Ah, so much has happened in the last few days. We're now in Venice and it is sizzling hot and absolutely beautiful. I've hunted down the authentic gelato (the trick I read about finding good gelato is to look at the banana flavour. If it is brownish it is made with real banana and a good indication that all the gelato is made of fruit. If it is yellow it is fake). Poor steve got dragged around 8 or so gelateria until I found the real deal. And yes it was very bananaey.
Slovakia was good at first but we got rained out in the end. The mountains were GREAT and we did a big hike up a mountain to the glacier level near Stary Smokovec. It was one of thsose walks where we kept thinking we were at the top, only to find more mountain still to go. Definitley worked off a meat platter during that one!! We decided to be a bit silly and spend a night at AquaWorld in Poprad whihc is basically a geothermal waterpark complete with snow cave, saunas, crazy flavoured steam rooms and things like envigorating showers (hot then freezing cold!). Certianly different and made a change from what we are usually doing.
The next day we were aiming to go to Bratislava but it was like a hurricane had hit and it was raining sideways so we drove into the city and then drove straight back out and decided to put in a long drive and head all the way into Slovenia, and hope that by crossing the lower alps we would get some different weather. As luck would have it we were right but best of all we ended up in the best place...a small Slovenian town in the mountains called Bled.
Ok, so I am now the tourist ambassador for Slovenia. Its my new favourite country, and we LOVED our time there. Bled is an amazing town on lake that is totally surrounded by mountains. We went white water rafting and met Lic and Erno our new Dutch friends who we met up with that night. We also did a hike to a gorge that took us about 2 hours longer than anticipated (we got a bit lost and follwed the signs to Gorge, which turned out was not the water gorge but instead a small village not very close by). After a bit of backtracking we finally found the right place.
We then hit my new favourite capital city, Ljubljana which is tiny but set on a river and just full of great cafes and bars to sit and soak in the sun. We were planning to stay in a small hotel, but ended up in a nice four star one after they offered us a cheaper rate than all the other worse ones. Just to add to my appreciation of the town, they also had a Zara with a big sale on and I stocked up on some tops and new watermelon coloured linen pants (um, they will be good for Africa?). Didn't really want to leave....
We then hit the tiny Slovenian coast (wedged between Italy and Croatia) which was a bit crazy. After trying on the Internet to get a room, we couldntà find anything other than a youth hostel so we booked it and set off. When we got to Piran, it was a tiny town at the bottom of a very large hill. Of course the few car parking spots in the town were jammed full so they told us to pak on teh hill (where we promptly got a 80 euro parking fine...nice). We then walked with our packs down into the town and couldnàt find the hostel anywhere. They donàt really have cars and the streets are tiny labrinths like a maze. Ended up being taken by an Austrain tourist to the Hotel Piran which she thought was the Hostel Piran, and wandered around in searing heat in circles. So we finally found it and it wasnàt really a hostel...more a house and we were in the attic in a crazy sloping ceiling room that you had to precariously jump from stairs to the bed space. The owner was proudly saying °it's the only room with a balcony°. Yeah great, the balcony was another jump across the crazy stairs. After all that though we had a swim in the Adriatic and forgot all the problems!
And after Piran it was on to Venice where we couldn't figure out exactly how to park the car and we ended up getting a small Italina speedboat from our carpark into Venice = very James Bond Style! It was a good start and after expecting to pay thorugh the roof for a hotel, we ended up being offered one of the cheapest rates we have had all trip and it was a great place. All good.
Ok, running out of time now.....wrapping this one up! Ciao!
1 comment:
Hi you two we Love the pictures especially the one of you by the lake Frankie, you seem to be having a great time we love reading the blog, and I print off each section to show nans and pops so they get to see what you are both up to as well. The banana ice cream sounds yummy and I might have know that action man would have had a run on the beach, you had a much better idea Frankie, we could do with some of that ourselves as it is not very good here, weather wise, today. Take care love you both mum and dad.
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