Here is a little video from my recent trip to Slovenia, where I did a lot of cycling. Among other, I biked from Ljubljana to Koper and then to Novi Grad, Croatia. All together about 107 miles.

Enjoy.

So, CM and I went to Slovenia to spend holidays with my parents. Overall, the trip went great. We saw some awesome places, such as Piran. That said, most of time we spend in some groups, such as family, that spend most of time talking to each other in Slovene. I am still fluent in Slovene, but CM only understands little Slovene, so most of time she was bored. Fortunately for her we only go to Slovenia every two years or so.

Here are couple of highlights from the trip. We landed in Munich, Germany. Why? Well, this way we save about $200 per person. Then we rent a car that we need anyway. So, we almost get the car for free. Maybe with Slovenia being a leading member of EU, the flights to Slovenia will become cheaper. The new airport sure looks impressive. After Germany, we drove to through the Alps towards Slovenia. For mid-december, the snow conditions were, well, weird. Almost no snow. If you were ever in the Alps in December, you know how weird that is. I guess people finally achieved their goal of leaving the mark.

In Slovenia, we visited Ljubljana, which was gorgeous. All decorated and super cold. But we did not care, we visited downtown several times, do some shopping, eat in the restaurants. We were tourists. Just tourists staying with my parents. One day we decided to visit Piran, which is a great little town on the coast. My favorite thing about this town is that it is essentially a labyrinth of narrow streets, some big enough for the car, one narrow enough that you have to be slim to go through. These streets are surrounded by houses that are built on top of each other.

My parents took us for a two day trip to the house in Croatia. On the way to Croatia we stopped in a little town in Slovenia called Lipica. This is where the white horses (Lipicaners) come from. It was interesting to see all these horses being really excited about us. They wanted us to play with them. After that, we continued our way to Croatia. Though Croatia has lot to offer, it is clearly far behind Slovenia in terms of their infrastructure. For example, the Istra’s costal roads are in pretty bad shape and things look in fairly bad shape. That said, they did have war much longer than Slovenia, so I would imagine they are still rebuilding. Also, the tourism in the area was greatly affected.

While in Slovenia, we also visited Skofja Loka and Radovlica, which are old town with some really interesting history. In Skofja Loka, we checked out this old castle and museum, and in Radovlica we watched old tradition of creating gift gingerbread artworks.

Finally, we visited several people I know in Slovenia. They ranged from may extended family, neighbors, to people I went to school with, and people that live in US, but I only meet at the conferences.

The way back was non-eventful except that the plane was broken, so we had to sleep in a bad hotel in Detroit.