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Plitvice Lakes

Posted by Jim St. George on July 14, 2022
Posted in: Croatia, Europe, UNESCO World Heritage Site. Leave a Comment

Here we are early in the hike around the lakes. Pretty nice water, huh?

We made a two-day stop in Plitvice Lakes National Park, what the guidebook calls Croatia’s “Adriatic hinterland,” about a hundred miles southeast of Opatija. We’d wanted to go there way back in 2013 when we first came here on our big adventure but it’s really hard to get here without a car. So part of the calculation in deciding to rent a car for this leg of our Slovenia/Croatia trip was to get to Plitvice.

The whole reason one comes to the area is this series of cascading lakes and waterfalls, surrounded by lush forests. It isn’t cheap – it’s about $40 per person, plus $10 for parking – but for a day-long outdoor experience it’s hard to beat. I mean, it’s been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since the 1970s. Oh, and one historic note worth mentioning. When Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, the Yugoslav (i.e., Serbian) army’s first point of attack was Plitvice. They held the park through the duration of the war and in fact it is thought that some remote parts of the park – not anywhere close to where tourists go – may still have Serbian landmines. Yuck.

As Lonely Planet puts it, “It’s as though Croatia decided to gather all its waterfalls in one place and charge admission to see them.”

So what’s going on here? The basic idea is that the geology of the area is loaded with limestone. As all the water flows along it picks up limestone and drops chalk sediment all over. That creates ideal growing conditions for moss and algae which constantly reroute the flow of water. The result is an ever-changing landscape of waterfalls cascading to lower lakes, over and over, all in stunning turquoise. And apparently it’s been going on for a long time, as in since the last great ice age.

And that was it. Though shorter routes are available, including lovely tour boats that glide across the biggest lakes as significant shortcuts, the full route around the major lakes in the park is about 12 miles. Which of course I had to do. Admittedly, I was sore the next days but the views were spectacular and definitely worth it.

Now it’s down to the ancient city of Split on the coast and off on a 14-day bike trip!

We were there quite early, before the crowds and when everything was very still

During the early part of the hike the boardwalk was often right over flowing water. We were amused by the lack of safety provisions; I can’t imagine you could have something like this without guard rails in the U.S.

More waterfalls

On the trail

While most of the trail was immediately next to the lakes, sometimes it went high up into the forest

From high up you would get views like this

And this

Trieste

Posted by Jim St. George on July 9, 2022
Posted in: Europe, Italy. Leave a Comment

Trieste’s Unity of Italy Square after a summer storm has passed through. The other two sides of the square are at least as grand.

This trip is all about four weeks in southeast Europe – Slovenia and Croatia – and then four weeks in Scandinavia – Norway and Sweden – but we decided to elbow in a little corner of Italy while we were in the area. Trieste was once one of the great cities of the Austro-Hungarian empire: the fourth city, it turns out, after Vienna, Budapest, and Prague, and the most important seaport the entire empire. Since it was annexed by Italy after World War I, though, it’s become a bit forgotten. It is Italy, but it’s not really Italy, at least not the way Naples or Florence or Rome are really Italy. Still, as the capital of one of Italy’s 20 regions, Friuli Venezia Giulia, we wanted to give it a try.

And … meh. The food wasn’t as good as it is in the rest of Italy. Heck, it wasn’t even as good as the food in Slovenia. It didn’t have that same historic imperative you get in so much of Italy. And while it’s right on the Adriatic Sea, you got little sense of that from the city itself as it’s largely cut off as far as tourists and pedestrians are concerned by all the industry and port services. I felt like taking city officials on a trip to Barcelona and showing them what you could do with a great city if you opened up the sea.

Mark on our balcony one evening

There were a couple of noteworthy experiences. The Unity of Italy Square (formerly the Great Square) is said to be the largest sea-facing square in all of Europe. The three sides not facing the sea are built up with massive imperial Austrian buildings, truly awe inspiring. The problem was that it’s so big they really haven’t filled it up with cafés and restaurants and all that stuff that would make it appealing. In fact on a hot sunny day – pretty much the norm this time of year – you want to avoid the square because it’s so inhospitable. Still, it’s beautiful to look at.

And then there’s the Miramare Castle, some four miles up the coast from the city center. It was built by Archduke Maximillian of Austria, the younger brother of Franz Joseph, the guy who ruled the empire for 68 years. When you’re the Number 2 guy in that situation you don’t have so much to do. For a while he was commander-in-chief of the imperial Navy, and later viceroy of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, but his liberal politics angered his brother/emperor and he was dismissed from both jobs. So instead he built this really beautiful castle and park starting in the mid-1850s just north of Trieste.

Miramar Castle, home for a while at least for Archduke Maximillian and his wife Charlotte

Sadly for him, he didn’t really get to enjoy it that much. While the castle was still under construction in the early 1860s Emperor Napoleon of France offered him the title of Emperor of Mexico. He eventually took the job and moved to Mexico City but – once the U.S. Civil War was over – U.S. officials had the leeway to enforce the Monroe Doctrine blocking European powers from intervening in the Americas. By 1866, in the face of U.S. pressure, France withdrew its support for Maximillian. Ultimately he was captured by the Republican forces under Benito Juarez and executed. His wife Charlotte, who had gone back to Europe on her own to plead their case in both Paris and the Vatican, was considered mentally unstable and not told of her husband’s death. Instead she spent the next 60 years living in insane asylums.

