this was going nowhere. I started walking away before he was finished saying a quick, “Thank you!” as I went the opposite way he was pointing and went to find route K myself.

The park was extraordinarily well marked and it wasn’t difficult to find the path for route K. I started off on a trail around one of the lakes and was thinking 23 kilometers of flat lakeside walking is nothing. Those people are loco! The path was pleasantly shaded by the trees and the water was so perfectly, sparkling blue it was practically incandescent. It was also so clear that you could see every twig, the scales on every fish, every pebble in the bottom – it was really pretty amazing and I got a little camera happy. I was amazed at how many pictures I had at the end of the day of water!

I wasn’t worried about the time or distance but knew that I’d have to keep moving at a decent pace to get back in time for the bus so was stopping to take pictures and enjoy the park but was moving at a pretty good clip. My flat lakeside walk turned out to have quite some major changes in elevation along the way…I probably should have looked at the map a bit more closely before I started to notice the major waterfalls which route K took you all the way up to while the other routes just stayed at the bottom. I was happy though that I had picked the route I did, it was definitely the best for the viewpoints and I’m always happier when I’m seeing beautiful things and getting in a workout at the same time (very efficient!). Choosing the hardest routes also has the added and very important benefit of keeping most of the other people away which I greatly appreciate. Nothing stresses me out more than the madness of hoards of tourists!

Unfortunately, route K merged with some of the easier routes for a few kilometers and I was back in the thick of things with every other tourist in Croatia and his grandmother and child and wife and…you get the picture. I was in an absolutely stunning and unique national park and every time I tried to snap a picture some Croatian man would send his wife or daughter to stand exactly in the middle of my picture. The other people on the hiking paths were slow, loud, and would stop without warning in the middle of the path, blocking everyone else from passing (usually so that no one stepped into the middle of their precious pictures). Every time I thought I found a beautiful, serene place to break a tour group of Germans or a Croatian family would come barging in, shattering my tranquility with their loud voices and loud feet. It was driving me crazy.

I got to one of the main gathering areas with food, bathrooms, ice cream, ferry connections, and suddenly got overwhelmed with all of the people and languages and pushing from every which direction. Some little kid slimed me with his ice cream on my leg at the same time an old woman stopped cold in front of me and wouldn’t move to the side just as a man ran into me from behind and nearly knocked me over, all the while the cacophony of loud German, Croatian, Slovenian, Italian conversations was drowning me in place. I was sick of being hot, of being bumped into, of hearing things I didn’t understand…basically, I was suddenly overwhelmed and sick of everything! I was about at the point of stomping in a circle with my fingers in my ears (tantrums apparently aren’t just for toddlers anymore!) when I finally broke free of the crowd. When I finally looked up a few minutes later I found myself standing smack dab in the middle of everything, as far away on average from every other person in the little park as I could possible be. There I was standing in the middle of a grassy field while all the other people were sitting at the surrounding lunch tables, licking their sladoded, staring at me, and wondering what in the world that girl was doing standing there in the middle of everything with that crazed look in her eyes?

I stood there until I figured out where I needed to go next (I wanted to be sure to minimize the likelihood of being pushed, slimed, bumped, etc, before I made a move anywhere) and made a beeline for my trail. Five minutes later I was back in the solitude of the park and on a more difficult hiking path which was keeping the riff raff (a.k.a. all the normal tourists) away. Thank goodness! That situation (or maybe just me) was about to get ugly!

I spent the rest of the afternoon making my way around the gorgeous park, being sure to always choose the highest and most difficult paths, and had a fantastic time. The last half of the trip was also the most impressive with hundreds of waterfalls, beautiful pools, crystalline streams, and stunningly blue lakes to explore and enjoy. This also meant that this is where most of the people were congregating but I had gotten a grip and was able to enjoy myself and make it through without “mistakenly” hip checking anybody into one of the lakes. I took the five minute ferry back across the lake to where I had started and arrived at 4:15pm. I looked for the kid who had told me I couldn’t do it on my way through the gates but he wasn’t there – bummer! I was ready to give him a wink and an “I told you so!” smile.

The bus from Zagreb was supposed to pass through at 5pm but the bus schedules are always a little suspect so I wanted to make sure I got back to the bus stop a bit early, also to make sure I was one of the first in line in case it ended up being crowded. I arrived at the bus stop at 4:30pm and went to check the posted bus information. Of course, the only information posted was when the bus came through in the morning, not the evening bus I needed to catch. There were probably another eight or so people already waiting and they were all in the same boat as me…first off hoping that the bus actually showed up and then praying that there would still be room. I had just sat down on the grass for what I expected to be a long wait and potentially a fight to get on the bus when a mini-van pulled up. A couple and their daughter had ordered a taxi to take them back to Zadar and the rest of us just watched jealously as they got in the vehicle. The driver then started wandering around and approached one of the couples waiting for the bus. He asked, “Where do you go? Zadar?” They looked at him a bit confused and ignored him. I recognized what this was – a possible ride home – and jumped up. “Are you going to Zadar?” I asked. He said, “Yes, Yes. Zadar.” “How much to ride to Zadar?” “100 kuna.” (About $20.) The bus was already 120 kuna so this was even a deal. I said, “Great! Do I pay now?!” The others waiting for the bus watched this and then jumped in too. We filled up that guy’s mini-van in about three minutes and were happily on our way back to Zadar in five.

Not only was I able to catch a ride five minutes after showing up for the bus but it was cheaper, faster (no bus stops so got back in 90 minutes instead of the 2.5hr bus trip), and as the lone single traveler I got to sit up front with the driver which was huge for me not getting motion sick. (The bus rides were pretty tough for me!) It was definitely the icing on the cake of a great day. The bus driver was a very cute little old Croatian man missing some teeth (endearing in a Croatian mini-van driver but not usually in anyone else!) and attempted to speak to me in broken English for most of the ride. I pulled out a pear I had stashed in my bag and he almost yelled at me, “Bon appetite!!!” and then gave me a huge, proud smile. I laughed. Later, when he was fiddling with the radio he changed stations and the volume suddenly went to max which blasted the rest of the van awake with a jolt. He hurriedly turned it down and said, “Sorry, sorry, sorry. Radio ka-put! Radio KAPUT! KAPUT!” I was cracking up. How did “kaput” end up being one of twenty English words this guy knows?



I spent a great evening in Zadar at an outdoor café eating Italian food, drinking wine, and writing about Slovenia (these blogs have to get written at some point!). I was heading to Split the next day and was really looking forward to finally staying at a nice hotel (those hotel points from consulting do come in handy!) where I was positive there would be air conditioning, a good bar, and a great, private beach…basically some relief from the heat and the tourists! After my meltdown in Plitvička, I figured I might need to take a bit of a break for a day before I made a fool of myself or hurt somebody!

