Trieste...probably my least favourite Italian city. Large, busy, hot and a little unkempt, we spent two nights here while we waited to catch our Ryanair flight to London. We stayed in an apartment at Residence San Marco which was described on its website as located an easy distance from the train station. It was not. Dale and I, weighed down with bags, puffed and sweated our way on foot through the muggy streets. By the time we had walked three or four block...

It is funny how similar middle-of-nowhere Slovenia is to middle-of-nowhere New Zealand. Pockets of forested area surrounded by farmland, frequent tractor encounters whilst driving, sporadic cellphone and wifi reception, and nowhere that serves a decent cup of coffee. Of course, Slovenian villages don't look much like New Zealand "villages" - wide gabled houses with red tiled roofs and window boxes instead of corrugated iron roofed state houses with paint peelin...

Graz and I got off to a wobbly start. It had not been easy navigating through the unfamiliar and busy streets to our accommodation, and when we arrived we found that there was no parking...oh great! Morale was low by the time we had deposited the car in a nearby carpark building and returned to our room for the second time (not helped by the fact that all I had eaten that day was a croissant which we stopped for in Klagenfurt). With the old town on our doorste...

After farewelling Beks and Tim in Ljubljana, Dale and I drove the 40 minute journey to Lake Bled. This glacial lake is dominated by Bled Castle, Slovenia's oldest, which sits atop a rocky outcrop thrust up above the lake. In the middle of the lake is a small Island with a pretty church sitting on it. The picturesque scene is completed with the overlapping mountain backdrop. But if it was tranquility we were hoping for, we won't find it here. It is peak season...

Ljubljana - what a cool little capital! From the moment we entered Slovenia we have had one pleasant surprise after another. The dry, rocky Croatian scenery was replaced with lush green woods, fields of wild flowers, and gingerbread houses complete with well cared for geraniums in window boxes. Suddenly there were rubbish and recycling bins everywhere, public toilets and regular road signs! We saw a sign for a military history museum and decided to check it o...