OK, but back to the castle. Beautiful location, right on the coast and really wonderful restoration work with the wall paper and furnishings throughout much of the castle authentically Maximillian’s. One small section of the castle had been renovated in the 1930s by some Italian Duke who had been given the property and was somewhere between depressing and hideous. Fortunately the bulk of the property retains its historic presence. Oh, and the park surrounding the castle was huge, beautiful, and peaceful. All in all a worthy morning’s outing.

Otherwise there wasn’t a lot to do in Trieste. We tried to find good restaurants but the cuisine of the region just doesn’t match the rest of Italy. We did laundry – that’s always exciting – and did some shopping to prepare for the remaining seven weeks of the trip but all in all it was less exciting than we’d hoped our one stop in Italy for the year would be.

Next it’s on to Croatia: one stop on the beach and another in lake country before we start a two-week boat/bike trip in Split.

Very near the main square is this canal that runs from the sea to … nowhere as far as we could tell. Just a couple hundred meters before it just ended. Not sure what it was all about but it was at least pretty.

Nearly every item on every menu we saw was seafood. Most of it was beautifully prepared and presented but ultimately not that good. This was an exception, a great seafood mix.

Here I am at a sidewalk restaurant waiting for lunch


This was a classic Trieste restaurant. Had a good reputation, good reviews, nice setting … and bland food. Beautifully presented but kind of flavorless. There was a family of four sitting next to us, parents and two young adolescent kids. Those kids were not going to try a damned thing at the restaurant. They were, however, determined to show their parents and anyone around how completely bored they were with the whole thing. How fun!

OK, the food wasn’t great. But espresso in Italy is one of the great treats on earth.

A street scene on the way to dinner one evening


A lot of sailboats in the harbor


The view from our balcony our final morning. Neither ship was there the night before but when we saw these two tied up in the morning we realized the old town area would be swarmed with hordes in a couple hours. Seemed like a good time to get the heck out!

Bohinj

Posted by Jim St. George on July 5, 2022
Posted in: Europe, Slovenia. 1 comment

Beautiful Lake Bohinj

Our last stop in Slovenia was two nights at Lake Bohinj. A quick drive from Bled, Lake Bohinj is a little deeper in the mountains, a little higher in elevation, and fully twice the size of Lake Bled. It is, in fact, the largest lake in the country, situated in Slovenia’s largest national park. OK, it’s the only national park in Slovenia. It may not be quite as beautiful as Bled, but surrounded in mountains as it is it’s a pretty good stop for a couple days.

What else to note about Bohinj? Definitely another good lake for swimming: even Mark went in a few times. Given that nearly all our beach time over the years has been in oceans and seas, we were both amused to note how much less buoyant fresh water is than salt water. Who knew?

Mark sent me a selfie while I was quite a bit further up the lake to show that he indeed was enjoying the water

We did one really good hike, some four miles up into the mountains to a gorge and the Mostnice waterfall. Now to be honest the gorge was all but invisible; there were times when it was apparent that there might be a stream down there somewhere but you could never really see it. And the waterfall was, well, decidedly modest, a creek running over some rocks. The hike itself, though, irrespective of the anticlimactic destination, was beautiful: some 90 minutes of alternating open fields with views of the mountains and then deep in forests. And the entire outbound trail utterly on our own; we got out pretty early and had the trail to ourselves. On the return there was the occasional hiker headed in, but we had it to ourselves going in.

Mark headed up to the waterfall. Or perhaps I should say the “waterfall.”

OK, one weird thing about the hike. When you leave the little town by the lake headed north, the road on both the paper map the hotel gave us with the trail marked and on Google Maps was labeled Stara Fužina, Old Fužina. Fair enough. But literally every other road up there, every time there was a fork or alternative road, was called Stara Fužina. Literally every road. Bizarre. It’s as though some local traveled outside of the region and got confused with all these roads using different names. Solution? All roads use the same name. As we passed through a little village along the way you would see an address, like 96 Stara Fužina. How is that supposed to distinguish it from all the other 96 Stara Fužinas? Damned if we know.

So that’s Slovenia. Great food, really good wine, beautiful lakes, great hiking, friendly locals, lively little capital. Nothing not to like. It’s funny to think that little more than 30 years ago this was a sad Communist, significantly dysfunctional place. Glad things got straightened around for our visit!

Tomorrow morning we’re off to Trieste where we’ll have lunch in the little northeastern corner of Italy. Now that’s exciting.

The view from our room. These were pretty much the first real clouds we’ve seen in our week here. Not at all unwelcome as opposed to some of the 90 degree days we’ve had.


We would lie on the pebbles at lakeshore reading and these cute little duckies would just swim right up to make friends


The couple hikes we’ve done in the region have been remarkably well signed. Little danger of getting lost here.


Sometimes the path was straight and open and sunny and reasonably flat


And sometimes winding and forested and cool


Grand vistas


And here I am at the apex of our hike. I’m literally like 10 yards or less from the waterfall. Yeah, that’s a pretty lame waterfall.


And the food! Our first night we were really struggling to find a decent place and decided to give Pri Lovcu a shot. I ordered lamb and asked if I could have vegetables instead of potatoes. So they served these elegant and perfectly grilled veggies. Nice service!


And the appetizer: a little trout carpaccio with trout roe. Really didn’t expect anything this elegant but we weren’t complaining.


One last shot of the hike to Mostnice

And a final early morning view of Lake Bohinj from the far side