Follow the trail to Triglav

my new reno shirt

This trip was 3 yrs in the making.  It was supposed to happen in 2020, it was all set to go and then March 2020 lockdown happened.  Trump happened.  Kung-Flu, China Virus.  His words not mine. For the next 2 years. Felt bad for Dr Fauchi.  He has a long fuse.

Come fall 2022.  Slovenska Sola restarted this trip.  And Kieran was in his final year of high school and there was lots going on.  I didn't want to add to his plate.  His friend Robert & Andrew convinced him to throw his name on the list as a MAYBE and confirm later.

It didn't take long to confirm.  If there's one thing this pandemic has taught us, is to strike while the iron is hot.  Cuz who knows when iron will heat up again.  Marta wasn't getting any younger.  And inflation was going up not backwards.  So T got the ball rolling.   K's passport was already updated.  Took over 4 months, but it arrived well before his History trip in March 2023.  So he was good in terms of travel docs. And it would be a good litmus test for us to see how airports were handling travellers. 

diabetic coma

The next question was.  Do we take this opportunity to visit Europe again.  It had been 4 yrs since we last went to that part of the world.  Heck it's been 4 yrs since we went anywhere outside of Ontario.  We hadn't travelled anywhere. 

  

Triglav

With airports reeling from the mass of people tired of being stuck at home and wanting to travel.  We had a wait and see how things evolve for international travel, as we knew some people who went to the airport and then missed their flight because it took so long to get checked in.  So we continued with the stay at home and go to the cottage on the weekend to check the plumbing.  That was it.

I actually was thinking T would go to EU with Rose.  I'd stay behind as I had a big project at work launching in the summer months, and didn't care one way or the other if I travelled or not.  I was good with the status quo.   And this way T would travel and bring K home with her. 

It didn't work out this way.  I ended up going.  It was going to be over my birthday and thought, why not? Heck work will always be there.  And it would be nice to get away and be a tourist.  That was my only request.   I wanted to be a tourist.  T could go into the Adriatic and swim and I would chill and drink spritzers or gamest.   All I remember from the last 2 times we visited the Balkans was how hot it was.  Well over 30 deg C.  Typically between 34-40 deg C at midday. It's hot.

It hot

We tried to do things at that time.  We played tennis, we went into town.  But it's hot.  Your body struggles to cool down.  At least mine did.  I'm not very good at handling heat, I know this.  Mostly we swam or stayed in the shade somewhere.

As long as I got to do certain things, I didn't really care what we did.  But if it's hot out, I needed a break.

I really liked Šibenik, it was a sleepy quaint Dalmatian village.  The pace was just right.  Not busy.  Nice beaches, good food.  It helped the resort T put us in was kick ass.  I loved it.  I was worried it was going to force me to retire at age 85 instead of 65.  But it was super.  I would go back there next year to celebrate my birthday.  There isn't much between the resort and town, there is a mall.  We could have done day trips to other towns.  But I was good with staying put.  Maybe next year we can do a bit more. We can plan for that.

A week here was just right.  Our room was great.  The beach was amazing.  The resort had all the amenities.  And we could head to town to have dinner.  We even were skipping breakfast and opting for small lunches as you can only eat so much buffet.  I was still full from the day prior.

On to Opatija.  This was a more glamorous town.  You can tell.  It had more dressed up servers everywhere.  The first restaurant we ate was a bit pretentious.  Next time we'll just have a burger and fries at the Roko Veloce.  It was worth the wait.  Just get ahead of the 7:30pm dinner rush.

We were here a few days.  Mostly wandering the concrete and stone beaches.  It's nice.  If you aren't a floater.  You can easily just hang out in the shallow parts.

As we headed left Croatia and stopped into a Petrol Stn to get a vignette (payment) for using the highways.  We had some lost in translation experience with the attendant here, we got fiery Croatian experience as we tried to provide him the info he needed for the vignette.  In the end we got it done.  It was funny.  Other customers found him funny.