(FYI - there are three photo albums this time, all on the blog. Hope you like them!)

Happy days in Slovenia

After a week of little sleep due to an atypically hot (around 90°F) Helsinki July combined with a floor four apartment without air conditioning or decent ventilation (miserable!), in addition to staying out until 3am two nights before I left for my trip singing karaoke and drinking gin and tonics at Pataässä, the Helsinki karaoke bar (which was a blast, by the way – thanks for coming to visit, Christian!), and then getting 2.5 hours of sleep the night before I left due to the continuing, smothering heat and a 5:30am wakeup to catch my first flight, my arrival in Slovenia can be (sadly) described as just plain exhausted if it was anything. I flew into Ljubljana (loob-lee-yah-nah), Slovenia last Thursday and my first destination was Lake Bled, Slovenia’s very famous, picture-perfect lake containing the country’s only island. The Ljubljana airport lies north of the capital (Ljubljana) and south of the town of Bled but my guide book and all the information I could find online indicated that I would have to backtrack to Ljubljana by bus before connecting to Bled. Ugh.

Despite the fact that I arrived deliriously tired, my first order of business was to figure out how to get to Bled without taking the hour ride back to Ljubljana, waiting another hour or so for a connection, and then taking another 1.5 hour bus back north to Bled. I walked out the airport arrivals to find that the Ljubljana airport is even smaller than the one in Idaho Falls! There were multiple mini-buses parked directly outside and they all had signs in their windows, “to Ljubljana.” Again, I refused to believe that this was really the only option so started talking to the drivers. I approached the first mini-bus and the 23-ish looking driver with a faux-hawk and he asked if I needed a ride. I said, “Yes, but I am going to Bled. Can I get a ride to Bled or do I have to go to Ljubljana first?” He said, “Yes, Ljubljana.” I said, “I have to go to Ljubljana?” He said, “Yes, Ljubljana.” Well, this was either going nowhere fast or I really did need to go to Ljubljana.

I said, “When do you leave?” He said, “I don’t know…maybe in one hour?” Maybe in one hour? You don’t know? What kind of European bus driver are you anyway?! He pointed to the café outside the airport, “That is the driver. I will ask him.” AAAHHH. OK. Your buddy outsourced the American-girl-needs-a-ride-to-Bled negotiations and you really have nothing to do with this operation, am I right? Yep. I was right. So he asked his driver friend and translated the response for me; the bus would leave at 1:30pm (it was noon). Ok, well at least I now had a departure time to work with!

I still wasn’t happy with the fact that I would have to go all the way to Ljubljana before going to Bled so I decided to shop around. I started walking down the line of mini-buses talking to any driver who happened to be standing by his vehicle (most were at the café – nothing is posted at the airport but these guys sure don’t seem too worried about getting customers!). Ljubljana. Ljubljana. Ljubljana. This wasn’t looking good. Then I caught the eye of one more driver who said, “Are you going to Ljubljana? Do you need a ride?” I said, “I am going to Bled. Do I have to go to Ljubljana to connect?” He looked at me and said, “You go to Bled?” I nodded. “Why you go to Ljubljana? Just go straight to Bled!” Um, yes, please! He continued, “I take you straight to Bled.” “Really? Direct to Bled? How much?” “Thirteen euros.” Done and done! It was going to cost me over six to get back to Ljubljana plus then the more expensive ticket from Ljubljana to Bled. Saving time and money – perfect!

He told me, “I leave at 3:30pm.” Ugh. I didn’t really want to sit outside the airport in the sweltering heat for the next 3 hours. I clarified, “3:30pm? In three hours?” “Yes. 3:30pm leave here.” I said “Thirteen euros? One, three?” I have been burned before and was thinking this apparently unknown direct transfer to Bled might be a taxi scam for thirty euros or something (which I may have actually been willing to pay at that point given the heat and exhaustion). He said, “Yes, thirteen. Come, come. I show you.” He dragged me over to his car and gave me a card with the printed price, thirteen euros, and the departure times listed. “See, next leave at 3:30pm.” He pointed to 14:30 on the card. “Ah!” I said, “2:30pm.” He replied, “Yes, 3:30pm.” and again pointed to the 14:30 time. “This says 2:30pm, not 3:30pm.” I continued more as clarification for myself than as a correction to him. “Yes, yes. Three-thirty.” My takeaway was to be ready to go at 2:30pm but be prepared to wait until 3:30pm.

He took my luggage, told me that he would not be the driver but would pass on the message, and told me that someone would find me when it was time to go. Not the most comforting setup given all the confusion with the departure times and now we were adding a different Slovenian driver to the mix and I was forfeiting my bag which I had to trust would get properly transferred to the new driver’s vehicle when the time came. I decided to go with the flow just because I was too tired to do anything else, hoped things would work out as promised, and promptly parked myself on a bench in the shade.

Turns out that I didn’t need to be worried – the new driver approached me thirty minutes later and told me that he had my bag and we’d be leaving at 2:30pm. Yes! No miscommunication or misunderstanding (for once)! By the time we got around to leaving which was closer to 3pm, I had sweated through my dress and was ecstatic about the prospect of an air-conditioned car ride. I was not built for that kind of heat! Thirty minutes later I arrived in Bled…the good news was that my hotel had air conditioning; the bad news was that it was only on the ground floor and I was four flights up. My room was sweltering which may have actually been a good thing that day because had it been cool I would have been tempted to take a nap. I figured that if I was going to be hot and miserable then I may has well be hot and miserable while checking out the area and looking at pretty things. I set out to walk around the lake.

Lake Bled is teeny tiny – only 6km around – and is truly gorgeous and a pristine blue. It’s also a perfect swimming temperature at 23°C (comes out that temperature from the source) and is a Slovenian and Austrian weekend holiday favorite. I walked in the shade of the surrounding forest and every 20 meters or so I got an even better view of the picturesque little island sitting smack dab in the middle of the lake. On the island is a very pretty church and then nearby, perched atop a rocky cliff, sits an old castle overlooking the lake and the island. Talk about a storybook setting! This is the place you see drawn on the covers of children’s books and can’t imagine really exists!

Very near Bled is Triglav National Park which is home to Slovenia’s Julian Alps. As this was one of the primary reasons I decided to come to Slovenia I wanted to make sure I was able to spend some time here and chose another famous lake, Bohinj Jezero (Bohinj Lake), as my destination for the next day and from which I knew I could do some great hikes. After another fitful night of too-hot semi-sleep, I set off for Bohinj the next morning on the bus and discovered one of my favorite things about Slovenia…the air conditioning on their public transportation! After more than a week of heat-induced discomfort and sleep deprivation I had finally found my heaven sitting under the A/C vents blasting on my face. I promptly crashed and woke up (very luckily) five minutes from my stop. Newly refreshed, I hopped off the bus and began the day of exploration. (As an aside, I did briefly reconsider the plans for the day thinking I might be just as happy to sit on the bus and ride around all day under that lovely vent!)

