Travel-related holiday gift ideas

The holiday season is here! I bet you're as excited as I am! Christmas is just around the corner and 2017 is coming real quick. As there's a huge chance I might be staying in the hospital during Christmas day (I'm due to give birth on Christmas eve), I decided to get my holiday gifts for the loved ones early this year. We don't usually exaggerate on Xmas gifts in our family, we exchange pretty little things, most of the times personalized, sometimes home made; then gather and have lunch together. Not everyone in our family is a traveler, but I've gathered some ideas of affordable holiday gifts for family members (or friends!) who love to travel.

Personalized travel calendar

What's more useful to start a new year than a calendar? That's my choice for some family members this year, including my mother in law. For a lady her age, she travels quite often. So I pick 12 best photos of her on trips with our babygirl, and ordered a personalized small on-table calendar with one photo for each month. I ordered one for our home too, with our family photos on different places in the world. I spent around one hour collecting and uploading the photos, and the calendar was delivered four days later and cost 50.00 kn (a little less than €7). If you're in Croatia, you can order it here where I got mine.

Our personalized travel calendar

Travel pillow or iClip

This one is not a personalized gift, but if someone travels a lot, whether he flies often or takes train and bus rides, he might enjoy a good travel pillow. Last year when asked what he'd like for Xmas, my husband said he wants a travel pillow. After at least four travel pillows (none of them he really loved), this €15 Samsonite U23 finally satisfied him. It works much better for him than inflatable pillows. Now his recent obsession is the recently launched iClip, a replacement for classic wallets that keep lots of cards neatly, which I believe is a pretty handy accessory for frequent traveler.

World map cut home-made cookies

I have this recipe for super delicious Danish butter cookies I've been making for years. Everyone who had tried them love them. My husband and my babygirl could eat tons of them (send me a message if you want recipe). I make them for every holiday season, and I've been thinking to get this world-map cookie cutter from Amazon. Which traveler wouldn't absolutely love home-made cookies in the shape of a world map? If you don't like the shape of a map though, you can cut out your cookies in your preferred shape and put them in a travel-themed cookie tin.

My freshly baked butter cookies

Exotic spices or tea 

Remind your loved ones of their favorite travel destinations by getting them specific kind of spices or tea. Wrap them nicely and they'll make affordable sweet little gifts. Try curry mix for someone who can't forget about their India trip, Provence spices for them who love southern France, or Italian spices mix for, well, the ones who fell in love with (or in!) Italy. If they're not that into cooking, try exotic teas. There's no better season for drinking warm sweet tea than holiday season. I buy my teas in Harissa spice store, you can order here in their webshop, plus now you can try their Xmas edition teas. Get 100 grams of Advent voćni (fruity advent) tea for €5, pack it in a transparent glass jar and voila, beautiful, aromatic, warm gift.

Country or city guide book

I know you can get everything online nowadays, from itinerary to hotel reviews. But I know many travelers who still enjoy reading paperback travel guides. I personally like to collect them after the trips, to fill my shelves with guides of the countries and cities I've ever visited. If you know his/her planned destinations for 2017, get them Lonely Planet country guide or city guide. They'll love it. I'm thinking to get myself City guide for St. Petersburg and Country guide for Israel :)

Plane (or train, or bus!) ticket, for some getaway

Last but not least, of course, the ultimate gift for travelers: plane tickets! Don't worry, they don't have to be expensive these days. I got my husband a return tickets to Paris for his birthday for less than €20! Check Ryan air, Wizz air or Easyjet if you're in Europe, and you could easily find great ticket deals. If you're in Croatia, Flixbus offers many destinations from Croatia at really good prices. They have new buses with comfortable seats and on-board wifi! The problem with giving tickets is you have to know the person's schedule really well. If you want to surprise him/her with a trip, you better make sure he/she'll be available for a getaway on those dates you pick!

Good luck and happy holidays! :*

Story in pictures: Istanbul, Turkey, December 2014 & March 2016

 

 

 

Turin: Why you should visit it, and we should come back

When you think of Italy, you think of Rome. Venice. Florence. Probably Milan. No one thinks of Turin. Turin is underrated. Lots of people think it's just an ordinary industrial city. I did, too. And the city proved me wrong. There are tons of reasons why you should book your next Italian trip to Turin. For once, it was the first capital city of Italy. Yup, you probably didn't know that.

