2018.09.25/26 – Ottawa (CA) – Zagreb (Croatia) – The weekend prior to our departure was rather unusual as a series of tornadoes hit the Ottawa/Gatineau region late Friday afternoon. The tornadoes left a large number of households without electrical power. Although we had been bracing ourselves for a few days of power outage, in the end, our home was without power for only 24 hours. On Sunday, we drove to Kingston to visit Victoria who started her second year at Queens University. The unfortunate aftermath of the power outage was that our home server had not been shutdown properly. After spending most of Monday trying to fix the server, to allow it to start-up other virtual servers, we had resigned ourselves to the fact that we would unlikely be posting any of our travel journal entries for this trip.

A good friend drove us to the bus terminal where we took a bus for the Montreal airport. The bus ride was slower than expected as it serviced local communities along the way. Upon our arrival at the airport, we printed our luggage tags and dropped our bags at the Air Transat counter. After our security screening, we had one last coffee for the road. Our flight to Zagreb was not a direct one as we flew first to Toronto with a short stop over long enough for a quick evening meal. After boarding and the airplane doors finally closed, Jenny and I were relieved that we had a vacant seat beside us. We were surprised when we got served a complimentary meal well after 9:30pm. The night flight passed quickly for me as I managed to get more sleep than usual possibly due to my trial use of an eye mask. Jenny might be considering its use on the return flight.

The processing by the Croatian immigration was efficient and quick as our flight appeared to be the only one at the time. We visited a bank machine before exiting the airport. We easily located the shuttle bus meant to bring us to the downtown bus terminal some 19kms away. Once at the bus terminal, we opted to walk to the train station with our backpacks. It was a much longer walk that we had expected (~20 mins). We easily secured train tickets for our next travel segment to the capital city of Slovenia, Ljubljana. We introduced ourselves to Zagreb’s tram service and boarded one which brought us to our accommodation where we would be staying for next two nights. After walking up two floors, we discovered that our apartment reception was only open from 2pm to 8pm. We opted to wait 30 mins at a nearby cafe. We managed to check-in on time. We had a delicious evening meal at a nearby grill restaurant that had been recommended to us. Our first impressions of Zagreb were very positive. We seemed to notice on the streets a lot of younger folks everywhere. We guessed by now, given our retirement status, that most people look younger than us! Smoking seemed to be very popular and even trendy – ash trays were everywhere and patios were overflowing with smokers.

2018.09.27 – Zagreb (Croatia) – It seemed like we needed to recover from the jet lag as we slept until noon. We spent the afternoon on a self-guided walking tour that allowed us to see most of Zagreb’s tourist sites. Before heading back to our accommodation, we stopped at a cafe. Along the way, we bought a couple of beers at a grocery store. While drinking some beer, I managed to remotely connect to our server back home and fixed the earlier issue caused apparently by the tornado power outage. In the early evening, we walked back to the city center in search of a restaurant. As expected, the days were relatively warm (mid/low 20C) while the evenings were cooler.

2018.09.28 – Zagreb (Croatia) – Ljubljana (Slovenia) – We dropped by a local bakery for breakfast. We returned to our accommodation and stayed there until our 10am check-out. We took the tram to the train station. As we arrived early, we had another coffee at one of the many cafes around the train station. We boarded the train and sat in a compartment with a Chinese mother and her daughter. The daughter had just wrapped up six years of study in Nice (France) and they were now traveling in Europe for six weeks. Jenny enjoyed conversing in Mandarin throughout the 3 hour train ride. In route we experienced having our passports stamped out of Croatia and stamped in to Slovenia. Following our arrival in Ljubljana, we walked a short distance from the train station to our hotel. After a brief rest, we returned to the train station area in search of the best mode of transportation for our next travel segment. Although our next destination town was only 1.5 hrs drive away, the bus option was to take 5.5 hrs while the train option was 3.5 hrs. We opted for train tickets to Rijeka as it would offer a better departure time. We stopped briefly at a travel agency to look at prices and availability of day trips to the Postojna Cave and Predjama Castle. We had our evening meal at regional Slovenian restaurant. We enjoyed strolling the pedestrian streets along the river. Back at the hotel, we purchased online tickets for tomorrow’s visit of the Postojna Cave, one of the largest cave in Europe. Because of the 9kms distance between the cave and the Predjama Castle, we were not sure we could secure a reasonably priced means of transportation, hence we opted to play by hear once we got there.