Mt. Triglav, the highest peak in Slovenia at 2,864 m (9,396 ft), is a right of passage for Slovenians and it is said that you are not truly Slovenian until you have summited Mt. Triglav. At 2,864 m, it is a significant climb which takes a couple days and requires a significant amount of equipment in order to handle the final ascent which involves scaling rocks with snow and potentially ice. I only brought a tiny Euro-sized carry-on bag with me for the 17 day trip and didn’t have room for my hiking gear, and also didn’t feel like doing a guided group hike (this mountain is too high and too advanced to safely do alone as a novice!), so had to forego the Mt. Triglav climb for a smaller peak nearby called Mt. Vogel.

Vogel is considerably smaller than Triglav at 1,922 m (6,306 ft) and while I had initially planned to hike from the lake level to the top and back in one day, I opted at the last minute to take the funicular up first, do a shorter hike, and then hike out to a famous waterfall later that day. All I can say is thank goodness I opted for the shorter hike of Vogel! As the funicular took off and my ears began popping on the way up I realized just how high this peak actually was, and that starting the hike around noon (after bus trip from Bled and a ~6km hike to the funicular) probably wouldn’t have been a good idea. I asked at the funicular ticket office if the hiking paths on the mountain were well-marked and the woman looked at me over her glasses and just nodded. “So, I can hike to the top of Vogel by myself and it is fine?” She dropped her head again, peered over at me again, and just said, “Yes.” Ok, then!

I hopped off the lift and set out. There were signs all over the place but, as Vogel is a popular ski mountain in the winter, they were all for ski runs and not exactly the hiking paths which were indicated on the mountain map. I set out anyway figuring that I would find my way; I always do. (!) I walked along what I expect is a cat track in the winter and found a marked hiking trail to Vogel and took off. Things were actually working out this time! I hiked in the forest for about 45 minutes and the path was extremely well-marked with a red dot outlined in white painted on a rock or a tree about every 20m or so. What was concerning though was that the path was continually tracking down the mountain and I was hoping to do an ascent, not a descent, of Vogel. I didn’t want to pay the $10 for a map of the mountain for one day hike so I was winging it and had been trusting that the path would be well marked (and intuitive!).

I had been hiking for about an hour when the forest path ran into a dirt road and at that point I was very confused. The road continued down and I wanted to go up (and besides being worried about going the wrong way I was going to be highly annoyed if I was on the right path but had to make up all the elevation that I was losing!). Was I on the right path? If I was on the right path was I going the right direction? I stopped and tried to figure out from my very basic map and Google maps where I should be going – using my blackberry to try to translate the signs posted in Slovenian. (No service up there so SOL on the translation and Google maps help!) A Danish couple walking the same direction passed by and I asked them if they were going to Vogel. They said yes and I said that was too but I was worried that the path was just going down, down, down. The woman said, “The map says that the path descends for quite a while before you go up again so you are ok.” Those map things are pretty useful, aren’t they? Maybe I should consider actually using one next time…

With renewed confidence I took off again and figured that if I got confused further on that I could just wait for the smart Danes with a map to catch up. The path at this point became very clear and there were not only the characteristic bullseye markers on the trees but also the name “Vogel” written above them with an arrow pointing me in the right direction. They must have been thinking of people like me when they marked this trail (needing extremely clear directions and lots of confirmation)! The only bad thing about the trail was that while it was well and almost gratuitously marked along the straight, clear portions (hard to get side-tracked when there is a dirt path carved out of a forest), it was vaguely or not at all marked at the key decision-making points (i.e. every single fork in the trail). I had passed probably twenty or so “Vogel” arrows along the way only to get quite near the top and encounter multiple forks which were completely unmarked. How does that make any sense? If you’re going to go with the 80/20 rule with respect to marking the trail I’d suggest including all the forks in the 80 as a trade for leaving some of the straight bits unmarked. Good grief!

The path got very steep very fast and mostly required climbing and scrambling over rocks. I was moving quickly and had made it quite near to the top in just an hour. It was still warm much but cooler at that elevation (Hallelujah!) and as I got closer it got even cooler and much more windy. The path finally ended up on top of a rocky bridge between two peaks and I was literally standing between an expanse of Julian Alps on both my right and on my left. It was pretty amazing but was also pretty scary – very high and very windy on a narrow rock bridge! I kept on though and continued climbing but had a moment of height-induced panic high on the last climb during which my legs started shaking uncontrollably and I had stop and camp out in a crevice for 20 minutes to breathe and get my act together. I thought I was going to have to turn around without reaching the top but after sitting for a while I was able to keep going. It turns out that I was only about 20m from the top and after I turned the corner which had stumped me before, I had only a few easy steps to the summit.

Victory! I was so happy to have made it after that last hiccup that I even hung out for a while and took lots of pictures. I was suddenly over my fear (at least for the time being)! The only frustrating thing is that I’m not quite sure which peak I summited given all the confusion and lack of trail markings on the last part of the ascent. I do know that it was either Vogel or Sija (tomato, to-mah-to). Well…maybe “know” is too strong a word…

The couple behind me stopped about 100m down the mountain. The woman had looked up the narrow, rocky climb and had thought better of it (probably smart). I felt pretty good about the fact that I had made it and was especially proud when they started taking pictures of me up at the top. If only they knew how scared I was on the way up! Shaking legs are never a good thing when on the edge of a rock face! I headed back down and, as I had made the climb in about half the time of what was indicated, I had extra time to do some more exploring and still make it to the bottom in time to walk out to the waterfall. I decided I would take a different path back just to change things up a bit. I had seen another trail along the mountain side which led back in the right direction so when I came to the fork in the road, I took it.

It was a really beautiful day and the Julian Alps were not only gorgeous (the star of the show, Mt. Triglav, was extremely impressive in all its rocky glory) but also a bit overwhelming. There were lovely, rocky peaks in every direction within sight and I was thoroughly enjoying the hike back, at least now that I was off the scary part and on an adrenaline high. This “new way home” was still quite high up but was relatively flat. There were a couple hikers up in front of me and then two German couples a bit behind so I was in good company. We all trekked around the side of one of the peaks and then had to cross over and, I assumed, descend. (I had climbed around 1,300 ft so needed to get down at some point). I passed another couple of hikers going the opposite direction when I got to the top of the pass and was thinking that this was a good sign – they had to come from somewhere (hopefully, a marked trail)! They did, in fact, come from somewhere…the same somewhere from which I had come. They got sucked into the same path that I did which led through a lot of overgrown bushes and then to a dead end in bushes so thick there was no way to get through without a scythe. I turned around to backtrack and get back to the fork where I’d made the wrong turn.

