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Published: October 15th 2010
With two weeks of travel under our belts, Susan and I breezed out of Florence with the intention of taking in Venice for a couple hours, followed by a leisurely train ride to Ljubljana, Slovenia, where our hostel was pre-booked. We felt totally capable, confident and well-planned. However, upon arrival in Venice, we were told that there was no train to Ljubljana from Venice. At all. This gave us rule #1 for our forthcoming travel advice booklet: never trust the train schedules you find in your travel agency, at another city's train station, or online. We were advised by the nice ticket lady to take a train to Trieste, on the border of Italy and Slovenia, because there was "usually" a bus to Ljubljana from there. She seemed quite bored by our distress so we decided we'd just have to take her word for it and hope for the best. After a quick photo by the nearest canal and the purchase of a 3.50 euro liter of juice, we boarded the train to Trieste and spent a couple harrowing hours hoping there would be some way to get to Ljubljana that night. It was a very beautiful train ride, lots of mountains and sea views, but there wasn't much joy in it. However, we were lucky and there was a bus to Ljubljana that evening from Trieste, so we decided to celebrate with some pasta and beer at a pub near the train station. As we sat there we attracted the attention of the local happy hour crowd (aka 3 loud elderly folks) who took a shine to us, and we spent a good hour trying to communicate with them via handsigns as they kept buying us beer. Later we found out that the man spoke some French, so with our grade 12 French skills we chatted with this elderly Italian man while he translated in Italian to his two lady friends. They got Susan to sing, having learned she'd studied voice in university, but only after the man sang us a song at very close proximity, and then tried to convince us to stay in Trieste that night to party with them - we'd do karaoke in the pub and drink. One of the ladies' only English word was "drink" so she reiterated that quite a few times with fierce hand motions...but sadly we had to take our leave, with kisses and hugs from all of them including the waiter, and amid promises that we'd be back. We all knew we probably wouldn't be, but it was awesome to dream of returning triumphantly to Trieste to party with the charming old folks.
Slovenia was a beautiful rest from Italy's urban madness. We spent one night in Ljubljana (not enough, for future reference), a really cool sort of hip town with a very chill atmosphere, then headed to Bled, which is a town of about 5,000 that centers around a crystal clear lake. It's very much aimed at tourists, but we stayed outside of the main city center and saw the charming outskirts complete with milking cows, amazing mountain and river views, and delightful little houses which all had their own little orchards in the back. Our hostel host made us apple strudel from the apples in his yard, and we took some great hikes and met some of the loveliest people we've met so far. We also ate a lot of dessert (to make up for the hikes) and did the most touristy thing of all - rowed to the island in the centre of the lake, which was embarrassing on my part though quite successful on Susan's. It was quite a wholesome four days and we fully enjoyed our time there.
After Bled, we had a disgusting 16-hour travel day heading to Split, Croatia. Note: If you suffer from any sort of motion sickness, please do not take the 5-hour train from Zagreb to Split. That's all I can really say about that day.
We headed down to Dubrovnik the following day (a much more tolerable 2-hour bus ride). We met with Clarice there which was super exciting and a lot of fun. We toured the City Walls which surround the Old City of Dubrovnik, which the Lonely Planet says "could well be the highlight of your stay" and that definitely proved true. The views were amazing, and it was super fun to pretend that we were back in the 1400s and living in a walled city. We also spent some time on the beach and splurged on some beachside cocktails and an excessive vegetarian supper, both of which were also recommended by Lonely Planet - it hasn't led us wrong yet.
After Dubrovnik we took yet another 2-hour bus ride down to Budva, Montenegro. We had no idea what we were getting into since Clarice and I had basically pointed at a map, while we were sitting at the Regina Beach bar a couple months ago, to choose our destination. It turned out to be a fabulous beach resort with a bit of an edge. Our hostel there was amazing and we met some awesome people, including some hilariously dapper Italian boys, at least according to our humble prairie-girl sensibilities (they wore blazers and nice shoes and slicked their hair back for our night at the bar - it was adorable but only really because we were wearing our "nice" clothes which included Susan's North Face pants and my leggings that I'd been wearing for the past 2 weeks...so really are we just slobs? hard to say). We took a day trip down to Ulcinj, which is very near the Albanian coast, and were lucky enough through Clarice's smooth-talking skills to get a free tour of Ulcinj from a local cafe owner. We saw the river separating Albania and Montenegro, had some fresh, local seafood soup, experienced the 14 km beach which boasts "flour-like sand," and got to chat with a local about life in Ulcinj. It was a very memorable day to say the least. All in all we spent our four sunny days eating way too much, drinking some, and beaching.
Clarice left us shortly thereafter, and Susan and I headed back to Dubrovnik and then to Bosnia. We'd been hearing pretty much since day 1 of our trip about the beauty and intrigue and general awesomeness of Bosnia, so that we could no longer ignore it. We decided to rearrange our route up to Budapest to fit in a few days in Bosnia. It was a beautiful experience, beyond whatever I could have imagined. We spent two days in Mostar and two in Sarajevo, and the experiences we had there were so impacting and genuine and rewarding, though often very poignant. This is a country with such recent and fraught history that it was very humbling to be there. We heard many stories from individuals about how things were and have been for the past 20 years or so...it was so shocking to think that this pain was all happening during my lifetime, and still does happen elsewhere in the world, and we just have no idea. Many people there are just now returning, and just now coming to terms with what has happened. It's shocking and beautiful, and people's honesty was more than I feel I deserved or could fathom.
We're now in Hungary, yet another different world, so once again there's more to learn and see and do... we're seeing an opera tonight (and Friday...) - so spoiled with good music here!
Take care all...
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Kath
non-member comment
much love
I love hearing your stories Lisa! keep em coming, i miss you girls