2018.09.29 – Ljubljana (Slovenia) – We had a filling breakfast at our hotel before making our way to the bus station. We purchased tickets and boarded the bus with many other tourists headed to the cave some 50 mins drive away. At the Postojna bus terminal, a small group of folks walked the 1.5 kms to the cave’s site. Along the way, we made clear our interest to visit the castle and our willingness to share a taxi with anyone else interested. Our online purchase allowed us to skip the longer ticket queue. The cave visit brought us up to 5 kms into the cave’s 25 kms network. A small electric train of 100 passengers covered the first 3.2 kms. Everyone was impressed by the size of the cave as well as its rather well preserved state. At the end of the cave visit, those interested to visit the castle regrouped and requested a taxi from the ticket office. We were six to board a mini-van taxi for the 9 kms drive to the Predjama Castle, which held a Guinness record for the largest cave castle (possibly the only one!). We managed to complete our visit and get dropped off at the bus terminal in town for the 4:10 pm bus back to Ljubljana. Back at hotel, we rested a bit before heading out again for our evening meal. We enjoyed once again strolling along the pedestrian streets boarding the river.

2018.09.30 – Ljubljana (Slovenia) – We started our day again with our hotel breakfast with plenty of coffee. We set out from our accommodation late morning and walked up to the top of the hill where the Ljubljana Castle was built. After spending a couple of hours visiting the castle grounds, we headed back to our hotel for a late afternoon rest. As it was Sunday, all the businesses and some restaurants were closed but we, nonetheless, managed to have some good pizza for our evening meal. After another good stroll along the river, we retreated to our hotel room for an earlier night sleep.

2018.10.01 – Ljubljana (Slovenia) – Rijeka (Croatia) – We had a late start in the morning. We skipped the breakfast in lieu of a lunch. After leaving our luggage with the hotel reception, we headed out, one last time, to explore the city streets. We stopped at cafe along the way. We had our lunch meal at a Mexican restaurant. The city was much livelier on a weekday. We later picked up our luggage at the hotel and walked to the train station. Although we showed up a full hour ahead of time, we almost managed to miss our train. As we waited on a bench at our scheduled train platform, we noticed a train on the track which was scheduled to leave in 20 mins. Unfortunately, we did not realize until 5 mins before departure that our train, a short three carriage train, was already on the track at the other end of the platform facing the other direction. Jenny sprinted with her backpack unto the train like never before. We managed to hop onto the train with a full 3 mins to spare. We had an entire carriage compartment to ourselves. We recognized that the trains here were clearly not as modern as those we’ve used in Western Europe – no power/usb outlets, no food carriage, etc. One of the nice things about traveling was that it forced us to brush up on our geography and history. Over the past two days, we spent a fair amount of time reviewing both to realize that all the countries on our travel itinerary, except for Greece, were part of the former Yugoslavia – duh! We were expecting a similar immigration processing at the border between Slovenia and Croatia as we had encountered on the way from Zagreb to Ljubljana – except that we did not get an Croatian entry stamp in our passports. We hoped we would be allowed out of the country when we traveled further to our next country: Montenegro. We arrived in Rijeka shortly after 6:00pm and walked briskly to our reserved accommodation. The apartment owner was waiting for us on the pedestrian street. We were quite pleased with the well located, large and well equipped apartment. We followed TripAdvisor’s and Lonely Planet’s recommendation for Rijeka’s top restaurant for our evening meal. Unfortunately, it reminded us of a meal in Milan – pricey with small portions. We took advantage to the clothes washer in the apartment for our laundry as even Merino clothes needed to be washed at some point!

2018.10.02 – Rijeka (Croatia) – In Croatia, the bakeries are everywhere. We bought some pastries from a bakery across from our apartment for breakfast. Our first task for the day was to walk to the bus station with the hope of securing bus tickets for our next travel segment. Although we discovered a website that allowed us to buy bus tickets online, it appeared that for some tickets they needed to have the tickets printed before we could board the bus. As we were not traveling with a printer, we thought it would be simpler and cheaper to buy our bus tickets directly from the bus station. Unfortunately, we discovered that it was not the case as in both Slovenia and Croatia it appeared the best way to buy tickets was directly on the bus. Since we still preferred to secure our tickets well ahead of the day of our departure, we had to accept the extra reservation costs. We bought a daily city bus pass and boarded a bus which brought us to the Rijeka castle at the top of hill overseeing the city. We greatly enjoyed the castle surroundings. The visit was even more enjoyable as it was free. Back in the city center, we visited another tunnel, similar to the one in Zagreb, that was constructed during WWII, and was meant to be used as a shelter during aerial bombings. We had our evening meal at a nice tapas restaurant.