I got back on the right path (as did the Germans who saw my mistake and followed me after I corrected) and kept on trucking. Finally, I was descending and I knew that I was going in the right direction, I could actually see the funicular building way up ahead, so was feeling confident despite having no idea what trail I was on. We all kept hoofing it along the clear if not marked trail until we got to the foot of what is a ski slope in winter time. I had seen the funicular building up at the top of this slope so, unfortunately, we all had to go up again. I didn’t quite understand how we’d only gone down what seemed to be very little and had to go up again what seemed to be a lot but who knows, I have certainly gotten twisted around before!

I had stopped to take some pictures a while back so the German party was now in front of me and had started climbing the slope. It was really rather steep and, worse, was covered in little rocks and pebbles (I assume to keep the plants at bay so it can be used as a ski slope with little to no maintenance). Little rocks and pebbles on a steep slope are bad news if you’re trying to walk up that slope. I had more trouble getting up this ski slope than I did on the much more intensive and strenuous climbs to the peak early that day. I only brought my sneakers with me (my hiking boots would have taken a quarter of the space in my bag!) and they aren’t the best to hike with anyway but they were terrible to hike with on those rocks. I was slipping and sliding for most of the climb which made it a lot of work. I probably only got 60% of every step I placed after losing 40% to the slide. I finally got to the top of the slope, looked out across the mountain and saw the funicular building WAY further down and still a ways away. What the hell had we just climbed to? I had about another 50m or so up and so went the rest of the way to find a ski lift and a herd of sheep. I thought, no, really, you have got to be kidding me! We had all made the same mistake and when the other hikers caught up to me we all looked at each other and shrugged. Now what? We could hike down to the real funicular but I now didn’t have time for that if I wanted to see the waterfall. The ski lift was operating…couldn’t the guy just let us ride down?

Ironically, right as I had that thought the ski lift came to an abrupt halt and the lift operator hopped out of his “office,” locked the door, looked over at those of us hanging around, and sliced is hand horizontally through the air. I knew what that meant - finito! No mas! An Italian couple in front of me had apparently spoken to him a few minutes earlier and he had told them that they could ride down with him. I didn’t know this at the time but when he jumped in his truck and they jumped in the bed in the back (covered with a tarp like the old military trucks from the movies), I yelled at him and pointed to the truck, “Can I come too?” He nodded yes and I hopped in just in time to go barreling down the ski slope in his beater truck.

The Italian couple and I bounced around in the back – at one point the woman shrieked and grabbed my arm when she thought I was going to fly backwards – and I can tell you that that ride was the bumpiest, sliding-est, wheel-spinning-est ride I have ever been on. (Small rocks and pebbles covering a steep slope also turns out to be bad news for both trucks.) We stopped once at another lift to pick up the driver’s hippie buddy (both looked like Slovenian hippies – if there is such a thing – to me) and the five of us continued to bounce and slide down the mountain, the hippies in the front and the dumb hikers holding on for dear life in the back. Besides the fact that I get car sick if I just look at a winding road, and then we were sucking diesel fumes in the back of the truck which made it worse, that five minute ride was five minutes too long! We hopped out quickly and before we could even say thanks the driver was already off again, likely happy to be rid of his cargo!

I was thankful that the ride had been short-lived and even more so that it had saved me a lot of time. I grabbed a Slovenian cheese strudel for lunch at the “warming hut” (I have had some bizarre meals over the past week – when it comes to eat what they have or don’t eat, I eat what they have!), and caught the funicular back down the mountain. I escaped the jam-packed funicular and set out for the next item on the agenda, Slap Savica. “Slap” is the Slovenian word for “waterfall” (although I much prefer to think of the English definition just because it cracks me up thinking of a tourist site called “slap” anything – I am obviously easily entertained) and this waterfall is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Slovenia. It was only an hour hike from where I had come down from Vogel so I took off.

Because of the confusion at the top of Vogel, I had less time than I had hoped for the waterfall visit and only had two hours to do what was expected to take three at a minimum. Of course, in true Andrea-form, I had already discounted the time estimates by half thinking I would do it much faster anyway (although it is always nice to have some buffer!). I figured it would be tight but I would be fine. I started along the trail and was moving fast – I didn’t have time to dilly dally this time and it was do or die. I wasn’t coming all the way back out to Bohinj again the next day for this waterfall! The trail was very wide, well maintained, and well marked given that Savica is such a tourist destination. I moved along quickly and then, of course, as I got closer there were forks in the trail which were not marked at all. Is this some kind of trail marking dude’s idea of fun?! I did not have time for any ambiguity here!

It slowed me down a bit as this time I didn’t have time to go down a wrong path but I ended up making the right decisions and confirmed with a couple hikers along the way. I reached the entrance to Savica and hit a roadblock – I was stuck behind a group of ten or so buying tickets. I shuffled around impatiently, bought my ticket, and practically ran up the 500 stairs to the waterfall. (I don’t think I made any friends on that trip – the old Italians with walking poles were not impressed with my athletic ability as I ran past and, unfortunately, usually scared them. Sorry!) I got to the falls and was pretty aggressive about getting in there to take pictures. There was a single wooden platform out to the waterfall with about ten teenagers on it talking and just generally screwing around. I typically wait patiently for people to take their pictures and take great care not to inadvertently step into the frame. Quite often I even offer to take the pictures for them…but not that day! I wove my way through them to the very front, climbed halfway up the gate at the end, and propped myself up in the corner between the fence and the rock wall so that I could get the pictures I wanted. I spent a few more minutes there checking out the views and trying to get better angles and then figured I better skedaddle. I had 45 minutes to make the bus home.

I hustled down the steps and back out to the hiking path. The trail marker said it was one hour by foot back to town. I looked at my watch…it was 6:13pm and my bus left at 6:40pm. I had 27 minutes. I wasn’t even sure if there was another bus that night so it was pretty important that I make this one unless I wanted to pay what was sure to be an exorbitant taxi charge back to Bled. I took off and knew the path this time so didn’t have to stop and wonder and ponder which direction to go. I passed a group of guys picnicking by the side of the trail and they yelled out to me…I waved and just kept moving. I was in a full on speed walk but wasn’t running so I’m sure I looked like some sort of fruitcake. But, as you understand by now, there was no time for caring about what people thought of me. I had to make that bus!

I kept checking my watch. I knew I was close but didn’t know just how close. Was there even a chance I would make it or should I just admit defeat now? I picked up the pace a bit and just kept going. 11 minutes. 8 minutes. At what point do I break out into a sprint? 5 minutes…I saw the bus in the distance! I ran the last quarter mile and burst onto the bus, almost teetering on top of the driver when I finally stopped myself. The driver didn’t even react and just looked up slowly. I started sputtering about a ticket to Bled, paid the man, and walked back to find a seat. I sat down and looked at the time posted on the bus above the driver: 5:37pm. I smiled and was proud. Three minutes to spare, final disaster averted, and all items for the day checked off!

