Spring 2014 Trip, Days 10-11: Lake Bled, Slovenia

We are now in country number three of a total of four on our itinerary for this trip. We are in Slovenia, a small country that is sandwiched between Croatia, Italy, Austria, and Hungary at the north end of the Adriatic Sea. This is my second time in Slovenia, and this second visit has confirmed for me that this is one of my favorite countries in Europe. Slovenia’s biggest draw is its varied and spectacular scenery. From its sliver of Adriatic coastline to its very own section of the mighty Alps, Slovenia packs a lot of variety and natural beauty into a small package. These last two days in particular have left me awed at how spectacularly beautiful (and fun) this little country is.

Lake Bled, with the Otok on the left and the castle in the center

As you may recall from my last post, our first destination in Slovenia was Lake Bled, which we reached in the evening after a long day driving back and forth around northern Croatia on the day before yesterday. Lake Bled was going to be our home base for exploring the highlights of northern Slovenia, where we would be spending three nights. On that first evening we didn’t do much except get ourselves settled, find some dinner at a great restaurant near our hotel, and take a short walk around the lake. Lake Bled is a truly beautiful place, a small lake in the foothills of the Alps with tree-covered hills and snow-capped mountains surrounding it and a cute little island with a church in the middle. Motorized boats are not allowed on the lake and the whole area is fairly sleepy anyway, making Lake Bled a tranquil place to unwind. We had two major activities planned for Lake Bled – a drive through the Julian Alps, which would take one whole day, and then another day devoted to the sights and activities in and around Lake Bled itself.

Cream cake, a very tasty dessert specialty in Bled

Due to the weather forecast we decided to do the Alps drive on the first day and the Lake Bled stuff on the second day. The Alps terminate on their eastern end in Slovenia and Austria (forming the border between those two countries), and as such Slovenia has some spectacular mountain scenery on its northern end. We set out from Bled in the morning and drove a loop through the Alps along a road called the Vršič Pass and then back down from the mountains through the Soča River Valley. I’m finding myself saying this a lot lately, but the pictures really speak for themselves. I don’t know that there is anything I can add to them with my own words. So here they are.

The Vršič Pass in the Julian Alps

The Soča River Valley

The Julian Alps

The Julian Alps

On the second day in Bled we spent the day seeing the sights around the lake. Lake Bled has been the leading “resort” area in this region, and really for all of central Europe, for centuries. It is certainly among the most scenic places I have ever been to in Europe. Everyone there is either a tourist or someone who makes a living off the tourism industry there, and yet Bled is the kind of place where that is perfectly alright. It is a great place to simply enjoy one’s surroundings, and that is exactly what we did. We started our Lake Bled day by walking the 3.5 mile loop around the lake. It was a great way to get the lay of the land and see the more remote parts of the lake away from the main town. There was a film festival (the Bled Film Festival, to be exact) going on while we were in town and the event had a significant portion of lakefront real estate cordoned off, although pedestrians were welcome to walk through. We would occasionally see what I can only assume (or at least I prefer to believe) were famous Slovenes being interviewed on camera at various spots around the town, and there was even a red carpet/photo op spot at one end of the festival. We have since confirmed that one of the people we saw being interviewed was none other than Armand Assante, of 1997 NBC miniseries “The Odyssey” fame.

Red Carpet at the Bled Film Festival

After walking around town we took a pletna boat ride to the otok, the island in the middle of the lake. Pletna boats are traditional flat-bottomed rowboats that have been used on Lake Bled for centuries. Our pletna boat pilot was amazingly deft at maneuvering the boat with just his oars, able to row it at surprisingly high speed and spin the boat around and back it into its berth within inches of other boats. I was seriously impressed. It also occurred to me that I really want his job. By my calculations, given the number of people on the boat and the price of a round trip to the island and back (which, with a 30 minute stay on the island, took a little more than an hour), the guy brought in about 180 euros (about 244 U.S. dollars). That’s a lot of scratch for a little more than an hour of work. Plus his job a) has built in physical activity, keeping you fit and healthy, and b) would be waaaaaaaaaaaay lower stress than mine. I wish I could be a pletna boat pilot back home.

