The Foreignist

Continuing on from my last post, we left Plitvice Lakes (see #4 on map) and drove through the Croatian hinterland to just outside Zagreb and then turned west and entered Slovenia. Here’s the map again so you can follow along at home.

Slovenia is the first former Yugoslav republic to become a part of the EU. You can definitely tell the difference as soon as you cross the border. We only went 10 km across the border to a place called Terme ÄŒatež (see #5 on map - pronounced cha-tezh). It’s a town along the Sava River that has lots of hot springs. There are several hotels and water park located along the river. Part of the water park was indoors and attached to the hotel where we were staying. Very nice place, reasonably priced (included entrance to the water park everyday), entertaining for the boys, and air-conditioned for my dad.

While we were in Slovenia (you can drive across it in less than 2 hours), we visited Ljubljana (see #6 on map - won’t even try to tell you how this is pronounced). The boys really enjoyed our morning at the zoo. They had a surprising number of animals, but the zoo was laid out on a forested hill-side and the exhibits were spaced very far apart. That meant there was a LOT of walking involved, but all of the pathways were very shaded. Still, we were beat by the time we finished. After all the walking and seeing zebras, elephants, giraffes, chimps, lions, tigers, and bears, the boys said that their favorite animal was the pig they made friends with in the petting zoo. I’ll post some video of the pig later. They tried to wake it up to play with it, but it just kept grunting and squealing and would roll back over and try to go back to sleep.

I saw a piece on Bled, Slovenia (see #7) one time on Rick Steve’s travel show on PBS. It looked interesting, and I’ve wanted to visit there for a few years. So, as tired as we were, I convinced everyone that we should drive on just to see what was there (remember, we were wanting to see new things and explore the region a bit). So we grabbed some dry, crusty sandwiches at a restaurant along the toll road and drove to Bled. Lake Bled is surrounded by the southern Alps with a town wrapped around one edge of the lake. We took a boat trip (human-powered) to the island in the middle of the lake. There is an old church on the island, and Garrett got to ring the church bell once we climbed all the stairs to get to the top.

After that, we went to the ski slope behind Bled. During the summer they set up a toboggan run. You sit on a little plastic car with a stick between your knees that acts as the brake. The track that you ride on twists and turns all the way down the mountain. Garrett rode with me, Lindsay screamed all the way down the toboggan run, and Caleb went back down the mountain on the chairlift with my dad. My mom was pulling on the brake so hard that she nearly stopped halfway down the mountain. Garrett laughed all the way down and was saying he wanted to go faster. It was a lot of fun. We would have stayed longer to ride again, but we needed to get back to our hotel on the other side of Slovenia. I wish we would have known how fun Bled was going to be, or we would have stayed one night there.

Our last stop on the road trip was Rijeka, Croatia (see #8). We didn’t stay there long. We just ate lunch, walked around for a bit, had an ice cream, did some shopping, and then back in the van to return back to our home in Split.