Not only the first capital of Italy, it's also the royal capital

Turin is home to Vittorio Emanuele II of Savoy, the first king of  the Kingdom of Italy. Although many other cities of Italy hosted noble families that reigned in the level of city-states, only Turin could claim itself as the first capital of the unified Italy. Turin is full of beautiful palaces in its grand squares. As babygirl said, it's full of the homes of Prince Eric (she's currently into Little Mermaid). The squares look amazing, the main square, Piazza Castello, has unusual water fountains coming out the floor surface which babygirl enjoyed so much. It also has direct view to the Royal Palace. If Piazzas and Palazzos are not enough for you, Turin also hosts the infamous Mole Antonelliana, also known as the Eiffel tower of Italy, now hosting the National Museum of Cinema, the tallest museum in the world. We wanted to take the panoramic elevator ride to its top, but we didn't make due to our limited time in Turin, so this tower is our first reason to come back to Turin soon.

Beautiful Piazza Castello where the Royal Palace (Palazzo Reale) and Palazzo Madama are located

It's a chocolate heaven, and food heaven in general

You're familiar with hot chocolate, and a big fan of chocolate spread. But you don't know where they were invented. Yup, in Turin. Since 17th century, Turin has been known as the chocolate capital of Europe. The famous chocolate spread with hazelnut Nutella? It started in Turin. There was a shortage of cocoa beans during the Napoleonic war, giving the idea for the locals to add hazelnut to get the cocoa texture. Later, Ferrero started to sell this hazelnut chocolate snacks for children, then the hot weather melted the chocolate and, there you go, Nutella was invented. If you're not a fan of chocolate, you still can eat well here. Turin is a home of grissini (breadsticks), which babygirl loved. The local pasta and risotto are cooked with local porcini mushroom (my husband's favorite) and truffles. I had the chance too cook tagliatelle with fresh truffles for the first time in my life, here! The streets of Turin are full of romantic little restaurants, pizzerias and cafes with the best coffee. One of our favorite part of the days was having breakfast (croissant a la crema, yum!) at Antony's bar close to where we stayed in Via Nizza.

World's most important Egyptian museum outside Egypt is here

This one is our second reason why we need to come back to Turin, because we didn't manage to visit this one! And we really, really wanted to. If you love Egyptian antiquities, or you really want to go to Egypt but didn't have to chance yet, or you had visited Egypt and feel nostalgic, you should visit this one. It hosts over 30,000 important artifacts including a collection of statues representing all the kings of the New Kingdom, mummies, papyrus and books of the dead originally belonging to the Drovetti collection and a painting on canvas dated from 3,500 BC. The museum's main entrance was featured in The Italian Job movie.

It's a very child-friendly city

I personally think Turin is much more child friendly than Venice, Rome and Florence. Don't get me wrong, the whole Italy is child-friendly. In our several trips to Italy, I can't remember any single shop, cafe or restaurant whose staff wouldn't offer free treats, gifts, souvenirs, foods to babygirl. Everyone's simply in love with babies. But Turin is special. The fact that it's not (yet) world famous like Venice and Florence makes it a more relaxing city. Unlike in Florence, we could stroll in Turin and enjoy the city with no fear that we'd lose sight of babygirl running in the crowd. Strolling along Po river in Turin was also much nicer for her than it was along Arno river in Florence (where there was traffic jam of people walking, in November!) We found a lot of playgrounds in Turin which she enjoyed a lot, and, if your child is a big fan of squirrels like ours, Valentino Park of Turin is the perfect place. There are zillions of squirrels which are used to interacting with humans running around the huge beautiful park which also host the Medieval town and Valentino Castle.