The next day I took off on foot for Vintgar Gorge, a beautiful stretch of the Radovna River alongside and over which a 1.6km wooden walkway was built so you can see every angle of the gorgeous gorge. There was a bus to Vintgar but it was only 4-5km from Bled so I figured that I would just walk it and check out some of the countryside. I took off and decided to take a small sidetrack to avoid one of the busy roads. (I do realize that me saying that I took a “sidetrack” has an ominous sound to it given my many past experiences but you really don’t need to worry this time – this is not another “Andrea gets lost again” story!) It took me past a really lovely Slovenian graveyard, surrounded by a rock wall and towered over by pretty arches and Russian-looking cupolas. I then turned onto a country road which cut through what looked to be small farm properties. I had just stopped to take a picture of a small shrine I found out in the fields when a little man hopped out of a clunker car, which I had assumed to be parked and empty, sitting in a small ditch off the side of the road. The fact that I didn’t know he was there startled me to begin with but then he was talking a mile-a-minute in Slovenian and rushing toward me which was even more disconcerting. I was frozen in my tracks like a deer in headlights as he ran / quickly waddled over to me with his hands cupped and outstretched in front of him. He dropped two small green apples into my hands which I presume he had just pulled off of his trees. He was very proud and still jabbering a mile a minute. Somehow I think I heard him say that he spoke some English and German when he was younger but given that I don’t speak Slovenian, who knows?! I gave him a big smile and said thank you, and then attempted to say thank you in Slovenian. He gave me a big smile and ran / quickly waddled back to his car in the ditch. The car lurched forward and he was off. What a cutie!

I always try to learn how to say “thank you” in the local language because I feel like you get a lot of bang for your buck – you use it all the time and it is a great way to garner some grace with the locals. “Thank you” in Slovenian is “hvala” of which the first syllable “hva” seems impossible to an English speaker. I looked it up in my guidebook and the pronunciation key was hva-la. Thanks for nothing! I then asked the man at the hotel desk for the proper pronunciation and he made a very soft, practically imperceptible ha sound, almost like he was trying to fog up a mirror in front of him, and followed it with vah-lah. I tried and it came out just plain vah-lah, no sweet and soft ha sound beforehand. He laughed and said, “No!” and then repeated hvala with some extra oomph and practically hocked something up on me to make the “h” sound more prominent to my clearly untrained ears. I took a step back and said, “I think I’m going to have to work on that one on my own! Hah–vah…vah-lah…thank you!” I did try to practice on my own but first it came out hah-vah-lah, then vah-hah-lah, then hahv-la, at which point I thought, bag it. I will learn “hello” instead. “Hello” is “zdravo.” Wonderful. The pronunciation help for which was zdra-vo. Also wonderful and extraordinarily helpful. (The guy writing the pronunciation section for my guidebook is running a scam!) I figured I was only going to be in Slovenia for five days so maybe I could let this one local language “thank you” slip by… (Now as I sit writing this in Croatia I know that “hvala” is also the Croatian word for “thank you.” I’m not getting off so easy!)

I walked through a few more small towns and villages on the way to Vintgar and I was not disappointed when I finally made it there. The river is absolutely stunning and crystal clear and the wooden walkway winding its way over and back makes the walk even more beautiful and unique. The pictures really tell the story here but it was surely worth using the day to see.

At the end of the 1.6km walkway down the gorge, I picked up another hiking trail which took me through the forest and up a hill to a 13th century church called St. Catherine’s. I made it to Catherine’s to find a beautiful, centuries-old stone wall and some impressive, original frescoes. The amount of history in Europe is just staggering! You literally run into it everywhere! I continued on down through the neighboring town of Zasip and was really taken with what a blend of cultures and countries Slovenia seemed to be. Not shockingly, it has a very Mediterranean feel and all the same flowers and vegetation making it look a bit like Italy. Then there are the homes which are predominately Bavarian in style and are as such very Austrian-looking. The language seems close to Croatian and the food is a mix of Balkan and Middle Eastern (I was feeling a Turkish vibe very strongly on the food front…lots of kebabs and meat and vegetable “grills”.) The country is bordered by Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Croatia so it’s not difficult to understand the influences but what is always so surprising to me is how unique every country in Europe is but how they also seem to meld together on a continuum, particularly apparent at the borders.

I made my way through Zasip, taking pictures of all of the Bavarian homes and Italian gardens that I could along the way (probably made some enemies of the locals as I photographed them in their backyards!), and arrived back in Bled to load up on water for my next hike up to a supposedly gorgeous viewpoint for the entire lake. I had read that it was short and steep and that was a good description. I think I ascended 200m in about 40 minutes. I got to the top and it was definitely worth it. The views were amazing and I was finally able to get a picture of the entire (if tiny!) lake. I spent about an hour at the top before heading back down and jumping into the lake for a cool-off dip. The water was the perfect temperature and sparkling blue. I can definitely understand why this is the vacation destination of choice for so many Austrians and Slovenes! A swim in lovely Lake Bled was the perfect way to wrap up my stay there.

I woke up the next day and made my way to the bus stop for Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia and my next stop. I normally hate bus rides but I learned to appreciate them in Slovenia – again, the bus was pumping glorious air conditioning and I had a couple hours of relief from the heat. I got to Ljubljana and it was just as described…quaint and lovely, a “little Paris” as it has been called…in my view, almost a dollhouse-sized version of Paris. “Ljubljana” translates into something close to “beloved” or “favorite” and I personally believe that was the perfect name for the place. There is a beautiful old town on the Ljubljanica (loob–lee–yahn–eh–kah) River (shout out to Janica…are you sure your mom isn’t half Slovene to have come up with your name?) with beautiful pastel-colored buildings lining each side. Right in front of Prešernov trg, one of the main town squares in Ljubljana, there are three white-pillared bridges all right next to one another, a very pretty middle finger to practicality. One thing I miss from the United States is how everything (usually) just works and is efficient but one thing I think we fail to see while we focus on efficiency is the aesthetic and artistic aspect of everything. Three bridges side by side certainly don’t make a lot of sense but they really do make a pretty picture.

When I checked in to my hotel the front desk clerk asked for my passport and I was staring out the window when he surprised me by saying, “You have a birthday today! Yes?!” I never think they really look at your passport when making the obligatory photo copy in case you turn out to be a psycho so was surprised he had noticed. I smiled and said, “Yes. It is my birthday.” He gave me a huge smile, extended his hand, shook mine vigorously, and said, “Well, then I wish you a very happy day on your birthday! Have a happy, happy day!” I thought that was such a sweet birthday wish! I guess it is the same as “happy birthday” but from a stranger when you’re far from home and friends and family that funny little handshake and genuine well wish meant a lot. I became a fan of that guy right then and there.