Mom and Dad on the pletna boat

Our pletna boat pilot talking to another pilot while rowing

The island with its church in the middle of the lake

Steps leading from the boat dock up to the church on the otok

After our trip to the island we had lunch and then drove up to Bled Castle, on a high cliff overlooking the lake. The castle itself was mildly interesting, dating from the middle ages when Slovenia was a territory belonging to the Habsburgs of Austria. What was really fun, however, was the opportunity I got to operate a replica of the original Gutenberg printing press. I had found a printing press shop at the castle, where a guy (whose name I am mad at myself for not remembering) was demonstrating how the press worked and telling about the history of early printing in Slovenia. They also had different custom-printed items for sale, and I wanted to have a page printed, so I explained to the guy what I wanted. He was really accommodating, letting me put together the design that I wanted, and then he actually let me do the pressing myself and even stamp the page with a wax seal. It was super cool.

Me operating the printing press at Bled Castle

After our trip to the castle we had a really nice dinner at a traditional Slovenian place near our hotel and then went to bed. The next day we left early to do some unscheduled sightseeing on our way to Ljubljana. As I finish writing this post I am about to head to bed after our last day in Ljubljana. I have a shuttle arranged to pick us up at 6:00 AM tomorrow to take us to the airport for our flight to Paris, our final destination on the trip. I am going to leave this post here, and I apologize for its brevity. I am just too tired and too busy seeing and doing to write more. I hope my pictures fill in the blanks where my writing falls short.

Spring 2014 Trip, Days 8-9: Plitvice Lakes, Croatia

Today’s post comes to you from Lake Bled in the mountainous northwestern reaches of Slovenia. I will have plenty to share with you about Lake Bled and Slovenia in the coming days, but first I want to talk about what we saw and did in our final two days in Croatia. For completely different reasons, both were among my best travel days in recent memory.

As you may recall from my last post we were in a city called Split on Croatia’s Dalmatian Coast. We departed Split yesterday, taking a bus from the old town to the airport just outside the city where we picked up a rental car. We then set out for Plitvice Lakes National Park, a complex of sixteen lakes connected by creeks and waterfalls in a gorgeous valley in central Croatia. Our rental car is a brand new Citroën DS4, a small four door car with a manual transmission and a diesel engine that is very fun to drive. Driving to Mostar last week wasn’t much to write home about, but yesterday and today were reminders of how much I enjoy driving in Europe. I don’t know that it’s really that much different from driving at home except that the speeds are faster, the cars I’ve rented are more fun, and it sometimes feels like you’re on a racetrack, but I like it nonetheless. We got in to Plitvice around 3:00 in the afternoon, checked in to the Soba I had reserved, and then set to planning our time at the park.

Our wheels

European porta-potties, which as it turns out are no different from American ones.

Plitvice turned out to be yet another lesson on why I prefer to travel without reservations. In my original trip itinerary I had planned on staying two nights and one full, uninterrupted day in Plitvice. As I read about the park in the days leading up to it, however, I realized that we really only needed one night and half a day or so to hike around the park before moving on to our next destination. I decided to modify our itinerary, arriving in Plitvice in the afternoon/evening and then hiking in the morning before leaving for Lake Bled in the early afternoon. So we got into Plitvice in the afternoon and I was feeling smugly clever for having worked out a better itinerary on the fly…that is, until an unforeseen necessity blew that plan out of the water.

That necessity will require a bit of background. My parents used to have three dogs. I say “used to” because one of them, a big Beauceron (here's what they look like) named Asterix, died at just eight years old due to heart disease not long before our trip. My parents (and I, for my own part) loved Asterix very much. He was a great dog. So that you can put a face to the name,here’s a YouTube video of him tossing a small car tire around in the snow backhome. Asterix’s death is still a very fresh wound for my parents, and in our down time my Dad has been reading about Beauceron breeders in Europe. He happened to learn about a very highly-regarded breeder in Croatia, in a town called Zadar, and half-jokingly raised the possibility of us detouring to go visit the breeder and meet their dogs. The first time he mentioned it my Mom and I shot the idea down, and as we headed north from Split to Plitvice and passed the exit to Zadar my Dad’s cockamamie idea seemed a thing of the past. But it wouldn’t die. He mentioned it multiple times on the way to Plitvice, and again when we got there. He never demanded that we go there, never even asked, but he clearly wanted to go very badly. This was an emotional thing for him. He wanted to see a Beauceron like Asterix again, wanted to explore the possibility of bringing another dog like Asterix into the family. We were so close; I knew that I had to accommodate his wish if at all possible. And since we had the freedom of a car and no reservations, almost anything was possible. So we made it happen.