Now that Croatia is part of the European Union, we could now drive straight through the border.  Also note the Kuna is no longer being used here, instead it's all Euros. They still list Kuna costs, but the currency accepted is Euros. Which comes with an increase in price.   No longer a hidden gem of the Mediterranean, I mean everything went up cuz of the pandemic.  It is what it is.  It's not going to stop me from coming here.  I love it it.  It's hot.  Sure, but it's so clean, the water is so nice, the service is amazing, the food quality is top notch.  If you want cheap, you'll get issues.  I'd rather pay for quality.

The drive to Ljubljana was shorter compared to the drive from Zagreb to Šibenik (340km, 5hrs due to traffic). From Šibenik to Opatija, it took us about 3hrs.  We left the highway, and took the seaside roads, just to experience the typically winding roads connecting all the villages.  Next time we can skip this.  Sure it's cool.  But I don't need more stress, just get me to the air-conditioned hotel and a put a cold beer in my hand.

We bought a Telemach SIM in Zagreb for 9.99€ that came with 10GB for 30 days, I asked if it would work in Slovenia.  They said yes.  Well that's a lie.  It stopped working as soon as we crossed into Slovenia.  Get the SIM that meets your needs for the time you need it.  When we arrived in Ljubljana we got an A1 SIM for 8€, that would be valid for the remainder of our stay here in Slovenia.

We know K, got 100GB for 12€ that he picked up at Hofer in Ljubljana.  Which is fine if you are not changing countries.  Either way, it's way cheaper to get multiple local SIMs, rather than paying roaming charges to these Canadian telecoms.  For me, I'd get charged $15CAD/day whether I send 1 text or use 20GB.  It's a flat rate rip off.

The drive to our hotel in the center of the city was pretty easy, way more straight forward than the drive into Zagreb center to our hotel there.  Parking for us was right out front.  We were only supposed to be in Ljubljana for 3 nights and we were to stay overnight in Zagreb before we caught our flight home.  But we changed our plans to avoid another hotel check in / check out.  It's only about 90min drive from Ljubljana to Zagreb.

We did 2 day trips while we were here waiting for K.  A day to Maribor to visit K's cousins, and another day to visit Bohinj, so T could get her swimming fix.  It's past Bled by about 30km. And follow the local folks to the parking that's conveniently close to the lake.  We could have swam in Bled too, but it's super touristy there.  Both are beautiful and clean waters.  Glacier filled and refreshingly chilly.  But what a beautiful spot surrounded by the lower Alps.   I would definitely come back here again.  It's noticeably cooler here.  But you can still get sunburnt.  Sun is sun.  As far as food, there's a cafe on the lake that was the first and only day we had ćevapčiči.  They only take cash.  And the view of the lake is amazing.  The food was very good.

Weather wise we were very lucky.  We encountered rain only once and it brought some relief from the intense heat.  The night before we had to head to Zagreb to catch our flight home, we finally met up with K.  I guess he didn't want us cramping his mojo with the other students.   We were having pizza at Pop's.  And just as we were finishing up to avoid any rain.  He found us.  I was so surprised to see him as he seemed to come out of the shadows.  We hadn't seen him in 3 wks.  So we had a plan to come get him in for 9am and get to Zagreb airport by noon to catch our 2pm flight back to TO.

The flight home encountered a bit of turbulence.  At one point it was resembling a rollercoaster ride.  Along with screams, and when we landed there were sweaty palms and grateful cheers to God.  Not sure why it was so bumpy at times, But that approach from Ottawa to Toronto, was full of prayers.  But we made it home and had some Chinese take out.

Croatia-Slovenia 2023

SSB Slovenija 2023

We didn't start the fire!

After nearly 2 months, we were able to sleep in our own room again.   We'd been displaced after damage from a fire next door impacted our house.  We were lucky to have a cinder block firebreak in separating us from the other semi.   It could have been much much worse.

It's not like everything was hunky-dory. This was still a major disruption in our lives.  I was already treading water on a project at work,  Kieran was heading into final exams, there was university decisions, prom, graduation, residence applications, and the list goes on.  My plan for this year was to work on the backyard garden wall.  So it was still a big deal for us. 

We were displaced in a hotel for a week, the strong smell of smoke, water had come in through our ceiling and rained in our master.