Beautiful Valentino park that hosts Valentino Castle and the Medieval town

Playing with squirrels (left); Strolling along Po river at the Isabella bridge (right)

Well, it's my childhood dream :)

Back in the late 90s until early 2000s I was a loyal fan of Juventus FC, a football club from Turin. I watched every single match of Serie A -the highest level of Italian football league. I don't follow any of national leagues now, but there's a part of me that has always wanted to visit Turin. My husband doesn't watch the sport regularly either, but he's always in for a stadium tour, and he's collecting official jerseys of football clubs (which I think is super lame). The stadium tour -cost €22 for each- was cool, would've been cooler if I were still into Serie A today though. We were on the field, and we saw almost every room in the stadium, including the locker room. The tour ended in the museum which hosts memorabilia of the club since its establishment, and we closed our day in the official store. My husband got himself an official jersey and babygirl got herself a stuffed zebra which is the mascot of the club. If you're not into football, but you're into cars, you should definitely check the National Museum of Cars. Yes, Turin is home to FIAT, but the museum hosts around 80 automobile brands with over 200 cars including ones dated from the 19th century. We really wanted to visit the museum but we decided to save it for our next visit.

The inside view of the stadium

Will you make Turin your next Italian destination? We'd definitely come back! :)

It's not all roses on our trips

Is there a moment, when you look at your social media timeline and see pretty pictures of your friends on vacation, then you thought, wow, they look like they're having the time of their lives! And then you think, if I were going to vacation like that, with my child, there is no way it's going to turn out to be THAT fun, it's just gonna be a catastrophe!

For some reason of course I also just post pretty pictures to my social media, I'm not planning to shame my own child and post a picture of her having a tantrum, soaking wet full of tear, lying down in the middle of a square in Florence. But trust me, it happens. I wanted to share some not-to-pleasant moments happened in our last Italian road trip just to assure you, traveling parents, that it's okay to experience unpleasant incidents during your trips. Believe me it passes quickly and you'll forget them even quicker. But the sweet memories of the trips? Oh they stay forever.

So last week we did our Italian trip to replace our cancelled cruise (more about that here). We left home on Wednesday night after work and headed to Turin. Our initial route was Lake Garda-Turin-La Spezia-Cinque Terre-Pisa-Florence, but in the last minutes we decided to just skip Garda and drove directly to Turin. So what's was not all roses during our six-days trip?

These are the things she'll remember. All the fun she had!

Our six-year-old GPS had cost us an extra 150km and an Austrian vignette

Unfortunately our new car isn't equipped with a built in navigation system. That means, we're still using our GPS we bought six years ago and never updated. When I created the route in my head, I knew we needed to leave Ljubljana and head for the border with Italy in Gorizia, drive through Venice, Verona and Milan then arriving to Turin. We started to drive from Ljubljana around midnight and hoping to arrive in Turin at around 6am. My husband was driving, I put the GPS on for Turin and we realized something was wrong when we passed the border between Slovenia and Austria instead of Slovenia and Italy. Yup, our GPS led us to drive through Villach in Austria just to get back down to south to Italy after having to buy Austrian vignette (€18 with a tunnel). We had to drive 150km more than planned and paid an extra €25 of Italian toll for that. Instead of 6am, we got to Turin at 8am, of course, super exhausted, even with 3 cans of redbull. Of course, we stopped using this GPS and navigated with my iPhone the following days.

A train officer (almost) fined us €100 and he was calling the police

Right, we were in the train from Manarola (one of the five villages of Cinque Terre) heading to La Spezia, our "base" city where our hotel was located. I've got us two one-way train tickets which cost €4 each (it's only 10-minute ride). Babygirl had a free ride as kids up to 4-year-old didn't need to buy tickets. I read the warnings on the ticket that we had to validate the tickets before departure. But as we were rushing into the train which was about to leave, we didn't even find where to validate them. Five minutes into our ride, an officer came to check our tickets. I handed them and he said no, these are not validated. He said a lot of things but all I heard was a €50 fine for each. My husband was trying to apologize (and argue) with him for a good five minutes while I was trying to comfort babygirl who started to become so fussy. The guy threatened us to call the police if we wouldn't pay the fine, when we arrived to our station La Spezia, and we all went out. The guy asked us to follow him, so we thought it was over, we needed to pay the fine; when another customer was approaching him in panic outside the wagon to ask whether the train that was about to leave was hers. Before attending to her, the guy just shook his palms to us and said: just go, you're free to go. We turned our back and walked away the station in the speed of light. And while doing this, we saw a validating machine and my husband validated our tickets while we're leaving the station. Yup, my husband and his sense of humor.

