Another day, another river valley walk – from lake Jasna along the Pišnica river, to a small Russian chapel. Writing this two weeks later I realize the river valleys are beginning to blend together and I can’t remember any particular details from this hike, apart from the chapel itself. Oh, and the cows! There were free-roaming cows not just in pastures but also just climbing the rocky, forested slopes along the river, which I unfortunately didn’t catch on a photo. I’m used to seeing goats and sheep in hilly woods, but climbing cows were new to me.

Today we relocated from Bled to Kranjska Gora, stopping for walks along the way.

Our first stop was in Krma valley for a short but very scenic walk. Clouds were hanging all the way to the ground. This valley is the starting point for hiking to Mt Triglav, Slovenia’s highest peak. Which we’re not going to do – we’re just here to take in the views.

Here’s our car for this week: a cute little Fiat Panda. It’s small enough that if Ingrid had come with us on this trip, we couldn’t have fit all four of us and our baggage in the car. Right now one of the back seats is filled with half our luggage.

Compared to our fourteen-year-old Volvo at home, it’s modern but cheap in sometimes surprising ways. Electronic displays with lots of detailed information in the dashboard, and hybrid technology to save on fuel, and much less noise in the cabin compared to our Volvo. But no air conditioning vents in the back of the cabin? Speaking of AC, the Fiat has such a non-intuitive way of turning it on that we thought for the first few hours that the AC was broken. Called the car rental company, and they told us to press the ventilation knob. Who the heck comes up with a UI like that? Knobs are for turning!

Next we drove to Vrata valley, where we started by visiting Peričnik waterfall. This was a nice compensation after the puny waterfall at Mostnica yesterday, which especially Adrian found a disappointment. Peričnik delivered: plenty of water, impressive height, cool surroundings – and you could even walk behind the waterfall.

Walking behind the waterfall was a wet experience. The whole roof was dripping. It didn’t seem like spray from the waterfall, because we were well away from it – more like the rock above us was leaking. Or maybe it was just condensation, who knows.

After that we walked up the river to Vrata valley. If Eric and Adrian look knackered during our breaks, it’s because of the heat again!

We finished at a mountain hut in Vrata valley. After cooling down with some ice cream, and climbing to the top of a large boulder, we took a local bus back to Peričnik and our car, to finish our drive to Kranjska Gora.

We’ve been staying in scenic Bled for several days and barely seen anything of the town, spending our days hiking instead. Just the closest streets, a supermarket, and a few restaurants. Bled castle has been beckoning to us from its seat on a cliff on the other side of the lake.

Today we wanted to take in the sights of Bled. The weather forecast promised clear skies in the morning but rain and thunder for the afternoon, so we went for a walk along the lake shore towards viewing points on hills at its western edge. Lake Bled also has a little island which you can visit either with a kayak or a SUP board, or you can get someone to row you there in a gondola.

We were still on the shore of the lake, not even on our way up the hill, when the rain arrived, hours ahead of the forecast. Walking up to a viewpoint for photos in that weather was going to be unpleasantly muddy and mostly pointless, so we gave up and went back to the hotel.

The afternoon was going to bring more rain. New plan: skip the walking, say good-bye to the idea of stunning views of the lake and the city, and go visit Bled castle instead, where we could mostly be indoors.

Actually the views from the castle turned out to be pretty impressive, too. And the weather forecast for the afternoon was as wrong as the one for the morning. We got the familiar broiling sun and not a single drop of rain.

The castle was very pretty. Irregular, like many old castles are, and subtly different enough from Northern European architecture to be quite interesting. The museum part was too impressive, though – it was a collection of interesting objects, presented with too little context and background information for us to learn anything. Apart from the fact that the oldest flute in the world (of which this museum had a copy), probably made by Neanderthals, was found in a cave in Slovenia.

Our first full day of hiking in Slovenia. Today we climbed Viševnik, a 2000-metre peak. Which sounds like a lot, but you don’t start at sea level, of course.

The actual ascent was just over 700 metres. Which is still a lot, especially on a hot, sunny day! And the route up this mountain was steep and unrelenting. Up, up, up, constantly, with barely any breaks in the ascent, or even a zig-zag. The first half of the ascent was also quite boring – for a big chunk of the lower parts, we followed a dusty trail through through a monotonous spruce forest. I don’t even have any photos from that part.

Halfway up we were feeling quite knackered and demoralized, and not enjoying ourselves much at all. But then we came to a small plateau with actual views, and enough room to sit down and take a proper break, and got some calories into us, and found the energy to keep going. After that the actual ascent didn’t get any easier, but the landscape opened up and got more varied, so the effort felt less.

And occasionally we even got views of the peak we were heading for!

Adrian really struggled with the heat and was seriously thinking of turning back even when we had no more than 15 minutes left to the peak. But with plenty of encouragement, and relieved of his rucksack, he managed to keep going.

