Weekend West Balkan Trip

Hello Everyone in Blog land!  I hope that you have been keeping warm.  Things here have been quite busy.  Last weekend, a friend came into town and we planned a spontaneous road trip.  We had been thinking of going to Transylvania, but realized that the "good" parts (according to Lonely Planet) were an 8-10 hour drive.  So we decided to go to Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. 

Generally, when you hear Croatia, you think about the stunning beaches.  I definitely want to go there too, but since it is January, we decided to stick closer to home.  It was a 3 1/2 hour drive from Belgrade to Zagreb.  We got there late on Friday.  We decided to walk a bit to see the city and have a drink.  We found this hole-in-the wall place that was extraordinarily smoky, but had good beer and music.  The funniest part of the evening was when "Born in the USA" came on, and everyone started dancing.  I would bet money that I was the only person in the place that was actually born in the USA!

On Saturday, we walked around Zagreb.  Unfortunately, it was raining really hard, so I didn't get a lot of photos.

This was a city park in Zagreb.  It was raining and about 34F.  Miserable weather, and the exact opposite of my previous Saturday in Bangkok!

This was a street market

La La La

I'm glad I don't have to carry my groceries this way!

Zagreb was a really nice city, but we were cold and ready to explore more, so we decided to drive to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.  It was only about 60 miles away.  Unfortunately, there was a very long line at the border, and we had to wait for 1 hour.  Slovenia is in the EU, so potentially they were being more strict with border control (though they were not strict when we crossed).

Aside from the difficult pronounciation, Ljubljana was great!  It feels very much like a small city, not like the capital city.  There was a lot of snow, and we enjoyed walking around in the evening.  The snow made everything quite interesting.

A canal

We took a funicular up to the castle.  You can see the snow and the fog.  The temperature was hovering around freezing.

Ljubljana from the castle

Christmas light display with a science theme.  There was the galaxy (top left), XY chromosome (not shown), and you can guess what this is a picture of!

After a quiet night in Ljubljana, we decided that we wanted to get back to nature by going up to Bled.  This is in Slovenia, almost to the Austrian border.  It is in the beginning of the Alps and is about 60km from Ljubljuana.  We arrived around 9:30am, and it was very foggy.  There is a lake that we wanted to hike around that is 6km (3.7 miles).  And Bled Castle (Bledgrad) is at the top of a big hill.  We started by hiking around the lake.  There was about a foot of snow.

Bled Cathedral on an island.  In the summer you can canoe to it and tour/hike around.

Another angle

Is this a post card?  No it's just Bled castle.  We decided to climb to the top.  I was a little nervous, but after last weeks climb in Thailand, I was up for it.

Here was the rock face as we approached the top

Here are the Alps and Bled lake from the top

The views here were amazing, and it is so cool to think that we hadn't even heard of this place 24 before coming, but it ended up being the highlight of the trip.  I'm really enjoying the smallness of Europe.  Bled was a 5 hour drive from Belgrade, which would get you almost to Fredricksburg in Texas, to Tulsa, to New Orleans if leaving from Dallas.  But we crossed into 3 countries, saw three capital cities, and the Alps.  It was a great road trip.

We finished the weekend by walking around Belgrade, so we could officially say we saw 3 capital cities over the weekend.  It was a lot of fun and a great way to see many different places.  If any of you have suggestions for sightseeing in the Balkans, please let me know.

Enjoying life right now and Happy Serbian (Orthodox) New Year!