Italy, Slovenia, Croatia whirlwind tours

Hi from Croatia! We have met alot of new people since we touched base last; this is a very generous part of the world to be travelling! After Pisa we spent a couple of surreal days in Venice, mostly floating up and down the canals (in vaporettis - boat buses - the cheaper alternative to gondolas) and eating pasta, then took a train into Slovenia. We were pretty excited to finally get to the part of the world that we had been dreaming of travelling (but of course so grateful for the marvellous detours).

In Ljubljana, we stayed with the Bancic family. We met them through the hospitality club, and had hosted Vesna and Domen in Cork, so it was great to see where they were from! We ended up staying with them for five days; they were so generous, and I think as excited to show us their country as we were to learn about it! They toured us all over the western part of Slovenia from the seaside resorts to the tallest mountain peak, took us to many castles, caves (we hiked 2.5 kms into the cavernous depths, past underground waterfalls and over subterranean bridges), and even taught us how to make apple strudel! We had our first experience cooking for a monk, and they shared so much of their history with us.

After Llubljana, we hitchhiked to another Slovenian town: Ptuj (pronounces Patooey, yes, that was one of the reasons we chose this place off the map) and our hitchhiking lift, Dejan, invited us to come and share his living room with his parakeet for the night, and to party with his awesome band, Zen. So, we got a private concert in their studio and the local wine tasting experience...watch this space for upcoming world tours, these guys are great. We hitched then to the Croatian border, were taken out for coffee and Slovenian cola with our next lift, but he got a flat tire while taking us from the border that foreigners could not pass through to the other one, so we had to walk out of the EU into our next adventure.

In the Croatian town of Varazdin, we stayed with a hospitality club host, Shime, who basically gave us the use of a whole apartment and took us out for modern Croatian food (Carli-Ann ordered Witch's Risotto, and should not have been surprised when the silver platter cover was lifted to reveal rice, all matter of seafood, and all of it thick and black with cuttlefish ink!). We are now in Zagreb (the capital city) and are enjoying the company and space of not one, but three hospitality club hosts! We are looking forward to the coming weeks in Croatia and Bosnia (and beyond), and we have invitations set up in most of the places we want to explore, so we think that we are in for quite an experience!

Buon Giorno!

So, we are a little surprised, but delighted of course to unexpectedly find ourselves in Italy! And we are racking our brains for any shreds of advice that Lisa and Tom, Auntie Norma, Matt and Amy gave us about Italy a few weeks ago. At the time we had stored it away as information we would not need to access for another year as we had not planned to come here for a while.

We had a great time in London with the Sibbald family, and then flew to Graz in Austria to visit with some Austrian friends: Tina, Anna, Sevi and Didi, who (3 of them) had been doing their social work placement in Ireland. We actually met them when they picked us up hitchhiking on our way to climbing Croagh Patrick, and this has turned out to be the luckiest hitchhiking lift we have ever got! We thought maybe we would only stay in Graz for a day or two and then head to Slovenia, but they offered to show us a bit more of their country. In what has developed into almost three weeks of visiting, we have hiked up to waterfalls in the Austrian Alps, toured little traditional Austrian hometowns, swam in alpine lakes, visited Anna's family, wound our way up to mountain vineyards to sample the regional food and drink delicacies, drove down to Slovenia for a night to go to a punk gig called "No Border Jam" with bands from Croatia, Slovenia, Austria and Germany in an old military bakery turned gig venue by squatters, and then were sent to stay with their friends and brothers and girlfriends in picturesque Salzburg and cultural Vienna!

We met them back in Graz on the 2nd of September to kick off an even bigger adventure, we all drove down 800 kms to Italy, stopping in Siena for a surreal early morning coffee on the square where we were bombarded by a medieval parade, and to Piombino on the west coast, to a port where we went sailing for a week in the Mediterranean, around the island of Elba. Our vessel, 'Noah' was an old 1949 wooden fishing boat that was converted into a sailing ship in the 1980's as part of an adventure program for kids from disadvantaged backgrounds to learn to sail and have intensive support for 9 month journeys. She had 3 rust red sails at 22m tall, and was 23 m long, and the owner was keeping everything on her authentic, so there was no automatic eases for her crew. We had to crank up the anchor manually, test water depths with a rope marked at meter intervals, pump out any collected sea water, swab the decks, and haul the sails up by hand, but it was great. It was the closest thing to a pirate ship that we had ever seen! We slept on deck under the stars on clear nights, went swimming in the clear aquamarine water almost everyday, had lots of time to relax in the sun on the deck, watch sunsets, play guitar, cook austrian and italian and canadian meals communally, and get to know the other 9 Austrian crew members and their dog, fabulous people who taught us alot about sailing and Austria and marine life. We took a little boat to shore for Italian wine once in a while, grateful that it had recently been refurbished with a motor so we didn't have to row, braved through a few violent electric storms, saw little glow in the dark sea creatures for the first time in my life, and were thrilled that they could also be seen swimming in our sea water toilet bowl! And of course we were all sea sick a few times, but that part will be soon forgotten.

After the great, salty week on board, the crew gave us a lift to Pisa, and it has taken us a couple of days to lose our sealegs, but we have nearly stabilized our vision again now. Pisa is a small place, and the leaning tower is the first peice of architecture to make me laugh out loud; it is a nice introduction to Italy. But as tempted as we are to explore the peninsula further, we will be pushing back on to course in the direction of Slovenia, with a short necessary stop to see Venice. So, we will stay in touch! Ciao!

We're goin' sailing!

Hi everybody!

We are just finishing up our time in Austria after spending 8 marvellous days here. Tomorrow, with three Austrian friends we are driving to Folonica, Italy and getting on a large, wooden sailing ship with 7 other Austrians for a week long trip. They just happened to need two more people before they could rent the boat, so it was a great oppourtunity for us! Hopefully we'll learn a couple things from the skipper!

Then it's on to Slovenia and the rest of our Balkan & Turkey trip. We'll post more later!

By the way...here is a photo from our going-away party at the Pub we worked at in Ireland with the South County staff!