Walk Home with Us

It was a beautiful day so we decided to scooter/walk to our favorite neighborhood Georgian restaurant.  We ate al fresco, enjoying the restaurant's talkative parrot in its cage next to our table.

After we were done eating, we headed home past Castro Square and through a park we've nicknamed 'three-playground park,' for obvious reasons.

I think we lived here six months before I noticed what this square was called.

The kids can't go past the fountain without going around it a few times, so we stayed for a few minutes.  Incidentally, that man in the picture below on the far right was using a makeshift fishing pole with a magnet on the end to fish out the coins from the fountain.

Continuing our walk through the park and across the street, on the side of the building to the left is a relief sculpture.  Reliefs like this are common on buildings throughout the city.

We continued down the street and then waited at the crosswalk for our turn to go.  I asked G2 for a picture and this is what I got:

Across the street was this lovely building.  Can you tell that it's pink?

And then it was a clear shot back to our building, approaching our rear gate entrance:

Once inside, we pass several businesses on the first floor--salons, coffee shop, a grocery--on the way to our entrance.

And finally we are back to our entrance after a lovely walk home.

Victory Day!

Victory Day!  A day to celebrate the end of WWII!  Last year Brandon was out of town and it was a cold rainy day so we didn't participate in any of the festivities.  But this year Brandon was in town and the weather was beautiful, so we went downtown to catch the parade.  And it seemed like most of Moscow had the same idea!

Waiting our turn to exit the metro

It was great to see everyone dressed up, wearing ribbons, holding pictures of loved ones--veterans from the Great Patriotic War.  We walked along the route until we found an opening along the street, but it's a good thing we brought a lawn chair otherwise there's no way we would have been able to hold on to our spot.  Once the parade started, everyone crowded forward to see, and the excitement was palpable.  Oo-rah!

My favorite part of the festivities, however, was later that afternoon.  We walked to a park down the street which was having its own celebration, including musical groups.

Slovenia: Lake Bled

Just a short drive away from Ljubljana and we arrived at Lake Bled--a beautiful lake nestled by mountains, including a quaint little church on its island, all overlooked by a castle!

We went on a hike with the kids to get a better view of the lake.  G2 was a trooper and made it most of the way on her own (although she wasn't happy about it), and the other two did great!  Plus, it was a fantastic view at the top!

Probably the kids' favorite activity of the entire trip was the summer tobogganing.  We took a chairlift up the hill, enjoyed even more beautiful views at the top, and then rode our personal roller coaster cars down (with the girls on our laps).  It went surprisingly fast and was a lot of fun! (Of course, too much fun to bother to take videos or pictures of our own, but here's one I found online if you're curious.)

We took a little train that went all the way around the lake, which was totally the way to go, considering all of the hills.

We took a pletna boat to the Bled Island and explored it for a while before going back to shore.

We made the trek up the hill to Bled Castle.  The castle itself wasn't anything amazing, but the views were great!

We drove over to the less touristy, but equally as beautiful Lake Bohinj to hike to Savica Falls.  By this time the kids had gotten their hiking legs and it was an easy climb to the falls.

We ended our trip by wandering around Lake Bohinj and stopping for lunch at a nearby village.  We never did get our fill of cevapi and cockta, but we sure tried!

We couldn't have asked for a better trip!  Mountains, water, castles, caves, boats, churches, hiking, good food and a great time with our family!  We loved Slovenia!

Slovenia: Ljubjana

Basically since our last vacation we had been planning our next vacation, but it just wasn't coming together.  And then I happened to see this blog post about Slovenia and I sent it to Brandon in a 'hey this looks cool' kind of way.  But Brandon's response was an immediate 'yes! let's do it!'  So just like that, our next destination changed to Slovenia!

We rented an apartment a 10 minute walk from downtown Ljubljana and spent our first night checking it out.

The next day we drove south to the Postojna Caves.  We love exploring caves and this one definitely impressed.  It starts and ends with a 15 minute train ride (which looked hokey, but was surprisingly fast) and a hour of walking around a really beautiful cave.

After a quick lunch (cevapi! cockta!) we headed to the Predjama Castle--a castle built into a cave!  It was one of our favorite things of the entire trip.

Over the next couple of days, we checked out Ljubiana Castle (the bell tower was the kids' favorite), saw the views of the city, went to the Dragon Bridge, the Cathedral, and Tivioli Park.  Basically, we saw everything.

Having seen it all, we said good-bye to Ljubljana and drove to nearby Lake Bled to continue our Slovenian vacation....