Day 10 (Sunday) Austria to Slovenia to Croatia

Klagenfurt, Austria to Ljubljana, Slovenia to Cetingrad, Croatia

Woke up early (before 7) to grab an early breakfast at the hotel.
Off to Ljubljana, Slovenia (country #6). After a small bit of confusion about where the border crossing actually was, of course…

Parked near Dragon Bridge and walked around in the tourist areas while they weren’t very crowded. Tried to feed nutria, but they weren’t there. Bought two shirts and some souvenirs and some delicious confections from La Mousse Goose.

Grabbed lunch at a place called Klobasarna for some “Carniolian sausage wrapped in cheese wrapped with sauerkraut and full-grain mustard in leaf dough” and some Soup with Carniolian sausage. They were fantastic and perfect for hitting the spot for the trip (I underestimated the size of the wraps and bought two. The second became part of our dinner later at our airbnb).

Carplay continues to get worse. Sylvia had to navigate out of town before I could pull over and restart both the phone and the car. Grrrr.

So many twisty roads! The road conditions got noticeably worse when we left Austria.

Continued on to Centingrad, but were an hour early for our airbnb meet up. Tried to cross into Bosnia and Herzegovina, but were turned away at a guard post that was “only for locals”. The guard told us that we’d have to enter at a larger border crossing…

Found a market in Centingrad and grabbed some groceries for the night and morning (no more sweet, sweet hotel breakfasts!).

Centingrad was an area contested during the Yugoslavian wars in the 90’s. Serbian forces took over the area and Croatian and Bosnian forces fought them back as the final skirmish of that brutal war (or so I think with very little knowledge of the situation). The area is filled with bombed-out houses even now, thirty years later. It’s a sobering sight.

Met the hosts who showed us around. The house sits on a property with a couple other houses owned by the extended family and has chickens and an orchard of fruits they encouraged us to pick anything ripe that we’d like to eat. After a long driving day, it was great snacking on the food we got from the local market and enjoying a glass of wine on the deck (which featured a hot tub and sauna) watching the sun set.