I’ve got good news and bad news.
The bad news is that the mosquitoes in northern Italy love me as much as the ones in Cuba, Saskatchewan, Uganda and Thailand … which is good news for the mosquitoes.
I currently have six of the ugliest welts/bruises around mosquito bites. The bites are almost a week old – this is beyond ridiculous.
Seriously, who is allergic to mosquito bites? Besides, apparently, me.
I guess the good news for me is, here I don’t have to worry about West Nile or Malaria.
The difference between hiking and mountaineering is subtle until one is actually on the side of a mountain.
Then it becomes extremely obvious.
Hiking is a gentle stroll through alpine meadows while singing and enjoying water from little streams.
Mountaineering is virtually climbing – clinging to cliffs, scrambling across rocks and sliding down trails of slippery shale.
I, unfortunately, was not hiking. And I didn’t realize it until stepping off the gondola at 2,300 metres.
Then I was committed, or I should have been.
Everyone I was with kept pointing out beautiful little wildflowers or the amazing views. I’m not going to lie. I didn’t see much except the next place I would put my foot.
In the end, my experience on Mt. Kanin, in North West Slovenia, was positive.
I survived, had only two moments of refusing to step any further and ate delicious soup at a little mountain hut, the fourth highest in all the Alps.
Today the biggest climb I will make, is out of bed.
Slovenian food is amazing.
Everyone talks about going to Florence and Tuscany seems to be the buzz word in foodie circles these days, but seriously they’ve got nothing on the things my Teta (great aunt) Mira can whip up.
I’ve had fresh strudel with apples, raisins, ground walnuts and almonds and chocolate. There has been peppers stuffed with ground beef, pork and risotto rice, and bathed in rich tomato sauce.
We had a spinach and cheese pastry with hommade goulash.
With every meal is bread with a crusty outside and soft inside and fresh sheep’s cheese from a huge round.
Let me put it this way – it’s a good thing I am walking lots!!
The bells at the local church chime at every hour all day and all night. Usually during the night I can ignore them, but they do a particularly loud and musical chime at 6 a.m.
It is the official wake up bell for the community.
I am looking forward to sleeping through it.
Equally loud, but significantly longer is the chime at 8 p.m. Historically, this was the time when all the girls in the village had to be home.
My guess is the long chime before the hour marks was to give the girls a chance to get home.
So the tradition has stayed in place, the bells sound amazing, but the girls get to ignore it.
So being on the road again has given me the urge to restart my blog after almost a year.
There always seems to be a common thread when I travel and that is a significant dislike for pointless, overzealous security.
And unfortunately for me the French seem particularly good at this.
While flying through Paris on route to Slovenia I had to switch terminals, which meant leaving a secure area, clearing immigration and taking a bus.
Before reaching the exit doors everyone was rerouted by angry looking, but mysteriously quiet airport security. People from at least three or four flights were funnelled away from the exit doors in to baggage holding areas where they left us for almost 45 minutes.
No one said anything until almost the end, when the rumour moved through the group that the police had been called because of a left bag.
Apparently it was third time it had happened that morning – it was only 11 a.m.
Left baggage in the departure area seems worrying, but in the arrivals? Maybe the person got stuck in a long line in immigration.
Isn’t an unattended bag less scary once it has been taken off the plane??