Within a few minutes I had a new plan. We would do an abbreviated hiking loop around the park that afternoon/evening, seeing the greatest hits in a few hours, and then get up as early as possible the next day and go visit the breeder before turning back around and heading up to Lake Bled. My Dad emailed the breeder and had a response in just a few minutes. They would be happy to let us drop by. And so the new plan was settled. I did a quick bit of research about what we should see and do at the park in the limited time that we would have and then we loaded up and headed out. We were on the trails at the park by about 4:30 in the afternoon, and being a group of Michaels we were able to take in the park’s sights in record time. We actually ended up seeing as much of the park as I had planned originally, completing a full loop of the park – which should have taken four to six hours – in about three. One concession I refused to make was neglecting my trip photography. I took the time to take a ton of pictures. To do otherwise would have been criminal, as Plitvice turned out to be one of the most naturally scenic places I have ever been to. It was truly a wonder. I don’t know that I can really convey its beauty in words, however, so I’ll let my pictures do the rest of the talking.

Mom and Dad on the boardwalk trail at Plitvice Lakes National Park

Plitvice Lakes National Park

Plitvice Lakes National Park

Plitvice Lakes National Park

After hiking around the park we stopped for a surprisingly good and affordable dinner at one of the park’s hotel restaurants and then tried to get to bed early in order to rise early the next morning and hit the road as soon as possible to go see the breeder. Despite the absurd noise level from the group of drunk Japanese girls next door (it was so bad that the hotel staff, which were otherwise pretty inattentive, had to come tell them to quiet down – something I have never seen happen in my travels), we got some decent sleep and were up fairly early and on the road just after 8:00 the next morning (today). Unfortunately Zadar was in exactly the opposite direction of where we would have been going (Lake Bled), meaning that the side trip would take up most of, if not all, of an entire day of travel. Still we soldiered on, intent on making my Dad’s Beauceron-viewing dreams come true.

I told my Dad to tell the breeder that we would be arriving at around 10:30, which by some miracle, despite my slowness to get up and ready that morning, we did. What we would find there was nothing like what we expected. In fact, when we first saw the place we suspected we had gotten lost. The signs on the front gate warning of guard dogs within confirmed that we had in fact found the right place. It was a two story brick house that looked like it had been built by amateurs (which, if my week’s worth of observations in Croatia is any guide, is pretty normal). Side note: I mean absolutely no insult whatsoever by pointing out the amateur flavor of the breeder’s house. That being said, whatever image that pops into your mind when you read those words is probably pretty accurate. We were greeted by Maja, a middle-aged Croatian woman who spoke decent English (read: understandable but certainly not flawless). Maja was clearly a dog person from the outset, both a lover of dogs and very skilled at managing and controlling her dogs. She sat us down at an outdoor table on her patio and offered us coffee, which we were grateful for. She went inside and her mother (whose name escapes me) came out to greet us. Her mother spoke almost no English, so there wasn’t a whole lot of conversation with her. When Maja eventually emerged from the house she brought us all dishes of ice cream, cookies, the promised coffee, and some sort of fruit juice. She seemed genuinely pleased to have guests in her home and her hospitality was both impressive and greatly appreciated. We spent the next couple of hours talking to Maja about her dogs and meeting her two breeding females and her new litter of four puppies. For me it was a great cultural experience, one of those moments that I always have in every trip that I never expected, never planned, and yet will never forget. I think it was cathartic for my parents too, and as we left and made the journey to Bled I realized that I was ultimately glad that we rearranged our itinerary and made the trip down to meet Maja and her dogs.

Maja's Beaucerons, Ginger and Basanti. Ginger (on the left) looked remarkably like Asterix.

Coffee and ice cream with Maja

Beauceron puppies

I am actually finishing this blog post a day after I started it. We just got back to the hotel in Bled after a great day driving through the Julian Alps. I’ll have lots of great photos and my usual gratuitous commentary for you in the next couple of days. Until then, thanks as always for reading and as the Slovenes say, na svidenje.

