Makes Me Wanna Take a Backroad

I am writing this post at great personal risk. IT Manager/Bookie/First Daughter

reminded me that this money-grubbing platform I use to post this blog has limited my monthly emails. I basically have one post a month without paying additional fees. Being somewhat lazy and very cheap - or perhaps very lazy and somewhat cheap - one is all you get. To that end, I am going to try and summarize a two-week trip to Croatia and Slovenia in one all-encompassing post. The risk I take is that more shit might happen in the next 48 hours and I can’t afford and/or am unwilling to post again - unless it’s truly outrageous. Last year after our Backroads trip ended we got bumped from a connecting flight to Buenos Aires but our bags did not. When we finally arrived in BA the next day, my bag was being held together by shrink wrap. I had to cradle it like a baby so all my dirty clothes wouldn’t end up on the floor in baggage claim in Argentina.

Anyway, on with it. As I mentioned before, Kelly and I have been on a two-week vacay with First Brother, Jeff, and Queen Marico I of Los Gatos.

We started in Dubrovnik a beautiful, walled city (where they filmed various scenes in King’s Landing for the Game of Thrones). We did take a guided walking tour of the wall, against the recommendation of native Croat and trip consultant, Alan Lisicak. We did not take the separate GOT tour because Jeff and Marico are uncultured and know nothing about the books or show. After we were done in Old Town we took a cab back to the AirBnB and that when the hijinks began. We got out of the cab and as he drove away, I realized my phone had fallen out in the cab. I tried chasing him down the street, but an old, fat guy is no match for a seasoned cabbie and he was soon out of sight. Thank God for Find My iPhone. We used Kelly’s phone to follow where the cabbie was going. We needed to call an Uber to chase the cab. That’s when Kelly’s phone ran out of battery. Back to the AirBnB, plug the phone in for about 20 minutes, start pinging the phone so the cabbie will hear it and know it’s in his cab, call an Uber and have him take us back to Old Town, where the cab had parked. Meanwhile Jeff is calling the phone to see if the cabbie picks up, but it goes straight to voicemail. As soon as we got the Uber, the cab starts to move. We end up giving Kelly’s phone to the Uber driver who starts a medium speed chase across Dubrovnik. We finally catch up to him and the Uber driver parks right in front of him facing the wrong way so the cabbie can’t get out. He gets out of the cab. He has my phone and he starts yelling at Jeff something along the lines of “that damn thing kept beeping but nobody called. I was ready to break it into a million pieces! Why didn’t anyone call?” I think he really did want to smash it, but in the end he gave us the phone in one piece. At least whenever we got back to the AirBnb, this guy was always waiting for us.

Back to Old Town that evening for one of the best meals at Azur. The restaurant is tucked in an alley in the far southwest corner of the walled city. The main entrance through the walls (the Pile Gate) is on the north side. This is very relevant.

We had a great meal, sitting across from a couple (half our age) that splits time between Canada, Florida and Slovakia. This was a favorite of theirs and they had come back just for the crusted trout. They even gave us a recommendation for another spot that we tried the next evening, which was also very good. After parting ways we got up to leave and make the trek back to the Pile Gate to catch an Uber. We stepped out of the restaurant into what can somewhat understatably be referred to as a torrential downpour. No umbrella. Nothing waterproof. Shoes and other items took two days to mostly dry.

The next day, we drove to Montenegro, risking a hefty fine by crossing the international border without telling the rental car company. In the beautiful Bay of Kotor, the four of us decided we are now yacht people and we made a quick inquiry into this bad boy

Turns out it’s not currently available. The original Kuwaiti owner never took possession. It was sold to a Russian oligarch for a cool $270 million, but promptly seized after the invasion of Ukraine. While its future is tied up in court, it slowly sits in the harbor in Tivat and rusts away. Apparently it could be had for the discounted sum of $150 million now, but it will require a substantial investment in repairs and maintenance. Operating costs are estimated at about $27 million per year. At 353 feet long, there is room for 27 guests in 12 state rooms, along with a crew of 37. We figure we’ll enslave our children to be part of the crew, to keep costs down a bit. We’ll crowdsource the rest.

Pro tip: If you’re ever in Dubrovnik and want to go to Montenegro, don’t drive. At least not until Montenegro is admitted to the EU. You can take a boat and you don’t have to deal with the border crossing. In fairness, we had been told this ahead of time by several people. We still did it.

The next day we headed for Split, but not before passing the second longest existing stone wall in the world in Ston. The Great Wall of China, in total, measures something like 21,000 kilometers. Coming in a close second is the Not-Quite-So-Great Wall of Ston at …. 5 kilometers. It used to be 7 when it was first built.

We also made another verboten detour into Bosnia. In for a penny, in for 2.244 Bosnia-Herzegovina convertible marks. We traveled up to the town of Mostar and saw its famous bridge. Bosnia is predominantly Muslim, so there were many mosques, as well as a bazaar with shops of all sorts. We had been told by trip consultant Alan that we had to have pizza in Croatia. His quote, I believe, was “the Italians invented it, but the Croatians perfected it”. We had already tried it in Dubrovnik. The Bosnian pizza was far superior in both the toppings and the thicker, crispier, non-limp crust.

On to Split for three nights and two days. The first evening, we took a guided tour of Diocletian’s Palace. Split must be the only town in Croatia that doesn’t have a wall, but they do have an Old Town like all the rest and they do have the palace, checking in at over 1700 years old and still in amazingly good shape. The Old Town is mostly within the perimeter of the palace.

Hard to get a picture of the whole palace but we did stumble across this wedding parade while we were in the Old Town

Balkan History Lesson: Generally speaking, the cultural differences between the Balkan nations can be summarized as follows (from the viewpoint of a Croat):

• The Serbs are uneducated losers and everyone hates them. They love Russia.

• The Bosnians are outcasts because they’re mostly Muslim and nobody like them either.

• The Croats are God’s gift and everybody loves them, or so they think. They definitely love themselves.

• There aren’t enough Slovenians in the world to make a difference but - according to the Slovenian history lesson we received - they are smarter and wealthier than everyone else so just leave us the hell alone.

In Split, we spent a day walking through the Marjan park and forest down to the beach, where we decided to double down on our desire to be yacht people.

We went down to a local beach club for a beverage. The term “beach” is generous. Yes, it had many of the elements you would expect. Plenty of sun, people frolicking in the water, dental floss swimwear, etc. But no sand. In fact, I don’t recall seeing any sand on the Adriatic coast of Slovenia or Croatia. Nonetheless, it was a beautiful, warm day. Little did we know it would be the last day that had both of those elements. Our final day we spent in Hvar, an island about an hour by ferry from Split. We wandered around the town and ended up at a beach club, in the rain. Trip Consultant Alan had inisisted we have some Šlivovica, a local plum brandy that is more like drinking gasoline than anything else. We didn’t want to disappoint Al, so we got a round of shots. The camerawork is lacking a bit, but make sure you have the audio on

Back to Split and then it was time to head to Ljubljana (Loo-be-ana OR Loo-bl-yana). Not La-joob-la-jana as we only partially in jest were referring to it before we were properly educated. On the way, we made one final stop in Trogir, because we hadn’t seen a walled city in a couple days and we were feeling empty. We made the mistake of ignoring the advice of Trip Food Consultant, Jason, and ate in the plaza in Trogir. His only advice for us for the entire trip was “whatever you do, don’t eat in a plaza or square. The food is not good”. While we would have been smart to ignore Alan about the Šlivovica, we were not smart to ignore Jason.

Pro Tip: Jason is a foodie. Ignore him at your own peril.

On our drive, we crossed into Slovenia. The weather and terrain changed instantly. Gone was the Mediterranean climate and the red tile roofs. Welcome to Little Austria. Which is appropriate since they were controlled by Austria for about 800 years. Mountains. Alpine villages. Austrian style Catholic churches in every little town.

We made it to Ljubljana without further incident and enjoyed a nice dinner and relaxing evening before starting the headliner portion of our vacay - a 6-day, 5-night bike ride through Slovenia and Croatia.

All in, there were 14 “tourists” and 3 guides. Ana (from Slovenia) and Perri (Scotland) took turns on the road with us while Crespo (Spain) drove the van and moved the gear. In addition to the four of us, there was Mike and Kim, the Ironman and Half-Marathoner from SoCal. Ken and Lori, from paradise, aka Durango, Colorado and clearly accustomed to riding up big hills! Mark and Lisa hailed from Alexandria, Virginia and appear to be spending lots of time on their bikes as they ease into the retirement life. We also had Mark and Anita from the “other” Vancouver. Their daughter drinks their Grey Goose and refills the bottle with water. They never knew because they never drink it. They also didn’t miss an opportunity to explore every town we stopped in. Finally, from Portland, right around the corner from us, were Maria the hazelnut farmer and her son Robert, an aspiring urban planner, just graduated from UCLA and somewhat torn between traveling Europe visiting friends and going home and looking for a job.

From left: Ana, Crespo and Perri - our amazing guides

Clockwise from left: Anita, Mark, Kim and Mike

Clockwise from left: Robert, Mark, Ken, Lori and Lisa.

I just realized Maria isn’t in the picture. Too bad because she’s not in this one either. But please note, I’m repping the alma mater!

True to form, we had fantastic food, stayed in amazing hotels - including Vila Bled in Slovenia, one of 50ish or so homes for Tito back in the day when he was ruler of all the land.

Lake Bled

We stopped at a cheese farm for lunch on Day 2 where a former Backroads guide was selling Slovenia biking jerseys and we learned about the great Tadej (Ta-day) Pogačar, the 2x world champion and 4x Tour de France winner (including this year). The Slovenian national championship race had been held on a mountain that we had just ridden up that morning. The race was 15km (we had bailed after 9km), grades averaged 6-7% and were as high as 14-15% in spots. For comparison, I did the 9km in about 45 minutes with the battery on the first level (Eco). Pogačar did the 15k in 29 minutes. He averaged almost 19mph UP THE F*ING HILL. With all the turns and occasional vehicle traffic, it would have been hard to drive up that hill much faster.

The Slovenian countryside was pristine. After a little rain the first afternoon, we had some sun most days the rest of the way. We just didn’t have much warmth. The wind - my arch nemesis - was present for several days, resulting in a lot more time with the battery on. It was always cold and always in our face. Hmmmm. I see another Blow Me tour coming! (For first-timers, just scroll back a few posts).

Random beautiful stream

Random religious monument. These were in virtually every town and some, like this one, just along the road.

There was also evidence of the war. Fortunately, Slovenia didn’t get much damage from the Balkan war in the early 90’s, but there was evidence of WWII from time to time.

After two nights in Bled, we spent our final night in Slovenia on their small sliver of Adriatic coastline in Portorož. Very kind of Italy and Croatia to allow the Slovenians a tiny view of the water. The town was beautiful, but a bit “bougie” according to Ana. It was already closing down for the season so we definitely didn’t see it at its “bougiest”, but the hotel was excellent and the Michelin star restaurant for dinner …

I had to re-stage these guys after I was done eating

From Portorož, we rode into Croatia and spent our last two evenings at Meneghetti winery near the town of Rovinj. We went into town the first night and ran into Ana, Perri and Crespo so we went and got pizza with them (sorry Alan, it still wasn’t as good as the Bosnian stuff) and heard more of their stories. Ana has been guiding for over 10 years and her training group included Pablo, one of our guides in Chile last year. Speaking of Pablo, Perri spent last winter in Chile after she was done guiding and she met Pablo and Igor, one of our other guides last year. With over 1200 Backroads guides, this definitely still had a bit of a “small world” feel to it. Crespo is nuts. Apparently for a good time, he spends his winters in Lapland in northern Finland, guiding mountain expeditions in -85C temperatures, or something ridiculously stupid like that.

Toasting with Teranino, a sweet blueberry (or similar) brandy. Blurry picture. It wasn’t our first toast.

Another overall fantastic Backroads adventure. At lunches and dinners, we would swap stories with the other couples and the guides. What an interesting, diverse, accomplished group of people to travel with for a week. I know it is unlikely, but I hope our paths cross again in the future.

Zivjeli

(I think I reached some sort of limit) I can’t upload any more pictures 🙁