Slovenia

Slovenia is a small country that touches the Alps and has a small coast line on the Mediterranean.

It is bordered by Italy, Croatia, Hungary, and Austria.

It's breathtakingly beautiful and very interesting to boot.

I'll share some pictures, but they really won't do it justice.

Oh and flying in over the Alps was beautiful.

First stop was the capital, Ljubljana (Lub ee lana).

 Buckets of sauerkraut. Mmm

The Christmas decorations were great and the small river city was very vibrant for New Years Eve.

Slovenia really should be called the land of hot dogs for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Another common kind of meat there is... ahem, horse.
We may or may not have tried it. It may or may not have tasted very gamey or much like venison.
It was a one time bite for me. Been there, done that.

 

Then at midnight, the firework show started. 

Apparently there are no firework laws in Slovenia because in addition to the official show,

everyone was setting off their own all around us. 

We're not talking about sparklers, folks.

We're talking fairly large explosives that are being set off all around us.

There was one very close to us that we could feel. 

As in, we got kind of thrown around by it. 

It was Nuts. We've never experienced anything like it.

On New Year's day we headed out to the Postojna Caves.

It is a network of 20 kilometers of tunnels and passageways.

It was LARGE.

You start by taking a train about two miles in and then walk by foot another mile or so. 

It's a world heritage site and quite impressive.

Then we moved on to a little lake town called Bled.

Via this interesting train.

Neil doesn't look so sure of this...

It was a ghost town of a popular train station.

But we finally made it in and are sure glad we did. 

It was stunning. 

While at the Bled Castle, we met up with Andre the Monk.

He taught me how to bottle, cork and seal some wine.

We took a small boat out to the island. 

Neil wanted a pony ride, but they told him he was too big.

So we headed into the mountains for some skiing to finish off the trip.

It was a really fun trip to ring in 2011. Which is sure to be a great year!