Spring 2014 Trip, Days 1-7: Dalmatian Coast, Croatia

My parents and I are in the midst of a nearly three-week-long trip to Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, and Paris. Today is the seventh day of our trip and I am only just now getting around to writing my first blog post. Contrary to what you might guess, my failure to post over the last week has not been due to exceeding laziness. Rather, this trip has been so full of sights and experiences that I simply have not been able to tear myself away long enough to write a single paragraph. Simply put, this last week may well have been the busiest (and best) week of my travel career.

I have been taking notes every day on our destinations up to this point but I don’t think my memory nor your attention span will allow me to give the kind of super-detailed, blow-by-blow accounts of my daily activities that I usually post on this blog. Instead I think I’ll tell you about each of the places I’ve been to over the last week and talk a bit about their highlights and my impressions of them. Today we are wrapping up our last day in Split, a city on Croatia’s Dalmatian Coast. I’ll get to that later though. Our other destinations have included Dubrovnik, a.k.a. “The Pearl of the Adriatic,” another city on the Dalmatian Coast; Mostar, an historic town in Bosnia and Herzegovina; and Korčula, a scenic island (and the name of its biggest town) just off the Dalmatian Coast.

We departed Portland at about 2:00 PM last Saturday and arrived in Dubrovnik at about 6:00 PM local time the next day. While I like to travel without reservations, I always reserve accommodations at the first place I’ll be visiting so that I’ll have an easy, guaranteed place to land after the long flight from home. Here in Croatia I had read that the best, highest-value places to stay were Sobe  - rooms or small apartments in private homes, almost always operated by families. I made reservations for my parents and myself in adjacent Sobe in Dubrovnik, and I had arranged with one of our hosts for taxi transport from the airport to our rooms. The proprietor’s name was Pero, and as it turned out he sent his son (also named Pero) to pick us up in the family car. When I met him at the airport I knew immediately that we were in for a great stay. Pero the Youngest (the nickname will make more sense in a minute) was friendly and spoke fluent English, talking to us about this and that all the way from the airport to Dubrovnik’s Old Town, where our Sobe were. You can’t drive cars into Dubrovnik’s Old Town, so Pero the Younger (our driver’s father and the owner/operator of one of our Sobe) met us at the gate to escort us to our rooms. Pero the Younger was equally talkative and outgoing and really made us feel welcome. When we got to our Sobe (which again were right next to each other), we met Pero the Elder, the unrelated proprietor of the Soba next door to Pero the Younger’s. While not related, Pero the Elder was very good friends with Pero the Younger and they had both figured out that I had reserved a room in each of their houses, so they both were there to greet us together. While speaking more limited English, Pero the Elder was just as warm to us as the younger Peros. I have found their demeanors to be common among Croatians, helping to make this an easy and fun place to travel in.

Mom and Dad on the town wall in Dubrovnik, Croatia

The street that our Sobe were on in Dubrovnik

Dubrovnik is hard to characterize. It was certainly my favorite stop so far on this trip, and it ranks among the top five places that I’ve visited in Europe. I would say that Dubrovnik epitomizes all that is great about the Dalmatian Coast. It is almost like the capital city of a Slavic version of Greece. The weather is perfect – temperatures in the 80s and generally sunny and slightly breezy. The Adriatic Sea is clear and surprisingly warm. The coastline is picturesque, rocky and tree-lined and with a dramatic mountain backdrop to the east at the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina. The architecture is very much like what you see in Venice and in other coastal towns in Italy, which make sense given that Dubrovnik was heavily influenced by Venice and experienced its “golden age” in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, around the same time as Venice’s own. Dubrovnik’s Old Town is a perfectly preserved Gothic-Renaissance city, complete with a remarkably well-maintained stone town wall. The people there are friendly and laid back, which may be as much a product of the ideal setting as the inherent quality of the people themselves. Nothing that I write about it will do Dubrovnik justice though. It must be experienced to be fully understood.

