First stop Santiago

The Uber driver was on time and then it began to go wrong! The keyboard on the garage door didn’t work!! It turned out to be a dead battery. I had to scramble around to find a screwdriver and new battery. All’s well that ends well. we got to the airport with time to spare and toasted at the Atwater Brewery. Then it was 15 hours of flying….. first to Dallas then a plane change to Santiago(a red eye arriving at 9am). This is a trip organized by Viking and the Viking rep was there waiting for us. We had 3 hours at the hotel then a 3 hour tour of Santiago.

Our trip finished in Athens back in October. I have to give closure to this trip as we are about to embark on another trip next week. Seeing Olympia and the site of the first Olympics was fascinating. The Parthenon in Athens was also fantastic. Patty is pointing to the spot where the summer Olympic torch is lit every year and then it starts its journey to the current Olympic Games site.This arch is where the spectators (men only back in the day)and athletics walked thru to compete on the track

It’s 193 feet long and 35 feet wide and they pack lots of nice features in a small package! We could get into smaller harbors that big cruise ships could not. Logistics of ports of call were very simple. Very often we just grabbed our ships ID card and walked into town. With a crew of 21 and a passenger capacity of 50 we got to know many of the crew. Our waiters, Moos and Sanjay knew our names, what we drank, and our food preferences by the 3rd day of our 11 day cruise. The cabins were comfortable and kept very clean. Following are some pictures of life on board the ship.

We left the national park and headed to Split, Croatia. High winds closed the freeway and we took a longer route through the mountains using secondary roads. This allowed us to see the aftermath that still exists from the Serbian/.Croatian war of the early 1990s. Small towns and one larger city still show lots of damaged and destroyed homes and businesses. Unemployment is high in this region and more than half of the people did not return after the war. It is a country that is slowly recovering.

Rebuilding of the country includes wind farms and road work.

After a winding mountain road drive we were glad to arrive at our ship, The Athena. She has a capacity of 50 passengers and a crew of 21 plus our two trip leaders.

Our first stop was Plitvice Lakes National Park. A very large(114square mile) park. Beautiful hiking trails…..16 blue turquoise lakes connected by streams and waterfalls. We hiked for 2 hours. Some of us(Rod) hiked a few hundred feet down to the bottom of some falls and back up. Patty was with the group that looked at the lakes and falls from the upper vantage point.

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.