Roadtrippin' Croatia - Part Two

It's been a while....I feel bad for neglecting my blog. I always mean to write but life's been busy. I should start writing again though because I've always liked writing and sometimes find it to be therapeutic. It's my creative outlet, and after a day of working around bankers, I need that! Quick updates on me first:

• I have a job! I went back to working where I was before moving to Germany in January. But soon after, got a new job in the same bank which I start next Monday. How hard was it to get back to work mode after a super long vaca? Don't ask. It still doesn't feel real. But I love that I just need to roll out of bed 20mins before I start and can walk to work with Umair! I don't miss taking the GO trains at all. 
• Our condo is slowly shaping up and coming together nicely. I had to redo it because this condo was Umair's idea of decor.... which isn't bad, it's just guy-ish with lots of brown. So we got the walls redone, new furniture, feature wall etc... it's still a work in progress. I love interior decorating, so it's exciting to pick out pieces and see it all come together. 
• I love our neighbourhood. It's right next to St. Lawrence Market and is in the Old Town so the area has a very charming feel to it. Plus lots and lots of restaurants all around. I'll post pictures once the weather gets better. But our winter days are mostly spent cozying up at home, checking out restaurants, inviting family and friends over. And a long weekend visit to Montreal, which consisted of indulging in gluttony.

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So, where were we? Oh yeah, we had reached Dubrovnik. We drove a little up to get this shot of the orange walled city:

That's the old walled town right there!

So it was a hilly, curvy drive with super narrow roads where I made Umair stop the car for 2 seconds, rushed out to get a few of these shots and back in the car to move further up the hill.

To get up the hill, they had cable cars which most people took. But Umair decided to rough it out by driving up the mountain. With no proper roads or road signs. It was exciting, but I almost felt like the car might just topple over and fall down. Now that would be a story to write home about. Or maybe not.

Trying to take a picture while keeping myself from falling over!

Umair maneuvered through that very nicely while I kept my one eye shut.

But it was all worth it for this beautiful view:

The cable car that most people took up and missed all the fun of driving!

On our way back down.

After admiring the prettiness around us and having lunch overlooking the orange and blue, we drove down to take a walk around the old town and walk the walls.

The tiles, the building....so cool!

Walking the walls of Dubrovnik:

Gorgeous orange and blue city!

the promenade

 After staying 3 days in Dubrovnik, we drove to Split:

the main square in Split with guards!

random fountain which intrigued the kids and Umair alike!

Loved the rugged feel of the town with pops of greens:

And then we made our way back to Munich, a long 9 hour drive....with a lunch stop in Slovenia of course!

Drove up the mountains to Lake Bohinj.

14 countries, 15 months and countless adventures/experiences later...

...it's time to head back to toronto! We are moving to Toronto on September 30th. The past few months have been busy doing moving stuff, taking stuffed suitcases back to Toronto, selling furniture, trying to get our phone, television etc contracts cancelled in German (which resulted in our phones getting cancelled on the 3rd instead of 30th, our TV guys bugging us to not leave them and that they'll give us a better deal - umm, we said we're leaving the country? Or maybe we said something else because it was a German conversation after all).

And also traveling. The first week of September, we took a family trip with Umair's parents down to the South of Spain (I want to blog about it, but that will probably happen after the move!). And just this week, Umair and I went for a 6 day road trip to Croatia (blogging about this too, someday!). In fact, I'm typing this as we drive back to Munich from Croatia through the lovely Slovenia. We've been to Slovenia before. Might stop around a lake for lunch today. (we did stop by the lovely Lake Bohinj that day...yes, I wrote this post a few days ago, and finishing it off today.)

How do I feel about moving back to Toronto? I'm not sure. It's a bittersweet feeling. Toronto is home and being close to family and friends will be awesome. In fact, it'll still be a new experience for me because we'll be living in downtown and I've always wanted to live in downtown, definitely looking forward to that. But Munich is where I started my married life, and that's how I've known my married life to be uptil now. Plus all the traveling. Oh, the traveling....I definitely will miss the spontaneity of getting up and going anywhere for a weekend or even a day trip.

I am absolutely grateful to have had this amazing experience of living in Europe. To be able to learn about different cultures, travel, broaden my horizon just a little bit more. Life has been good, and kind. And a bit surreal and even unreal at times. And I've had my fair share of surreal and unreal -ness! So maybe it's time to finally end my super long vacation and get back to reality. 

Just a few things running across my mind about what I will and will not miss about life in Europe...