The cathedral in Dubrovnik

The courtyard in the Dominican Monastery in Dubrovnik

A gate atop the town wall in Dubrovnik

A view from the town wall in Dubrovnik

We stayed in Dubrovnik for three nights, but one of the days was spent renting a car and day-tripping to Mostar, a town in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Mostar has been an important town in the region for centuries, and what makes it especially worthwhile for tourists is two things: its picturesque bridge spanning the Neretva River, the Stari Most, and the pervasiveness of the Islamic Bosniak culture. The Slavic people who have historically inhabited this region are divided among several ethnic groups which are primarily delineated by religion. There are the Croats, who are Catholic; the Serbs, who are Orthodox Christians; and the Bosniaks, who are Muslim. My exposure to Islam and Muslim people has been minimal in my 29 years, so I thought visiting Mostar would be an ideal opportunity to gain some exposure and learn about a group of Muslim people living practically in my travel back yard. There are beautiful mosques and minarets all over Mostar, and its people were even more friendly and welcoming than my new friends in Dubrovnik. The Stari Most was as picturesque as advertised, and we were fortunate enough to catch some bridge divers in the act of plunging down into the ice-cold Neretva River from the crest of the bridge, a harrowing drop of about 65 feet. I had read about the bridge diving in Mostar in my research for the trip and I had been thinking about attempting the jump myself. When it came down to it my parents talked me out of it, but I insisted on making up for it the next day by jumping off a cliff into the Adriatic back in Dubrovnik. My Dad and I estimated that my jump was about 45 feet, which I mention only to note that the drop from 45 feet felt like it took forever; 65 feet would have been death-defying.

Me jumping off a cliff into the Adriatic Sea in Dubrovnik

The Stari Most in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Mostar

After Dubrovnik and Mostar we spent a couple of nights in Korčula, a town on the island of the same name off the Dalmatian Coast between Dubrovnik and Split. There isn’t much to say about Korčula except that it was small, sleepy, incredibly scenic and perfectly relaxing. We hung out, walked around, swam and sunbathed until it was time to catch the ferry for Split. I’ll let my pictures do the rest of the talking.

Korčula

Korčula

Korčula

Korčula

After Korčula we caught the high speed catamaran ferry to Split. Split is the biggest city on the Dalmatian Coast, and it has been our first taste of a grittier, more metropolitan side of Croatia than the idyllic beauty of the rest of the Dalmatian Coast. I like it though. Here we have gotten a better idea of how most Croatians live and work. That being said, we didn’t come here just for that; we came for Split’s biggest attraction, Diocletian’s Palace. The Roman Emperor Diocletian, one of the most important of the late Roman Empire, constructed a massive palace to retire to here in Split. He was actually born in a town called Salona (Solin in Croatian) which was just inland of Split and which exists today. Diocletian decided to retire in the land of his birth, and given what I’ve seen of the weather and scenery here on the Dalmatian Coast I’d say he made the right choice. After the Empire receded from this area and the palace fell into disrepair and decay, local people began to take refuge in the huge old building and used its walls as fortifications for a new town, a town which would eventually grow into the city that is now Split. To this day thousands of people live and work among the hodgepodge of Roman ruins grafted to medieval and modern buildings which make up Split’s Old Town. There is a modern Splitska Banka bank branch, full of computers and encased in glass, with an original stone column from the palace rising up through its center. There are walls consisting of huge stone slabs from the original palace construction, rough stone masonry patches from the Middle Ages, and modern brick additions to increase their height and join them to new buildings. The palace’s mausoleum, where Diocletian himself was laid to rest, is now a Catholic cathedral. We watched a party emerge from the cathedral with a newly baptized boy just as we arrived to see its interior. Little did that boy know that he had just been baptized in a room where the Emperor Diocletian had once stood and been laid to rest. In Split’s Old Town we see the definition of an organic city, a place where there is rare physical evidence of the continuum of a society and its people from ancient times to the present day.

Split

Split

The dome of Diocletian's Mausoleum (now a cathedral) in Split

The main altar in the cathedral in Split

Split's northern wall, showing the mix of ancient, medieval, and modern construction

That is about all I have the time and energy to write today. It is near midnight and I have a long day ahead tomorrow. We will be picking up another rental car and driving to Plitvice Lakes National Park in northern Croatia. Tomorrow and the next day will be our final days in Croatia, and I will be sad to leave it behind. I plan to post more frequently going forward, so look for my next post on Plitvice in the coming days.