Saturday, May 18, 2013

CROATIA AND SLOVENIA, via Germany and Northern Italy

We're flying to Frankfurt May 28 to spend a few days with Robert and Gerlinde, travelling to the wine region of Rheinland-Pfalz. On June 3, we catch the train to Trento to visit Flavio and Cristina on their herb farm, Solerbe, in Trentino, Northern Italy. They are planning to drive with us to CROATIA for a few days in Trieste en route to Istrea (Pula) and maybe some islands. We will then make our own way down to the Dalmatian Coast (probably Split and Korcula Island) to Dubrovnik. We fly from there to the capital, Zagreb. The flight on Croatia Air restricts us to 15 kg checked baggage so that will determine how much (or little) we take on this trip. We'll let you know how we make out with this challenge, but we have purchased Rick Steves' backpacks for this. It will certainly make travelling easier considering we'll be on the move every 2-3 days or so.

From Zagreb we train to Ljubljana, where we pick up a car to tour the small mountainous country of SLOVENIA. Our plans are to visit some gentle mountain slopes, passes, caves and lakes. Skofja Loka, Lake Bled, Vrsic Pass, Triglav National Park, Soca Valley. We'll turn in the car and relax on Slovenia's tiny coast at Piran for the last couple of days before flying home Trieste-Munich-Vancouver just in time for Canada Day. As always, we'll enjoy sampling the local food, wine and meeting the people. 

Here is a small map with more destinations than we'll visit, to give you an idea: