Austria seems a bit like the more fun Swiss cousin. Roads are often wider, speed limits are higher and it’s just as stunning to drive through the countryside. I chose to take the highway around, or rather under Graz to win some time and reduce the trip time to a more manageable 5 hours. The tunnel under Graz was hell though, being completely lane split, limited to 80 km/h and featuring 38.5°C in a less well ventilated area. I was stuck behind a truck for most of the nearly 10km length.
Category: Croatia
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I woke up at eight and got ready for the day. We started by loading tons of food into the car and driving to the nearby town, where we planned to meet some friends for brunch. While setting everything up the other guests arrived, for a total of nine people. We finished the rest of the food and prepared three buffets. All in all this was easily the best breakfast buffet I had in ages. But I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves…
So this is going to be a real short post since it’s already close to midnight and I’m really tired. I left the place where I stayed for the night a bit past 10 after enjoying the view one last time…
What a day… I left the hotel in Skradin shortly before 10, knowing that I had a pretty long day in front of me. From the very first minute the weather was stormy and the sky was dark. I hit the highway since I knew that I’m not gonna be able to take any pictures anyway. It turns out, that was a mistake. Most of the highway has a variable speed limit which adjusts with the wind speed, so I spent about 40 minutes driving on a highway limited to 40km/h because of the wind. That was pretty much the maximum you were able to drive though, since you were just thrown from the left to the right side of your lane… Not a fun time.
So, what’s the bright side of bad weather you might ask? Well, it’s obviously going to Krka national park. That’s exactly what my next destination was. But before I got there, I took a small detour north towards Rama lake. A huge lake with the peninsula Šćit in the middle, featuring a monastery.
Of course the weather wasn’t well enough in the morning. How could it be. So I skipped trying to get a nice picture of Dubrivnik from the imperial fort. It rained pretty much constantly until I reached the border to Bosnia and Herzegovina at Ivanica. Since I wans’t going through the Neum Corridor this time the border check took much longer now. They checked my ID as well as all the papers for my motorcycle in detail. Just a few kilometers from the border I got the first sight of what would expect me for the next two hours…
It costs about 27€ to walk on the Dubrovnik city walls. To take a walk. There is nothing else up there. You can obviously get a guide to show you around and tell you a few things, but that’s going to set you back another 10€. This city is just too expensive… So naturally, I’ve skipped it. Instead, I spend my time walking around inside as well as both east and west of the city, going up the mountain a bit.
… more rain, that is. I even had to use the handle heaters today. It was 14°C, raining quite heavily and there was a storm over most of Croatia. The gusts were preventing me from driving more than about 60km/h for most of my way. Luckily it opened up a bit when I arrived at the ferry port, so I was able to take a few pictures without worrying my new phone would have to learn to swim.
30 to 40°C. That’s what everybody told me to expect here. Instead I got yet another day with temperatures in the 16 to 22°C range and rain. It started shortly after I left Pag island and didn’t stop yet. The weather forecast is also bad until at least Friday, so I’m looking forward to my next stays…
I took the route through Krak and Kočevje to travel through the rest of Slovenia. It was a very nice road with some bends around all the rolling hills which cover the south-east of Slovenia. Upon arrival at the border to Croatia it was kind of weird to have to show the passport. I think this has been the first time since Switzerland implemented the Schengen agreement in 2008 that I had to show a document while traveling, excluding airports. The Slovenian border agent just checked the document and smiled and let me go to the Croatian agent, who couldn’t even be bothered to check anything.
I initially planned to stay two nights in Ljubljana and just go do some shopping today. I did however get in contact with a ex work colleague from my last job who lives about half an hour from here and he invited me over to his place. The ride wasn’t worth mentioning too much, since it consisted mostly of a highway and then some tiny old roman roads leading through a few villages. He did however give me some good tips for the next day of my trip, which I’m planning on making full use of.
The destination for today was Ljubljana, the capitol of Slovenia. The planned itinerary would have been over Austria and down the Jezersko pass. While talking yesterday evening, a local recommended to do the Vršič pass instead though, which is the highest pass in all of Slovenia. So I took a right turn right when leaving the village and entered the fairy land…
My body refuses to work if I have too little sleep. I think that’s what we call “aging”. I went to bed around midnight yesterday, the others were still up until at least 3, probably 4 AM. But it was definitely the right choice, since my route for today took around 5 hours according to google, or 6 hours with stops for pictures and the road conditions.
First of all, sorry to anyone who reads this blog because of the pictures I normally post. There aren’t going to be any today. Even though the weather was finally a bit nicer and I took some pictures, I can’t post them right now. The reason is that I am still with my friend and we’re currently sitting up in the mountains, with about 30 minutes of battery left. I just have the time and connectivity to post this post with a single title picture. Update: Added the pictures from yesterday.
But let me start in the morning…
The hotel I stayed in for the night continued to surprise me with the breakfast buffet. It wasn’t huge size wise, but the selection on display was. It had about 8 different local cold cuts, a sizable selection of cheese as well as a separate buffet where you could build your own muesli. The fried egg they offered was as delicious as it was gorgeous looking.
It’s been more than a year since our last blog post on this site. During that year, a lot has happened. I have finally started doing my master degree in cyber security. I’ve spent the past 8 month in France and will finish my degree in Finnland. Because of this, I currently have summer vacation - four months in total. I decided to travel Europe a bit more and visit some countries which have been on my todo list for a long time now.