A view of Manarola, Cinque Terre, which makes you forget of the train incident in just two seconds

We realized we're actually getting old, on a trip!

I'm only 28, and my husband's 33. I'm 7.5-month pregnant so he believes that is an important factor. But boy, we're no longer what we were 5 years ago! A few years ago we'd leave our office on a Friday afternoon and head somewhere, drive the whole night and arrive in our destination on Saturday morning and we'd be completely happy and fresh. Now? Yeah right! We were literally broken when we got to Turin at 8am after driving for almost 8 hours. He was doing most of the driving because I was falling asleep -I handled only around 150 km probably. We had a short nice talk with our friend who was hosting us in Turin before she left for her class, and we just slept until midday while babygirl was playing by herself with our friends' dog. Mind you, she was sleeping the whole night in her car seat while driving. Three days later in La Spezia, after taking a walk around the port and marina then had dinner, we were back at the hotel at around 8pm, completely tired. My husband mumbled, "if we didn't have her (referring to babygirl) we'd now totally go out and dance the whole night." I responded with, "really?" to what he said "nah, probably not. I'd go now straight to bed!". Of course, we had a nice hot bath with babygirl and went to bed.

We wasted one whole day to be lazy in the hotel and didn't do lots of things we planned

I made a brief plan before we left. Things we wanted to visit. It was nothing too ambitious, just to make us plan our days easier. But as I might have mentioned a couple of times in my previous posts, with babygirl we're trying our best to travel while catering to her needs and responding to her mood. Our fifth day on the road, which was first day in Florence, she already showed some extra crankiness. She was mostly fine, it was just a combo of fatigue and, I guess, a disappointment because she had to say goodbye to a lovely dog of our friends with whom we stayed in Turin. We had to go further to La Spezia from Turin and the little dog had to fly to Greece with our friends, and babygirl didn't love that. We managed to visit the Duomo, Palazzo Vecchio and Basilica Santa Croce with her, and visited Ufizzi Gallery then strolled along Arno river and crossed Ponte Vecchio while she was napping in the carrier, but she was just nearly impossible to handle at the end of the day. That night instead of having supper at a nice restaurant as we did in the previous days, we decided to have a calm night and ordered pizza to to hotel room. The next day, which was our last day in Florence, she wasn't really in a better mood. After breakfast we decided to "give up" the day -which was meant to visit Palazzo Pitti and Boboli gardens, and just stayed in the hotel. Somewhere during the day she stated she wanted to take a walk, so we just walked along the river next to our hotel, saw some ducks and strolled back to the hotel before checking out and leave.

Don't worry, it's only 2% hard. 98% is fun!

A few years ago, these little things would totally make me upset. Especially things like, I didn't get to visit this Boboli gardens when I was already in Florence?! Who knows when, if ever, would I come back to Florence? Or the thing with the fine in the train, a few years back it would've probably created an argument between my husband and I, like, whose fault that was, why he or I was so careless about it. Now? Nah, we don't have time for arguments and nervous breakdowns. What happens, happens. We stick to that Dalai Lama's "If there's no solution to the problem, don't waste time worrying about it. If there's a solution to the problem, then don't waste time worrying about it". After all, we were 98% having fun during the trip! And believe me, you would, too!

My toddler ranaway from the daycare, and I think she's cool

Babygirl has been going to the daycare since I came back to work from maternity leave, and that was when she was exactly a year old in April 2015. A year and a half going to a private daycare, in September this year she finally got into a public daycare and started her days in the new place.

Although the adaptation period was planned to last around a week to get each child used to the new environment, babygirl needed three days to settle down in her new place. I took a week off from work just in case, but she already spent the whole day being there on her fourth day. On Monday the following week, I spent my normal hours at work and everything has been fine since.

