Triesting Times Three Countries In One Day The amazing hospitality being shown us in Croatia continues. Sanja’s brother, Miki, and his girlfriend, Doris take a day off to take us to Trieste in Italy. This involves travelling from Croatia, through a corner of Slovenia, and into Italy. There are good quality roads all the way. There has been a lot of road building in recent years but there’s also a lot of toll stations to pass through to help pay for it. Miki is also very careful to keep to the speed limits in Slovenia – both him and Sanja have told us that the Slovenian police hand out large instant fines for anyone caught speeding. Miki is clearly on a different career path to Sanja. He is an expert at finding his way to Trieste ... read more

The Rovinj Of The Killer Truffles ”Legend Has It…..” On Tuesday we have Sanja to ourselves for the day and she takes us out to various places in the Istrian Peninsula. The area has been fought over throughout history and has been part of Austria, Hungary, Italy and Yugoslavia in recent years so it’s not surprising to find that most of the places we see are fortified towns on the top of hills. Sanjatakes us all over the peninsular giving us lots of information and telling us the history of the places we visit. I think I’ve forgotten most of it! Perhaps someone will help me out… The World’s Smallest Town? Hmmmm…. Our first stop is Hum, officially the smallest town in the world. Is there some official definition of a town? Hum has a population ... read more

Vinales Soroa The final destination on the tour around Cuba is Vinales on the west side of the island. We stop off on the way from Santa Clara to Vinales at Soroa. Soroa probably has quite a lot to offer but as this is a stop-off on the way to Vinales and we just have time to visit the Orchid Garden here. The gardens have more than 25,000 species of orchids from around the world with the microclimate of the region being particularly suitable and it’s not long until I’m filling up another memory card in my camera. Vinales Vinales itself is a small town set in a beautiful limestone valley. The limestone has been eroded leaving a lot of interesting rock formations called magotes. The area is now a UNESCO World Heritage site with a ... read more

Santiago De Cuba Monday 4th April I’m trying to squeeze a tour of the rest of Cuba into two weeks. I would really liked to have spent more than two nights in Santiago De Cuba. Santiago is Cuba’s second city and was once the capital of the island so there’s probably a lot more to see than I could squeeze in to my brief stay. Our first stopping off point is the Moncada Barracks. This was the scene of Fidel’s first unsuccessful attempt to start a revolution in Cuba when Fidel and a number of students attacked the barracks. The bullet holes from the gun battle had been repaired but these have now been restored to give a better impression of what the building looked like after the attack. The barracks now serves a more useful ... read more

Camaguay Friday 1st April Camaguay is Cuba’s third largest city and one of the oldest settlements on the island but I suspect that that main reason that the organised tour stops here is to break the long journey as we head to the east coast of the island. We arrive here late in the afternoon in time to settle into the Hotel Plaza and head out for a meal at a local Paladar, a family home where they have been granted a licence to serve meals to visitors. On this occasion we get served a fairly standard Cuban menu but with the inclusion of goat meat, which I haven’t seen anywhere else in Cuba yet. The Hotel Plaza has probably seen better days but it seems to be where tour parties are taken as there are ... read more