Balkan Adventures

DISCLAIMER - In this blog I refer to the area I am writing about as the former Yugoslavia region. The region is actually called the Balkans (where there are numerous small countries) but some of you may not know where that is.

So former Yugoslavia region. Ideal vacation place? Not for me. I assumed there would be sandbags on the street corners and a large military presence. Boy was I wrong. The region is beautiful but the history is sad (and oh so complicated).

Ljubljana was rainy but the downtown had some interesting structures. My favourite one was the Dragon Bridge which had dragon statues on each end and decorative lampposts across it. There was also a massive old pink church at the centre of the city with nothing very interesting inside for me. It was beautiful to walk through the old downtown at night when everything was lit up. I enjoyed seeing the mountains and lakes north of Ljubljana and had fun hiking up to see the Savica Waterfall.

Zagreb was one of my favourite cities because of the huge market in the middle of the city.  There were so many colours and smells especially in the seafood section where they were selling rays! There was an interesting church that had a brightly coloured roof that formed the country's flag. Did you know that before they had actual money in Croatia, they used pine martin fur (kuna) as their currency? When they switched over to coins, they kept the name so now their currency is called kuna.

Sarajevo was like going back in time to when we were in Istanbul. The city's history is horribly sad and I'm not going to talk about it in this blog. The old city was split into two sections - the newer Austrian section and the older Turkish section which reminded me of Istanbul with all its little cobblestone streets and shops. It was fun to walk down the streets looking into the shops and there was even a building set up like a bazaar. The Austrian and Turkish sections of the Old City met at a line with the words 'Sarajevo Meeting of Cultures' written on it. An added bonus while we were there was that we went to go see the movie 'Murder on the Orient Express' which was English with Bosnian subtitles.

We also stopped in Mostar to see the famous bridge and then we were off to Dubrovnik.

Though this region's history is very sad, it is a beautiful area to visit and people are very friendly.

Exploring Northern Italy

MAMMA MIA!!! What a great time I had in northern Italy. I went to the Tower of Pisa and tried to help the people keep it upright but that didn't work. We may have made it worse! Whoopsie!

After staring at the tower and mimicking all the other tourists who were trying to push it back up, we went to Lucca where we jumped on bicycles and went for a ride around the walls of the old city. Since that wasn't enough, we drove through the streets on the bumpy cobblestones. I found out that there was to be a Comic-Con there and we just missed it.

Our next stop was the Cinque Terre and I had a great time exploring the five different villages. I enjoyed climbing up to different viewpoints as well as swimming in the ocean by our Levanto apartment.

We took the windy road to Bellagio on Lake Como and there we explored the town like we did five years ago. We found out that our host Fausto was a glassblower and that he created ornaments that he sold to Winners in Canada and TJMaxx in the United States. There were several other towns around the lake that we visited by ferry. Fausto also showed us where he packaged the ornaments and showed them to the buyers. He even gave us one so we will have to be careful getting it home!

We felt like we were in Switzerland when we traveled to Tyrol. There was nobody there who spoke Italian. They all spoke a German dialect that we could not understand. We spent the days driving high in the mountains and taking lots of pictures. We saw a few deer run across the road and an amazing lake that was half drained. We drove so high that we were surprised to see ski lifts all the way up there.

Our last stop in Italy was Venice and I had a wonderful time walking the streets and across the canals. St. Mark's cathedral was amazing on the inside because there were gold tiles covering the entire ceiling and the walls had mosaics on them. It was incredible to see all the ornaments and decorations on Murano and all the beautiful lace and brightly coloured buildings on Burano. The only problem was that it rained most of the time while we were in Venice. In the end I still enjoyed our time in Venice but I'd like to come back when it's not raining.