The next few weeks we involved sleeping somewhere other than our bedrooms and dining out.  It seems like fun times.  But I still had work to do.  It wasn't a vacation.  I was now dealing with insurance adjustors, evaluators, and the emergency clean up crew they sent to remediate the impacted areas to get us back into the house, so they can stop paying for hotels and take out food.

Sure they got us back in, but we couldn't sleep in the bedrooms. They were still a mess.  There were big openings directly to the attic!  They had removed all the wet insulation, installed big ass fans to dry the attic out.  The only thing separating the attic was a thin piece of plastic that was taped and stapled to the ceiling. It was the summer solstice weekend, and it was hot out, so that heat from the attic was also coming into the bedrooms.

Once that was done we had to wait for a couple of weeks until both the adjuster and contractor were back from vacation to get us an approved estimate of the work that was required to bring our home back to the way it was.

I wanted to get things back on track sooner rather than later.  Do I do this work or do I trust someone else to come in and do it better than I could do.  I had been told I'd be waiting a lot if I went down this route.   I kept looking at the openings.  Shaking my head that there will be a noticeable big massive patch there.  It wasn't going to look very nice.

The other dilemma I was having was that I had 2 big holes to patch.  One in our master and the other in Kieran's.  I was hoping they would use the attic hatch to remove all the wet insulation, but that'd be not as efficient.  And then it gives them more work to bill for later.   It's a WIN-WIN.   In any case, I couldn't have both rooms out of commission at the same time.  But I needed to get our master done because the replacement bed was going to be delivered in a few weeks.

I ended up putting back the insulation in the attic and sorting it all out from the master bedroom side.  I was trying to avoid bringing all that attic dust and fibres in to K's room.  But I didn't want the insulation to fall through the plastic on his side.  My bro suggested a brilliant idea to install some rigid styrofoam over the opening in his ceiling and put the bat insulation over that.  It allowed me to remediate the attic and I could work on the master ceiling. 

What I didn't factor in was how strong the smoke smell would. be and how incredibly hot it was up there.  As soon as I removed the plastic barrier, the smell of smoke bowled me over.  Even masked I could only stay up there for 20mins tops.  It was brutal.  Before I started I assessed everything and the roofed looked amazingly good.  Then I suited up and got to work.

I had to make my way carefully on the joists across to put the insulation back nice and neat.  They had piled it up to remove all the wet insulation.  It seemed so much easier in my head when I envisioned it.  It felt like I was up there for hours as I had to keep coming down and outside to hose myself down to cool off, but I got it done.  I didn't want to have to go back up there another day!

I didn't waste any time, and immediately cut my drywall piece and after some frustrating efforts in trimming to get it to fit and getting all the support pieces up.  The first hole was up and ready for the next stage of taping and mudding.  Drywall is dirty dusty work.  The dust goes everywhere.  It's also very hard to make it look seamless.  Mostly cuz there are seams!  

And that's what was bothering me so much.   It was work that didn't need to happen. But it did.  What can you do except do the work.  I'm no pro so this was a slow process.  I don't like rushing things, cuz bad things happen when you rush. But I was under a lot of pressure to get this done.   We were going on vacation very soon and I had to prep a back up to take over for me while I was away, and then there was Kieran's grad and the grandparents were staying over.  Needless to say, there was a lot on my mind, and plate.   I tried not to let it get to me, but it did at times. At least I wasn't alone in all this, that helps.

Kieran had been sleeping in his room and it was important for me to close up his ceiling to protect him from the dust and fibres.  He already suffered from asthma, this wasn't a good thing.  So the day Kieran left for Europe, I worked til midnight and managed to patch his ceiling and tape and mud it, it's very close to being done.  I just need to wait until he's out of his room and in school to finish it and repaint his room.   At least he's not exposed to the crap in the attic.

Tresa wanted to repaint our ceiling and walls.  When she asked the contractor they said they would only paint the patch.  Like WTF? Really? To be fair, their job is to put it back to how it was.  Not make it better.  It's a restoration, not renovation.

In any case.  That wasn't good enough.  So I got to work.  And it turned out really well. Better than I expected.  I need to give myself more reno DIY skills points.  Many thanks to my contractor buddies.  It wouldn't have turned out as good without their guidance and advice.

Billy Joel's 1989 song We Didn't Start the Fire!