morning listening to the thunder and rain and hoping it will blow over
later so we can get out on our bikes.
Our first stop in Slovenia was at Ptuj, a thermal spa town in the East of
the country. The campsite was ruinously expensive but included access to a
water park/spa. We had a great afternoon exploring the town, which is one
of the oldest here and very pretty followed by a fun evening on the water
slides. I have never been a strong swimmer so always avoided them in the
past but after being called a wus too many times I summoned up some courage
and discovered just how much fun they are!
We are now staying in a place called Velenje, which is one of the most
beautifully soviet towns we have come across in all our travels. There is a
small old town, very run down and semi-deserted squeezed in between a
castle topped hill and a huge area of post 1950s tower blocks. In the
centre of the tower blocks is a huge empty square surrounded by massive
statues and suitably 60s civic buildings. However it seems to be quite an
affluent town, with lots of fancy shops and cafes and felt quite
comfortable wandering around last night. We also discovered a dry ski jump
slope, and watched the guys doing practice jumps just as if it was winter!
It looked quite scary, can't say I fancied having a go.
We have yet again changed our route plans, as the day before we planned to
drive into Croatia I thought I would just check our documents, only to
discover that our breakdown cover is strictly EU only, hence not Croatia.
We were quite dissapointed not to be off to spend September playing on the
beach but the extra cover was just too expensive. Will have to put it on
the future holiday list instead. We now plan to spend the next few weeks
exploring Slovenia and playing in the mountains and lakes of the Julian
Alps before heading into Italy for a grand tour down to Sicily and back.
Well thats the plan currently althoughlooking back through these entries
most of the plans I have talked about so far have changed lots.
We have spent alot of time thinking about our route the last few weeks as
we were also considering going through Romania and Bulgaria to Greece. We
discounted this for a couple of reasons; we were tempted to do it because
it would look good on the map when we get back to say we had driven to the
Black Sea, the sites in Romania are quite limited and not in great
locations for the things we wanted to see and we were actually not that
bothered about Greece! Again though Romania is one to go on the list as the
pictures of the mountains and buildings look fantastsic, and obviously now
having reently read dracula I want to see Bran castle!
Ah well its still raining so probably time to get the easystitch (my cool
portable sewing machine which has been really handy) out and finish off a
pair of trousers I am making. That bike ride is looking less and less
likely as we still can't see the mountains.
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