Friday morning we left the little house on stilts around 8 and drove back to Zagreb for the last time to drop off our Fiat 500 rental car. Luckily we were able to put all the extra space haha in the car to use by drying laundry while we drove. Nobody has dryers here, of course. Then we caught a FlixBus to Ljubljana, Slovenia which ended up being a city we really liked despite the intense heat as soon as we stepped off the bus. More up with the times in some areas, and with the old architecture in others. We went straight to the apartment where Morgan made spaghetti and veggies for supper.

After some poking around online, I came up with a Saturday market to go to so we got a start on the day mid morning. We took the bus to the Dragon Bridge where the Market was close to and spent awhile perusing produce before we had lunch. Madison and I had pad thai from a street vendor and Morgan had breaded fish, sardines maybe? and fries. After lunch we walked through the handmade side of the market, no different than the ones in Canada and the US we go to with candles, soap, and knitted mittens. We discovered a little Nordic style coffee shop called Mariposa Coffee Roasters so we got iced coffees and blackberry lemonade while we talked with the owner. There is only one other coffee place in the world using the Mariposa Coffee title and that’s in Mariposa, California so the guy thought it superb we had been to that little place up in the Sierra foothills. After refreshing, (which is necessary like often because the stone streets here with brick walls on either side are basically a Dutch oven) we got bus tickets out to Lake Bled, Slovenia. The Ljubljana airport is far out of the city, surrounded by pine trees, so with only that stop, we arrived in an hour to Lake Bled.

The water was so blue and green and it was breezy so little waves added white in the color mix against the mountains. A white church with a tall spire standing on an island in the middle of the lake completed the idyllic picture. We spent the rest of the afternoon hiking along the lake through the pines, and then walked through a market before we caught the bus back to Ljubljana. We collapsed in the a/c for a couple hours and Morgan brought pizza and kebaps back for supper.

We left early on Sunday morning and found a flea market that we walked through before going to Le Petit Cafe where we had scones and marmalade and eggs. Then we took our last FlixBus of the trip down to Venice, Italy, one of my top 3 favorite cities. We were here a couple years ago and have wanted to come back because we loved it. We arrived into the train station and caught a water taxi down the Grande Canal to San Marco Square close to where our apartment was. It was unseasonably warm here too, so we dumped off our packs at the house and took a break. Morgan has been living the dream cooking in all these countries and trying new foods. I’m living the dream because he loves to cook. Anyways he made a mushroom cream chicken with rice for supper and we went out late for gelato. Supper is in full swing between 9 and 10 here so the city was very busy while we were out. Men in striped shirts and flat straw hats sail people about the canals in gondolas and the sunshine on plants in faded courtyards paints a picture of serenity. There are lots of people in the main areas, but we find little streets, old walls on both sides and the smell of pizzas chasing us as we go. Its bittersweet that this is our last stop, but fitting that its a place we love and are comfortable.