So I spent my birthday eating Slovenian food (heavy on the chanterelles which are in season) including Slovenian wine (unfiltered and a little scary looking!) and exploring the city and the Ljubljana castle (Ljubljanski grad) perched on the top of the hill smack dab in the middle of everything. The castle was nearly destroyed along with many other buildings in Ljubljana by the earthquakes of 1511 and 1895 but has subsequently been restored (twice) to represent what it once was during its glory years. I took a short tour with a guide (appropriately, at least in my mind, named Igor – what better name for a Slovenian medieval castle tour guide than Igor?!) and he told us that the castle had served as a fortress, as a home for government officials, and even as a prison at various points in history. (It was later used to house those who had no home of their own – quite a different take on welfare!) He showed us the prison cells which were stone-walled rooms dug out below the surface (like a basement) but with only bars for ceilings. The inmates were held in these cells (I would call them cages) and left to the elements, whatever they may be. Given that I had been suffering in the heat for two weeks, and was sweltering in the sun at that point, it seemed like this was cruel and unusual punishment!

I had hoped to do a special solo birthday dinner that evening but had started checking into my buses to Rab Island, Croatia for a couple days later, which I was already a little worried about, and found that there was no way for me to get from Ljubljana to Rab Island in a single day. Great. I searched bus, ferry, and catamaran options and there was just no way to do it. I would need to make at least part of my way on Monday if I was to be in Rab town on Tuesday night. I was able to get the hotel to let me out of my second night there and then made a reservation for Monday in Rijeka, Croatia as the main connecting point to get to Rab. It was a bit frustrating but what can you do? I had been a bit worried about this being an issue but wasn’t able to confirm all the bus and ferry connections until I was actually in the country. Thankfully, the hotel took mercy on me on my “happy day” and let me cancel. Unfortunately, however, this meant I spent my birthday evening on the internet figuring out when and what I could do to get to Croatia on time. Oh well…such is life and travel!

I had one more day in Slovenia and had decided to go to the Škocjan Caves, about 60 km southwest of Ljubljana. Slovenia as various patches of limestone in the country and, as you likely know, limestone is porous so when a river hits a limestone surface it will literally “drain” through the rock. And when a river drains through limestone you get, you guessed it, an underground river. Škocjan is just one of the multiple caves created in Slovenia by these underground rivers carving out caverns under the surface and is not even the most famous of them. It is though, at least according to my sources, the most impressive of them all so I opted to go to Škocjan instead of its more famous big brother Postojna.

I had to take a two hour train to get to Divača and then the caves were inconveniently located another 5km away. I had read that there was (might be) a bus from the station to the caves but that there was definitely a walking path. Either way, I would be ok. I left on the 9am bus and arrived at Divača at 11am. I walked across the tracks with the rest of the train passengers to find multiple buses parked and ready to go. I checked all of them for signs to Škocjan but none seemed to be going there and two of the three were labeled by private tour companies. I shrugged and started looking around for the signs for the walking path.

The first section of the walking path was along a road and was well marked. I got to the intersection of this road and a Slovenian highway and the highway sign told me to turn right for the caves while the walking path sign pointed straight ahead. Thinking this was yet another lovely 80/20 Slovenian hiking path marking fiasco, I wavered between the two options for about 10 minutes and then decided to go with the walking sign. I walked and walked, mostly on the six inch shoulder of a very fast road, hoping that this would result in an actual hiking trail at some point. A couple kilometers later, I was pleasantly surprised to see another sign pointing me in the direction of a dirt road and into a forest. I walked along the path for an hour or so and finally came to a stair case to the right. I climbed the steps to find what looked like a home and a backyard with children’s toys. I turned around quickly and went back down to the trail. I definitely didn’t need to trespass on somebody’s backyard and have an angry Slovenian parent chasing me down the mountain!

I could hear waterfalls and knew that I was very close so just kept going down the trail and following my Google maps directions to Škocjan. I arrived in Škocjan village and began again to climb up (I had already climbed up and come back down a significant hill on the way). The views were spectacular and it was great to get off the beaten path a bit and see a little Slovenian village but I was under some time pressure…the Škocjan tour was an hour and a half, the train ride back to Ljubljana was another two hours, and then I had another train to catch that night to Rijeka, Croatia. It was nearing 12:30pm at this point and if I didn’t make the 1pm Škocjan tour, I was at risk of missing the last train to Rijeka.

Something didn’t seem right. I felt like I had turned and was now going in the wrong direction. I had a simple map in my guidebook and Google maps on my blackberry (but remember we’re in rural Slovenia so Google maps isn’t much help!). I started piecing together some landmarks and then translated one of the few sites on the Google map. I was close but had gone the wrong way to Škocjan town instead of Škocjan National Park (again, almost doesn’t count in GPS directions!). I turned around and headed back to the park, only a kilometer or so away. I arrived at 12:45pm in time to make the 1pm tour. Thank goodness!! The only thing worse than four hours roundtrip on a train is four hours roundtrip on a train to do and see nothing!

The caves were, in a word (or maybe two), absolutely spectacular. They don’t allow pictures or movies in the caves because it allows photosensitive algae to grow (not native) but believe me when I say this is one of the most unbelievable places you will ever see. It was like jumping into middle earth or to Mars or something. There were enormous caves, one was 90m x 40m x 60m if I remember correctly, with surreal looking stalactites and stalagmites hanging from the ceiling and “growing” from the ground some of which have been determined to be up to 300,000 years old. The place was really something out of a science fiction novel. I almost tripped multiple times because I was walking around staring at the ceiling and walls with my mouth hanging open. Then came the most incredible part…an absolutely gigantic cavern which literally had an underground river raging through it. We walked along a wooden pathway built into the cavern walls and could see stone steps carved into the opposite wall which were what the first explorers had used to get much deeper and much lower in the cave. I have never seen anything like this and it is even a bit difficult to describe! When I hear “cave” I think a small, underground, enclosed space. When I use “cave” here, you should envision another universe. We crossed over the river and were, I think, 90m above it at the time with I don’t even know how many meters of open space above us. If you are ever in Slovenia it is completely worth the trip to Divača for this! Nature has given us some spectacular things and this is just another example of something which is beyond human imagination!

Still with my jaw on the floor, I made it out of the cave at 2:30pm and took the “hard path” back to the information center. I had an hour or so to kill before the bus came to take us back to the bus station (I figured this one out this time!) so wandered around the property and came to…a backyard-looking area with a bunch of kids’ toys. The joke was definitely on me! I had actually come straight to the right place initially and had turned around thinking something looked wrong. Ironic…for once I actually take and stick to the legitimate trail and then I get to the destination and think it looks wrong so decide to leave. One of these days I’ll get it right…I hope!