I will miss:

• cobblestone streets! even after living in europe for 15 months, I love walking on cobblestones, it makes me feel like I'm in ancient times.
• side street cafes/outdoor cafes/just the European cafe culture in general. Loved living right by one of the main areas of Munich, which is filled with side street cafes and shops. 

• adorable, colourful buildings.

The bright blue! The yellow! Lime green! This is Burano Island, close to Venice. Which we visited again just 2 days ago. And I haven't even blogged about the first time have I? 

• catching a train and being in a different country in as little as couple hours. where the culture is different, the language is different. 
• drinking spezi (mix of coke fanta and sprite) 
• yummy wood oven pizzas because of the many Italians in Munich. I can never go back to Pizza Pizza or Pizza Hut.
• Umair getting ready for work early morning in Barcelona, and then heading straight to work in a couple hours in Munich. Or...having breakfast in Croatia, lunch in Slovenia and dinner in Germany! (which is what we're doing today). 
• randomly deciding on a saturday morning to take a train and be in a medieval little town. 
• seeing so many ahh-mazing sights that my mind boggles at the amount of beauty this world holds. And I have only seen a fraction of it. 
• the mango gelato 15min walk from our place! it's the best mango ice cream i've ever had, and i've tried many around europe. 
• adding to the above point, I'll miss our walks to the ice cream place before or after dinner. there better be a decent (I'm gonna be practical and not expect the awesome gelatos I'm used to here, so decent will do) ice cream place close to our downtown condo. 
• living in a place which is so rich in history. So rich that there are still historical bombs emerging from the city. They found a WW2 bomb like 5 mins from our place last September!! Crazy. 
• Hitting up castles after castles. and randomly finding a castle while driving through Austria.

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• conversing on google translate. did I tell you about the time I got our dish washer fixed by conversing with the German technician through google translate? fun times! 
• wearing my dirndl during oktoberfest and dragging Umair to my favourite ride ever - roller coaster with 5 of those 360degree loops! 
• running in the English Gardens. Which I didn't do as much as I would've liked to. 
• our favourite Mexican take out 5 minutes from our place which was our go-to place when neither of us was in the mood to cook. 
• Umair having a crazy total of 33 days of vacation.

Not gonna miss:

• being away from family and friends.
• fumbling on my phone to translate what I need while standing in the grocery store. 
• trying to figure out what kind of flour to use to make crepes. Because Germans don't do all-purpose flour. Each kind of flour has a different purpose. Duh, you silly North Americans.  
• staying at home while Umair worked away long hours, because I couldn't work/didn't have a work permit. 
• having someone speak to me in a language I don't understand and in return giving them blank stares. I promise I'm otherwise not an unfriendly person! 
• being the only ones to be asked by cops for passport checks on a train filled with people. Train filled with Germans. Minus the one brown couple. Don't tell me those cops weren't racist punks. 
• lack of multiculturalism here.
• Not being able to find a proper salon and spa. Seriously, I had to go through 5 different ones to find about getting eyebrows done because they all had no clue what I was talking about and instead suggested permanent makeup. Um no thanks! Also, have been told by few different girls here that manis and pedis are weird here. So, hello lots and lots of manis and pedis in tdot!
• asking for something at a store in germany and when words would fail me, using my hands to explain what I want, feeling like a 3 year old. 

There might be more....but I think this is it for now. I started writing this post like 5 days ago, and just getting around to posting it. Moving is no fun at all! And for some very strange reason, we have a lot of stuff. Like... A LOT OF STUFF. It's never ending. I'm not sure how or why. 

I blame it on Umair's eccentric shoe collection. 

PS- I will still continue writing here, about the travels I haven't written about, life in downtown Toronto, and what the future is looking out to be. 

Slovenia: Little Wonder of Europe

One random day:

Umair: Let's go to Ljubljana.
Me: Lbuj...jnan...what??
Umair: Ljubljana, it's the capital of Slovenia.
Me: Oh...Slovenia.

Slovenia. You know the small country that was once a part of Yugoslavia? Yes, no one really talks about Slovenia. And if you're visiting Europe, Slovenia will most likely not be in your itinerary. It never crossed our minds either. We've done Czech Republic within Eastern European countries. And we wanted to visit Hungary and Croatia. But Slovenia? 

You know when you walk into something not expecting much but then stumble upon something amazing? That is how I feel about Slovenia. The countryside is beautiful with lush greens, blue lakes and the Julian Alps. The capital, Ljubljana, is a perfect palette of pastels and charm. 

Our trip was a short weekend trip - 1.5 days. We took the night train and arrived to Ljubljana at 6AM. After checking in, instead of catching up on our sleep, we decided to take the 8AM bus to Lake Bled. We wanted to see as much as we could in the little time that we had.

