Ljubljana is one of my favorite cities. It's so peaceful and quaint but not boring. They have statues of poets and musicians instead of generals and murdering conquerors. They also have the typical castle on the hill reminding us how life was in Europe a few centuries ago, where if you didn't have stone walls and a castle, you would be butchered by your friendly neighbors. It's nice not to have to worry about that these days, but I guess we have replaced that fear with a few others.

The city name appropriately means 'Beloved'. The slow moving river by the same name is lined by a plethora of cafes which are all full of cool dudes and mums with prams. The place just has a great vibe.

We moved on from the capital to the Mediterranean coast again to make full use of the slowly disappearing summer sunshine. Our plan was to move slowly down the coast to Albania over about 2 weeks.

I wasn't expecting too much of the coastal village of Piran in Slovenia, but it was the most picturesque little fishing village.

Then we stopped at Rovinj (another coastal fishing town) in Croatia. We arrived and found another little pension room just as a festival was kicking into life. We walked towards the square by the marina where the music was coming from to find the usual oldies dancing to folk music, and food and wine stalls. It didn't take me long to find out that the winemakers of the region each had a stall and it was only 7 euro to try them all. I think I nearly ticked them all off but there were 32 wineries with a few whites and reds each...

We continued down the coast to Split. The old palace town has heaps of cool ancient roman stuff around but the highlight was watching the mighty Magpies smash Geelong to reach the AFL grand final.

We then sailed out to the small island of Vis and stayed in an apartment with a terrace overlooking the beautiful bay. We had the novelty of a kitchen so for three whole days we enjoyed cooking every meal and swimming at secluded rocky bays around the island.

We are now at Hvar where we are continuing the blissful days enjoying great seafood and wine in the evenings and coffee and bakery treats in the mornings. We are staying in another lovely little mediterranean pension with sea views to rest our bones.

But tomorrow the inland traveling kicks in again as we head into Bosnia where we hope to get a feel of the war that was splashed over the news screens as we grew up.

The funds in the old piggy bank are running a little lower than expected but we are going to tighten the belts and our plan is still to make it overland through Turkey and Jordan to Egypt and return home from Israel around cup day in November.

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