I took the bus back to the station and made the train (by two minutes – even I think this is cutting it close but no one at the Škocjan Caves info center seemed to know when the buses came and if and when they connected to the trains – don’t people do this every single day?!) back to Ljubljana. I even made the train I had intended to make so was able to have dinner before heading back to the train station for my Rijeka connection – bonus!

I had decided to go to a Serbian restaurant on my last night in Slovenia. The food was good and the waiter was lovely. He even gave me a second glass of wine on the house which made for a quite happy walk back to my hotel to grab my bags and a very relaxed catching of the bus despite the fact that the driver had never seen an internet-purchased ticket. (I had spent almost an hour translating each web page to buy this ticket online the night before thinking it would make things easier and no one at the bus station seemed to know what to do with it.) The bus driver wouldn’t take my printed ticket purchase confirmation and marched me into the bus station at which point it took three of them to figure out what was going on. I was pretty happy after two glasses of wine so didn’t worry too much about it and let them figure it out – as long as the driver was with me I wasn’t worried!

They finally figured out how to process my ticket and as I boarded the bus I said a fond farewell to Slovenia. Beautiful country, lovely people, and happy days!

Now, on to Croatia!

Finnish summer

What a treat it was to get invited by my friend Laura to her parents’ and her in-laws’ summer cottages! It is officially, FINALLY Finnish summer here now and is actually hot – nearing 90°F over the past few days – which is not something I thought Finland was capable of being after the last 6 months. With Finnish summer comes Finnish summer holiday season during which almost every Finn goes to his or her family’s summer cottage to rejuvenate and, as most summer cottages are very basic and without running water or electricity, to truly get away from the rest of the modern world. And with 200,000 lakes (not including the “small” ones) and approximately 180,000 islands in a country of around 5.3 million people, there is a lake or an island for every 14 people! Needless to say, there are plenty of beautiful lakefront or oceanfront places for a summer house and the Finns have definitely taken advantage of this unique offering of their country.

I came back from the US on the afternoon of June 30, the weekend after the big Midsummer holiday weekend, and while walking to work the next morning was wondering if I was so jetlagged that I had mistakenly woken up in the middle of the night…the always bustling downtown Helsinki streets during my morning “commute” to the office were almost completely empty with just a few stragglers here and there. (And it is sunny for 19-20 hours a day so you really could be walking around in broad daylight in the middle of the night and not realize it. It can be very confusing when you come back from a time zone 9 hours away!) Where was everyone, I wondered? Duh. Everyone was on holiday and at their summer cottages! The winters are so long, hard, and dark that when summer comes the Finns take full advantage of it, usually in the form of around 4 weeks of holiday (basically the whole month of July). The country practically shuts down! I went to my favorite lunch restaurant the other day to find a piece of paper in the window stating the place was closed between June 28th and August 9th. I was bummed that they were closed but envious of this many week holiday mentality – why have we not learned to do this yet in the US?! I’m taking three weeks off starting next week and was thinking that I was really pushing it only to find out that I am taking less vacation than practically everyone else in the office…from between one to four weeks less. Wow. I need to learn something about this whole holiday thing while I’m here!

In the spirit of showing the sad little American with no summer cottage what a true Finnish summer is all about, Laura graciously took me to hers for a cultural indoctrination of smoke saunas, Mölkky, and Hulju. Laura, her husband Jeri, another friend Kaori, and I all took off last Friday for the 5 hour drive to eastern Finland, a bit past the city of Kuopio. It’s only about 250 miles (400 km) but takes a good 5+ hours because the speed limits are rather conservative and the people here follow them nearly to the number. (In contrast, I have many memories of driving with my dad on the interstate in Montana with no speed limit and him getting $5 “wasting of resources” tickets when he pushed it too far.) Speeding over 10% above the speed limit in Finland warrants a speeding ticket with a fine commensurate to one’s salary and there are many well-known (true) stories of Finnish executives getting fines of thousands or even millions of Euros for one speeding ticket. One story I read from 2002 resulted in a speeding ticket for 116,000 euros (about $104,000 at the time) – the equivalent of 14 days of the rule breaker’s earnings the previous year – for the equivalent of speeding 16 mph over the speed limit. Yikes! And I thought my $200 ticket in west Texas for the same 16 mph over was bad! (In this particular case, the man appealed the case based upon the fact that he had a much lower income the next year. A different ticket which was issued for around $165,000 was reduced to about $9,000 after the speeder restated his earnings so there was some precedence set for the benefits of “re-filing!” Probably the only time you’re hoping you make less, a lot less, than the previous year.) The record for the highest speeding ticket fine paid was in 2002 by a 27 year old heir to a northern European meatpacking business. This man had made nearly $12 million dollars the previous year so was fined almost $200,000 for driving 50 mph in a 25 mph zone. Don’t mess with Texas? Don’t mess with Finland! At any rate, it took us quite a long time to go 250 miles but there was no way that I was going to be the one to suggest we drive faster!

We got to Laura’s parents’ summer cottage late that evening and I began to understand what this whole summer cottage obsession was about – this place was absolutely beautiful and so amazingly peaceful and quiet. If you hadn’t been able to see another summer house across the way on the lake you’d think you had the entire country to yourself. It was still sunny and gorgeous as Laura cooked chicken, vegetables, and pineapple on the grill which we then complemented with fresh homemade bread, salad, and wine. It was a feast! Naturally, we had to strategize about how and when we would do dessert (a delicious rhubarb and pear tart with fresh whipped cream) around going to sauna and we decided to do dessert before sauna so we wouldn’t be rushed. (Priorities!)

While I have been in multiple saunas here over the past 6 months, I had not yet been in a traditional smoke sauna so this was to be a new experience. Most saunas are electric saunas but the traditional Finnish sauna is a smoke sauna in which there is a fireplace without a chimney but just a small hole in the ceiling instead. This type of sauna usually houses an open rock stove and as the burning wood heats the stones (which may take many hours and perhaps even up to a day) the resulting smoke circles and blackens the room with soot before escaping out the small vent in the ceiling. Any soot on the floor or benches is cleaned off before you then use the sauna but the ceiling remains characteristically black.

Once the sauna has been properly heated, the smoke is fully released out of the ceiling vent, you hang your clothes and towels on the hooks outside the door, grab your beer or cider, and get ready to sweat. These things are typically heated to around 170-230°F so this is no laughing matter! The first thing you do when you get in is to douse yourself in water from the water bucket just inside the door and then you find a place to park and you just sit there and relax…and talk…sometimes drink…and, for me, always overheat. After 15 minutes or even fewer if you just can’t stand it anymore (not that I would know), you walk out of the sauna, down the always well trodden pathway and wooden pier to the lake, and then, of course, you jump naked into the freezing cold water. You then gasp for air and frantically blink a few times as your body goes through about 30 seconds of shock, swim around for another 2 minutes, get out, traipse back up to the sauna, and do it again. Rinse and repeat for as many times as you like for a “standard” sauna of about an hour and 15 minutes or a “long” sauna of two hours or more.