The higher we climbed, the more fabulous the views were.

And we made it! When we got to the top, all we wanted to do was sit down and drink lots of water and scarf down dried fruit for some fast calories.

Once we had revived ourselves, we took photos.

The way down required less huffing and puffing, but more attention and concentration to not lose our footing.

By the time we were done with the descent and just walking back to the car, even Adrian was full of cheer, almost skipping along, and talking about how the whole thing wasn’t so bad after all, and how cool it is to climb a peak, and how he could totally do this again.

How selective our memories can be! The best parts we’ll remember for a long time, and the worst parts melt into a vague sense of “it was a bit of an adventure”. The same happened with our last day in Mercantour, when we got caught in hail and thunder. When we were living through it, the last half-hour of it felt pretty horrible, with me carrying Adrian in my arms, curling up around him to protect him from the hail. But six years later it feels like it wasn’t so bad at all.

Photo-heavy post coming up!

We’re in Slovenia for 10 days of walking and sightseeing. Today wasn’t even going to count for real because I expected us to be tired and groggy after a day of flying. But after some rest, we thought we could do something better with our evening than just sitting in a hotel room, so we went out for a short walk.

Ingrid isn’t interested in walking and has – despite only being 15 – wonky knees that bother her especially when she walks for a long time, so she elected to stay at home and enjoy a parent-free house and take care of Nysse instead.

Flying really is no fun these days. We got up at 4 to get to the airport. All sources – including Arlanda’s website, and the airline’s – said we should be there three hours before the flight leaves, because bla bla, and when we did that, the baggage drop counter wasn’t even staffed yet. For the first hour we – and dozens of other travellers – just stood there, waiting. Two hours before departure time, someone turned up. Apparently a missed hour of sleep for dozens of people is worth absolutely nothing to the airline. The availability of breakfast at Arlanda was also seriously disappointing. On the other hand, lunch at Warsaw airport was among the nicer parts of the experience.

For our evening walk we went to Vintgar Gorge just outside of Ljubljana. Getting there was an adventure in and of itself, with roadworks blocking off several access routes, and half of the official parking lots closed down, and Google not aware of some of the roadworks. We spent a silly amount of time zig-zagging down narrow gravel village roads, but we got there in the end.

The gorge itself was amazing, and even more beautiful than I had expected. Rapids and waterfalls, sheer cliffs, lush greenery. The photos speak for themselves.

We had a 20-minute walk from the parking lot to the entrance, and the weather was hot. The ice cream kiosk near the entrance was a welcome sight.



Adrian made sure I would also be in these photos and memories.








The pathways through the gorge were narrow, so it was a one-way tour. It was another half-hour’s walk back from the end of the gorge to the car. We were tired again by now, but then we got views like this!

On our way back home, somewhat tired, somewhat sad to be leaving, but also glad to be home soon. The trip could maybe have been a day or two longer, but now we’re leaving on a high note.

Picnic and bathing at lake Pangodi. The weather was warm, the water not so much at first, but OK once I got in and started swimming.

Board game night, with Bang as the main focus. It’s one of the few games I’ve played that becomes much more interesting with more players, so we usually end up playing it when we’re meeting up with our friends in Estonia and have a big crowd.

Over the years they’ve added various extensions to the base game, and it’s becoming hard to keep up with all the additions. I kind of liked the base version better – with all the extras the game is more chaotic and less about planning and strategy. But he kids all prefer the over-the-top chaos version.

We visited my father and his wife, and made sushi together. I was mostly too busy talking to take any photos, so most of these are not mine. Ingrid photographed some of the sushi materials; Adrian photographed me from various angles.

The book I’m enjoying is Estonia’s most famous and well-known cookbook – the wonderful Raamat maitsvast ja tervislikust toidust (“The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food”) from 1955 which contains everything from very traditional Estonian recipes, to lots of Russian baked goods, to instructions for using all sorts of fish that I’ve never even heard of. It was strange and exotic already in the 1980s.

The annual trip to Estonia isn’t complete without an outing to Otepää adventure park. 11 years after our first visit (when I was pregnant with Adrian and not allowed to do any of the fun stuff so Ingrid was the only climber) and it’s still fun.

Both kids are now tall and agile enough to manage all the ordinary tracks. There used to be special track labelled the “path of suffering” but I saw it has been removed. I guess not enough people cared for all the suffering. None of us three had ever tried it; the initial rope climb straight up was more than enough to deter us.

The highlight of the last, fifth track is the rather spectacular “Tarzan leap”, where you hold on to a thick rope and swing from a platform about 10 metres above ground, to catch yourself in a net 20 metres away. (With a safety harness of course.) Scary but exhilarating.



After the climbing tracks you’re treated to two zipline rides back and forth across a wide meadowed valley.