As of today we have been travelling for 5 weeks! And it's going by MUCH too fast!! Found a beach on the way to Paestum (best preserved Greek ruins in Italy) and decided to stop for a picnic. So glad we did as the weather was fantastic and it was so relaxing!! We had the beach entirely to ourselves and collected a few shells. Spent a couple of hours wandering around Paestum which was very cool even though I've been to Greece and seen a lot of Greek ruins. After returning to Salerno for the evening, did a bit of [View Full Entry]

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Arrived in Bari, on the ferry 8am. Drove to Matera Italy which happens to be the place where Passion of the Christ was filmed (a movie I haven't seen or plan to), we went because of the amazing sounding cave dwellings that we wanted to see. We walked around the main town a bit, had sandwiches for lunch at a great roof top cafe, then went off to see the inside of a cave that is setup to look like what they used to when people lived in them. The government actually had to force people out of the caves because [View Full Entry]

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We left Croatia this morning to stay in Montenegro. On our way, we spent the rest of our Kuna on gas to get rid of it so we wouldn't need it anymore, just Euros. Funny enough (or not...), even though there is a 0% drunk driving tolerance in Croatia (meaning you can't register any alcohol in the system and drive), there is a bar in the gas station (actually all of them!) and Thad said there were two guys in the bar drinking with a cop! This was around noon too! Anyway, we spent some more time walking around Kotor, this [View Full Entry]

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Decided to stay in the nice hotel in Dubrovnik one more night and do a day trip to Kotor Montengro before staying there. The drive into Montenegro was spectacularly beautiful. Unfortunately it was pouring rain when we got there, but we had another rainy hike and walked up to the fortress on the top of the hill. Then had this incredibly beautiful sunset drive back to Dubrovnik. [View Full Entry]

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Just a note that Im having a lot of problems finding places to upload pictures so I havent been able to since Trento Italy... meaning Im about 400 pics behind. Also meaning that Im not going to upload very many to this site anymore (a time issue) but rather will include links to pictures in the text of my posting. I just updated a bunch of postings including and after Hallstatt, so if you have already read any of those, may want to go back and look for the picture links. [View Full Entry]

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Dad, you asked for a Map of our route so here it is up through the next week or so... still havent figured out how to update it so we will see if I continue it or not. Enjoy! [View Full Entry]

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Left Hvar really early to get to the ferry building and see when ferries left, and if there were any ferries that went directly to Dubrovnik... only to find out the only one from that port left 15 mins ago!! So ended up driving to the other end of the island, over an hour, to get the ferry from there. Worked out fine and we ended up at our hotel early afternoon. Ate lunch at this fantastic restaurant, Atlantic, that had been recommended in Lonely Planet for its veg lasagna... YUM! Walked into old town, found a great wine bar, good [View Full Entry]

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Lunch at a cute cafe, then we decided to hike up to the fortress we keep staring at. Our first hike with no rain!! In fact it was perfect weather, which is good since we hiked the long way. We didn't realize there were a set of stairs to the fortress... probably would have taken us 20 mins to get their. Instead we spent a lovely 2 hours hiking around the hills, not sure how to get to the fortress. Once we got there, spent quite a bit of time at the fortress, walking around and relaxing. There is a bar [View Full Entry]

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Since leaving Salzburg and the COLD weather, we have been to Trento, Sommacampagna, Verona, and Venice in Italy as well as driven through about 1 hour in Slovenia and stayed in Opatija and Plitvice Lakes in Croatia... we are now in Hvar an Island in Croatia. I will post more on all of the other spots later, way behind and just trying to back up pics for now. For the time being, attached are some pictures of our drive from Plitvice to Split and the Ferry from Split to Hvar and then our first evening in Hvar.... WILL upload more pics [View Full Entry]

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We woke up and the temperature had dropped to 42 degrees!! And STILL raining. We had originally planned to hike a little before going, but this is just too cold/wet for us so we headed out right away to go to Split. On the way stopped for a scenic picnic. We had originally planned to stay in Split over night and take the ferry to Hvar the next day, but we pulled into Split so early we decided to head over right away. We took the car ferry over, and the ride was beautiful, AND it was sunny and 75 degrees! [View Full Entry]

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