We took a bus ride into the countryside about one hour to the city of Varazdin. A quiet beautiful city with a nice outdoor market, old castle, an angel museum(can’t hurt to hang out with angels), and wonderful vineyards. This area was settled in the 6th century. It is much different than Zagreb, the unemployment is less than 1%(hard to imagine, fake news??), more bicycles than any other town in Croatia, and a great restaurant at the vineyard that we visited.

Beautiful old city, capital of Croatia. Very good public transportation. We rode the bus and the trolley all by ourselves and had no trouble getting around town.

We had a good presentation about current brain drain in Croatia. A professor told us about the young educated people can’t get jobs. Since joining the European Inion in 2013 350,000 people have left Croatia. Mainly young people with an education are leaving to find jobs. Only 57% of 24 to 64 year olds are working.

We saw some interesting museums. Naive Art museum, museum of broken relationships were just a couple of them.

Cool castle in Postojna, Slovenia. It was built into a mountainside incorporating caves in its design

A 10 minute train ride into one of the worlds largest caves open to the public. Slovenia has 9000 caves.Fun dinner! Did you know that the accordion is the national musical instrument of Slovenia?

unique library design in Ljubljana (capital of Croatia). Doors are heavy because learning can be difficult. Then the entry way is dark, leading to bright wall inside. Knowledge leads you out of the dark into the light. Look at the windows, designed to look like an open book. Lots of thought went into this design.

Other interesting facts of Slovenia ……

Worlds highest ski jump, 900 feet(lots of Olympic gold and silver medals in ski jumping).

National flower is the carnation.

Restrooms are free in Ljubljana(unlike a lot of Europe) . This has kept the homeless and poor from peeing in the streets. A good idea!Then it was off to Croatia! We’re now in Zagreb for three nights. We did an orientation walk with our trip leader then found an outdoor restaurant for pizza, beer and wine.

At Detroit Metro Airport, the journey begins!

3day pre trip in Slovenia….our trip leader, Petra takes us on orientation walk of Bled, Slovenia. A beautiful little mountain city. We could be in Oregon cascade mountains.lake Bled has…. kayaking, rowing, hiking, biking, trout fishing , ski jumping and moregot my CBD balm, helps my arthritic hands a lot.

pizza, two glasses of wine each… $25euro , about 1/2 the price of pizza vino or Nassau grill back home.

Rod and Patty are heading out tonight to checkout Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, and we then spend a few days in Athens, Greece.

Jimi Hendrix frequented Essaouira In 1969, just a year before died. Then it was off to Casablanca for our last two days.

The highlight of our last day in Casablanca was the tour of the Hassan II Mosque. It is the largest Mosque in Africa, 5th largest in the world. The minaret is the tallest at 210 meters. It is the only mosque in the world that allows non-Muslims to enter. Not required, but out of respect, our female travelers covered their heads while in the mosque.

A wonderful trip and our first exposure to a Muslim country. We were well received by all the people we came into contact with. We traveled over 2000 miles in 25 days and got a good look at life in Morocco. Typical of our travels, the people we met have similar goals and desires…, a peaceful, happy, and healthy life for their family and friends.

Thanks to our trip leaders, Noree and Naima for showing us your country and introducing us to your people. Thanks also to our friends Rick and Sharon for joining us on this adventure and we look forward to future travels with our friends.

Shokran(thank you),

Rod and Patty

A great tour of the commercial fishing marina. A very happy, enthusiastic, retired fisherman showed us around for 1 and 1/2 hours. I could have spent all morning with him

A beautiful seaside city with a massive fortification around another old Medina with lots of shops and restaurants. It’s now a resort town. On the beach wind surfers and kite surfing compete with horseback and camel rides.

The food…. we had lunch at a small kiosk. A hole in the ground about 8 feet deep and a slow cooked goat…. we(not Patty)ate like the locals and survived to tell about it. Tasty and hot, figured it was hot enough…. no body got sick 😊

it was grab a piece of bread and put some goat meat inside and eat it. We used our fingers only, no utensils!! yes, that’s a delicacy, a goats headPizza was our default lunch and dinner on numerous occasions … survival food

A Medina(old town) like no other! Busy merchants and performers. Snake charmers, trained monkeys, street performers, food vendors and more sell their talents !