I had been to sauna with Laura multiple times before at different events (there are saunas everywhere here…in homes, apartments, offices, company headquarters…2 million saunas in a country of 5 million people!) and most recently at our main client’s summer cottage outside of Helsinki where he had invited our entire working team for a lovely end of case celebratory event. Laura and I were the only women on the team so we sauna’ed together first while the men waited up at the house to go second. We were sitting in the sauna there when Laura got up to go for the “standard” al fresco swim. I must have looked at her with a shocked look on my face when she asked if I was coming, “I am not swimming naked in the lake outside our client’s house while he’s up there making us dinner!” I almost hissed. She shrugged the “prudish American” shrug and jumped right in. “It’s refreshing!” she yelled from the water as I sat on the edge of the pier and pulled my towel a little tighter around me. Are these people crazy?!

I felt a bit embarrassed when we had finished in sauna and went back up to the house to tell the guys it was their turn, “You didn’t swim in the lake?!” more than one of them asked me, incredulous. Um, nope. Still not really ok with this whole thing! But, in typical American-learning-to-sauna-form, my first sauna was terrible because I went without a Finn, didn’t know what I was doing, stayed in for 45 minutes, and nearly made myself sick. My second sauna was in winter with a group of Finns who taught me how to do it properly and I enjoyed it but there was no lake involved. My third sauna was at my client’s house and I knew the sauna drill but wasn’t willing to skinny dip in the lake. My fourth sauna was at a Laura’s summer house at which point I was peer-pressured into the swim and then, shockingly, was the one who pushed the group to do it again. (It really is refreshing!) By my fifth time, at Laura’s in-laws’ sauna, I was an old pro…cider in hand, clothes off, in smoke sauna (eyes closed), too hot, down the pier, in the lake, repeat. Next escalation step would be to do the same in winter but I’m not sure that I will ever be woman enough for that swim! I humbly admit inferiority to the Finns with respect to sauna skill, cold water appreciation, and alcohol tolerance!

At the end of sauna you give yourself a bucket bath including the whole hair-washing and soaping-up shebang, a bit awkward given this is done front and center on the floor of the sauna while all your fellow sauna-ees have stadium seating for the performance (not that any of them cares a bit but, again, prudish American), and then you head back to the house always more relaxed and usually ready for more alcohol. I have to say that the longer I stay here the bigger sauna fan I become but I still don’t know that I’d want to do this every day as many Finns do! For a country of very quiet and private people, this is a rather unexpected and bizarre social staple!

After sauna (maybe between saunas – I don’t remember – the multiple bouts of heat and water got me all mixed up!), we hit the next fun Finnish summer cottage tradition which is called Hulju and is like a very basic, no-jet hot tub. While enjoying Hulju we got attacked by another major player in the Finnish summer world…the mosquito! I, as the fresh meat in the group (which maybe means that I complained the most vs. got bitten the most), cut this event pretty short in favor of the sauna. I may not be able to stand the heat for long but mosquitoes can’t stand it at all. Ha! After the many smoke sauna / cold water / hot water treatments of the evening, we finally took off to the beds in our cabin and slept great in the perfect summer silence.

The next day, we woke up to a great breakfast of homemade porridge (courtesy of Laura’s lovely mother) and berries and then drove off to Laura’s in-laws’ summer cottage. Again, this summer place was quaint and lovely with beautiful flowers all over the property, cute little buildings (the “old main house,” “the new main house,” an enclosed grilling gazebo overlooking the lake, a smoke sauna of course!), and a very welcoming Finnish family. We played a traditional Finnish yard game called Mölkky where you stack pins with numbers on them (think bowling), and throw a small wooden post at them in an attempt to knock over either one pin, in which you get the number of points displayed on the pin, or as many pins in possible, for which you get points equal to the number of pins knocked down. Each time a pin is knocked down, it is set back up in its new position so while the pins are all grouped together initially they may quickly get spread out if someone is successful at “breaking” them (like in pool). The goal is to be the first to hit exactly 50 points so you can see that you actually do need to be a bit strategic in your play (and your post-throwing accuracy!). I played with Laura, Kaori, Laura’s friend Hantta, and Laura’s mother-in-law and I actually got to 50 first!...and then lost to Hantta when she got to 50 on the same turn and beat me in the tie breaker. Bummer! It was a fun game though and was absolutely perfect weather so it was great to be out enjoying the day.

We had a great lunch, took a sauna (Laura’s mother-in-law was sad that we had forgotten to grab birch twigs before sauna so that we could warm them up over the stones and then hit ourselves on the backs with them – another Finnish tradition which is supposedly also “refreshing” and leaves you smelling great…think I might stick with soap for the time being as a less painful alternative for smelling great!), ate fresh crepes courtesy of Jeri (with jam and sugar - amazing!), and then left for Kuopio for an evening wine festival. The wine festival was really fun and was made even better by the excellent weather. We listened to the Finnish performers while we tried multiple Greek, Italian, and Croatian wines and then finished out the night at a local bar on the terrace. It was pretty great to be sitting outside with a drink in hand as the sun set around midnight.

We spent the night in Kuopio and then went to the local landmark, the Puijo tower, the next day to get views of the city and the surrounding area. Finland, as you might imagine from the lake statistics I gave earlier, is literally covered in lakes (many of which connect and you can actually get extremely far inland, all the way to Kuopio for instance, from the sea by traveling on connecting lakes) which makes for a very uniquely pretty landscape. We then ate lunch at the “best restaurant in Finland for muikku.” Muikku is a small, freshwater whitefish which is traditionally prepared fried (called “vendace” when fried) and eaten with mashed potatoes. No, this didn’t sound particularly good to me (and yes, I had already been warned by a few Finns that it wasn’t very good) but when in Kuopio you must try muikku! I have to say that I was extremely hungry and when my plate appeared and was piled high with four inch long, whole (heads cut off but bones in and skin on) fried fish next to a mound of mashed potatoes I was a little sad! I ate about 5 of the 15 of them and called it good. That’s all the culture I had in me that day! (Another specialty of eastern Finland is kalakukko which is muikku baked in Finnish rye bread. No comment but I think you know what I am thinking.)

We finished the day by taking a ride on a new road which connects many of the tiny islands in the surrounding lakes. These lake islands basically create an “inland archipelago” which is something I haven’t seen anywhere else in the world and is really cool! It’s definitely something very unique to the area. Even better, we stopped for ice cream on our final ride to the train station which helped me recover from the muikku. Moi moi, muikku! (Bye bye, yucky little white fish!...Ok, “yucky” might be more editorialization than a direct translation.) Ice cream never tasted so good!

And most of all…kiitoksia (many thanks) Laura, Jeri, and families! See you in sauna!