Lake Bled is a small lake, bordered by Julian Alps with a castle perched high on a mountain, and a tiny island with a church. It is about 60km from Ljubljana.

Castle perched on top, and Julian alps behind.

We got there at 9.30, so it was not crowded. It was a warm and nice day, and as soon as I stepped out of our bus, I could almost feel fresh, alpine-ish air all around me. It's so lovely and serene, just strolling around the lake. 

To get to the small island with a church, you take a pletna, gondola like boats, because motor boats and ferries are not allowed on this lovely lake. 

Pletna

It takes about 20 minutes to get to the island. The island is tiny, it has a set of staircases leading up to the church. 

After spending about 30 minutes on the island, we took our pletna back to the main land. Next up was Vintgar gorge, which was really my number one thing to do in Slovenia. We had limited time, and the buses running to Vintgar gorge had not-very-helpful schedules. To add, no bus actually went to the gorge, you had to walk 20 minutes in the countryside to get to the gorge. Which was fine.  

Until we got there, and realized we were in countryside. All alone. With cows. And no directions or signs leading to Vintgar. Which made me wonder....

Me: How come it's just the two of us going to see the gorge? Surely people want to see the gorge??
Umair: Hmm, maybe it's too early in the morning?
*Two cars pass by us*
Both of us: Oh right, we are in the countryside, WHO walks around countryside? You drive. Duh! 

But there is something so peaceful and lovely about walking in the countryside, lost, asking for directions from any living soul we can find. If we weren't so short on time, I would've loved to explore more Slovenian countryside on foot.

Julian Alps, so pretty.

Alps peaking through the lush greens.

Walking in crazy heat, completely lost, uphill, downhill, short on time....I mumbled to myself that the gorge better be worth all this effort.

And then we were there. And yes, the parking lot of the gorge had ton and ton of cars. Was it worth all the effort and running around? Well, the pictures speak for themselves. 

It's a 1.6km gorge, with wooden bridges and walkways built around the rocks to walk on. It was heavenly. 

Because we were there early during the day, it wasn't so crowded. Or else, I imagine it to be pretty difficult walking around. It gets really narrow in some parts so traffic coming from both sides cannot walk at the same time. And for tall people like me, I had to constantly be aware of the rocks above me so not to bang my head on them. It was very hard to be aware though, I couldn't take my eyes off the water. The gorge ends with a waterfall.

So out of this world, the feeling when walking through the gorge. All you heard was the sound of rushing water, birds chirping, and footsteps on the wood. I had just started envisioning me living on the gorge...

....when I was brought back to the world by Umair's hurried voice stating we had to get back to our bus. Oh right. Get back to the real world. 

So off we went walking through the up and down hills of the beautiful Slovenian countryside to catch our bus. 

Back in Ljubljana, we set off to explore the tiny city. You know what I said about having no expectations and stumbling upon something amazing? Slovenia can make you feel that way not once but many times.

Ljubljana is a very small city, we covered it all by foot. Apparently tourists can't even take public transport easily because payments are made through cell phones. Strange. 

I love the feeling of starting to explore a new city, not knowing what it has to offer (okay I have a fairly good idea because I do my research before going, but still). So we were walking to the city centre, when we encountered the first of the many bridges - the Dragon bridge. 

The street led us to Ljubljana's main square, Presernov Trg, where sits an adorable pink Baroque church, adjacent to the Triple Bridge.

The church

Triple Bridge taken from the steps of the church. It's not as clear, but there's three bridges connecting the streets.

My favourite part of Ljubljana was the cafe culture. Rivers flow in many European cities; Paris, Florence, Prague, Salzburg and many many more....but what I loved about Ljubljana's river and bridges was that on both sides of all the bridges were cobblestone streets lined with cafes after cafes. It was a pedestrian only zone. It gave the city such a charming vibe.

Another thing I loved was the pastel palette of the city. The pink church, the buildings in old town, Ljubljana is all pastels. They even had little pink benches around.

Absolute love! I am so grateful that I got a chance to live in Europe, because it just opens doors to so many beautiful places, which I would otherwise have not been able to visit. Slovenia is an absolute gem. And after recently being to Italy, Slovenia was such a contrast in terms of tourist population. I actually liked it - less people around, a more relaxed feel, and of course, cheaper prices! Slovenians all speak such fluent and perfect English, something that really isn't as common in Germany, or at least in Munich. 

Clear reflection of the church and triple bridge at night, beautiful .

PS - it's pronounced Lyublyana.