Back to Slovenia!

I loved Slovenia so much I had to go back for more after Budapest. This time I hit up the hip and happenin' capital, Ljubljana (top 2 photos). My travel mate, that I met in Budapest, made the day long train trip go very fast...as I think we talked the entire 8 hours. Let me quickly digress...this is what I love about traveling solo, you simply meet more people! She had a great story and was in the middle of a similar life transition (moving from London back to her home country, Australia). I believe that you meet people for a reason and in this case we realized that we aren't alone in our free-spirited, nomadic, yet grounded way of living life. When we arrived in Ljubljana we kicked up our heels and enjoyed the under-rated Slovenian red wine.

Then, I made my way to Piran (bottom 3 photos), a sweet little Venetian-style peninsula resting on the Adriatic sea. This village is quite special as its Renaissance style buildings nestle up to the narrow cobblestone streets and the sea breeze gently rocks the sailboats and fishing boats in the port. Everyone speaks Slovenian and Italian since it is so close to the Italian border, which also means that Italian food is served up. YEAH!

Next stop: Italy!

Happy Birthday in Slovenia!

Mother nature gave Slovenia a gift of the great outdoors and the Slovenian people have worked hard to conserve it. We stayed in Bled, a beautiful town surrounding a lake filled with emerald green water from the Julian Alps that tower proudly in the background. This place is simply beautiful. If you love the nature, you will love this place. We loved it and the hostel, Traveller's Haven, so we extended our stay. On my birthday, we hiked up to the castle (like 4 times), rented a boat and Schanell canoed to the church perched on an island in the middle of the lake while I laid back and enjoyed the ride, and we biked around the lake. My birthday dinner quickly turned into a party with 25 new found English friends that we celebrated with into the wee hours of the morning. They even sang me 'happy birthday', complete with the posh Queen's accent.
On our second day we went on a 12-hour tour of the Triglav National Park hosted by the hip and local tour company, 3glav Adventures. We hiked to the highest point in Slovenia, 2864 m (9396 ft), jumped off a bridge about 20 m (65 ft) into the COLD emerald Soca river, swam under the Kozjak waterfall, snapped photos of the Boka waterfall, and hiked to the source of the Soca river. At the end of another adrenalin-filled day, 'that is the way we roll', our (very attractive) Slovenian guide gave us a gift, a local Slovenian beer, as we took the car-train ride back to Bled. A great day indeed!