Paris/Croatia/Slovenia/Budapest TR

[zion zig zag]

Still going through photos from this trip. Traveled to Croatia back in October and hit a few other places along the way. I'll try not to show the basic tourist spots unless I think it's a pretty cool photo . Critiques welcome. All shot on a Sony a6300 with Sony 18-105.

Paris was basically a long layover, about 36 hours. Enough time to get a couple of good meals and walk through the different neighborhoods.
I really enjoyed the graffiti.




The city at night.


We then flew to Split. Did the tourist thing there for a day before taking a ferry to the island of Brac.

I believe this town is Postira


This is the peak of Vidova Gora (800ish meters), overlooking the Med and the beach of Zlatni Rat.


Everything grew on this island. Pomegranates, citrus, apples, olives. Whatever. Loved it here.


Bol. Apparently, after the war, many properties were abandoned. No one claimed this hotel so it turned into a canvas for graffiti artists.


This would be the first of many epic sunsets. Always accompanied with a bottle of local wine.


Leaving the island of Brac out of Sumartin, headed for Makarska.


We headed for Dubrovnik. We planned for three nights here but ended up leaving after one. It was awesome but felt a little too tourist trap after Brac. The food didn't compare.




Headed south to Montenegro. This is the bay of Kotor. The mountains are pretty damn impressive rising straight out of the ocean.

[zion zig zag]

This church was built on an island in the bay of Kotor in Montenegro. The Catholics had a monastery on an island so the Orthodox crew just built there own island and placed this church on it. We took a boat the 1/2 mile out to the island and spent a half hour or so.


A church in the walled city of Kotor. I don't know if you can see it in the photo, but a wall goes right up the mountain behind the church.


Spent the night in Makarska on the way back north.


Another epic sunset, another bottle of great Croatian wine.


The high school sailing club was in town, along with their hundreds of little sail boats. We parked our tiny rental car in the hotel parking garage and went to bed unknowing of the pain in the ass to come. Crazy strong wind started in the night, strong enough that I had to wake up and close the shutters outside of the windows. When the daylight came it was pretty neat to watch the Bura winds rip across the bay. The winds had to have been gusting to 80+ mph. These winds are downslopes off the mountains right behind town. Cool air rushes down the steep slope picking up speed until it hits the ocean.
We went to grab our car and head towards Plitvice to see the water falls. Unfortunately, sometime in the night with the vicious winds, they were forced to place all of the sailboats in the hotel parking garage to prevent them from blowing away. Our car was blocked by 50+ sailboats on trailers. After hand wringing and lost time, we were able to get the car out of the garage. This is the highly abridged version of the actual events.

In Plitvice park. It was spectacular, but honestly, we could have skipped and spent more time on the coast.



On to Rovinj. Rovinj was an accident, we hadn't planned on it, but leaving Dubrovnik early opened up some time. Which was lucky as it was probably our favorite place of the trip.



Pula, which is a few minutes from Rovinj, has a Roman coliseum.


Slovenia was another accident as it wasn't planed on. We checked out Lake Bled, which has a lot of Dracula history and lore, on Halloween. Turned out to be a cool spot. Slovenia deserves another visit on its own. Church on an island in the lake, we rented a row boat to go visit.


Castle Bled on a cliff above the lake.


Church on the side of the lake. I could't get enough of all of the church steeples across Croatia and Slovenia.

[zion zig zag]

We flew home from Budapest and had a couple of days to spend here walking around.



After a long trip of drinking wine, a good beer selection was welcome. Hops Beer Bar.


Fini. Unless I find others that are interesting.

[rod9301]

Nice trip.
We spent four weeks in Slovenia, climbing and a little mountain biking. Really nice country.
I could live there.
Plus, beautiful women.

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[smmokan]

I spent 10 days in Croatia a couple of years ago, and the small towns on Brac were by far my favorite.

[dfinn]

Nice trip.
We spent four weeks in Slovenia, climbing and a little mountain biking. Really nice country.

How's the climbing and biking there?

[F#*k you cat]

Nice TR. I would add skipping Dubrovnik and spending more time in the smaller towns. KRK, Baska, Pula, Bratislava, Ljubljana were highlights of my trip to Eastern Europe. We flew into Prague and that was a big city with super friendly people.

Eastern Europe is a gem!

[rod9301]

How's the climbing and biking there?

Climbing was fantastic, limestone.
Mountain biking, not so good, either super easy or crazy hard, trails were built for hikers.

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