Since my husband is currently working in Slovenia (about that here), our normal day looks like this: waking up around seven, have quick breakfast and leave around half to eight, I'd drop her in the daycare (where she'd have another breakfast) and go to work, and pick her up around four in the afternoon. She sleeps around two hours in the daycare, so by the time I pick her up she's well rested, and ready for some outdoor time (usually a combination between park and playground, groceries shopping and ice cream time). We'd come home around six o'clock in the evening, cook and eat dinner together, have some bath time, play some more and go to bed at around nine.

Her group in the daycare consists of around twenty toddlers of the age of two to three, and she's one of the few without diapers. These kids who are toilet trained need to be able to go to the toilet by themselves. That means informing the caregivers they're going, getting out of their playroom, crossing the hallway, going to the toilet across the hallway, getting their pants off, doing their business, cleaning up (the caregiver would help here if they do the big business, but they clean up by themselves if the only pee), flushing the toilet, dressing up and washing their hands. And then getting back to their playroom across the hall. For the last month and a half, this has been working great for babygirl.

And then yesterday happened.

What's more important than to initiate, and not to be scared, to explore new things around her?

I came to pick her up at usual time, greeted her in front of the glass door of the playroom, when she ran to me, took my hand and dragged me to leave while whispering "I made teta (means aunty, the way the call their caregivers) really, really mad". I told her to wait a second because I saw the teta approaching me. She greeted me and smiled, said the regular things like how much babygirl ate and slept, told me what happened.

So my two-and-a-half-year-old had an idea that day. She told teta she needed to pee, when she didn't. When she got the okay to leave the room, she left. Instead of going to the toilet, she decided to take a little walk. She walked on the hallway by herself and just looked around. Until a cleaning lady found her on the other end of the building and returned her to her group's playroom. This is the point when her caregiver decided to give her a little serious talk. When asked, babygirl said she was just "taking a little walk and checking maybe my mom came". Mind you, she's not able to get out of the building because the main entrance/exit door has very tall handle and has a button to be pressed to open it. The worst that could happen, well, in my opinion, nothing much. She could end up in the outdoor playground, which, is visible through the glass wall from her playroom.

I hardly hid my smile when the caregiver explained to me what happened. She looked a little too concerned when once again telling my babygirl she's not allowed to go out by herself (except to the toilet of course).

When I told what happened to some friends, their reaction was more or less similar to each other. Getting panicked, (partially) blaming the caregiver of not noticing she'd been missing, imagining the worst scenarios, pointing the daycare's system's failures and so on. But when I told the story to my husband, his reaction was exactly what I expected (well, there is a reason we're married, right?) he said "Oh my God that is soooo cool! So our two-year-old actually tricked her caregiver and took a walk??" Yes. And she probably also planned the whole "trip".

A friend actually couldn't believe how I don't have problem with it. She thinks other parents would confront the caregiver for not paying enough attention to the child and put the child into danger.

But I know my toddler better than anyone. And so does her dad. She was NOT lost. She can't get lost in that building. She directs me where to drive the car to get from our building to her daycare. She guided her grandma to walk from our home in Ljubljana to her favorite bakery in the bus station when her grandma visited for the first time (they went alone, just the two of them).

She did plan the whole thing. She knew the caregiver would let her go if she says she needs to pee. So she took her time, took a walk and looked around. She's been there for a little over a month. She's just curious. She's brave. She's free spirited. And oh my, she's genius. The  most important thing, she knew she's not supposed to do what she did. She told me that. By herself. The whole fuss yesterday with the "serious talk" put her a little bit to the scared-side, because she, for the first time, refused to go to the daycare (to the same caregiver) this morning. But it will pass very soon.

And we're proud parents. We really are :)

Predjama Castle: just like your childhood dream castle

In my last post about Postojna Cave (read the post here) I mentioned that we bought a combo ticket for the cave and Predjama Castle, so after visiting the cave, we drove toward Predjama Castle on the same day. Predjama Castle is only 9 kilometers away from Postojna Cave. In July and August they have free shuttles that drive visitors between the two objects, but we were there in September, so there were no more shuttles.

Babygirl is crazy about castles in general. Our bedroom in Ljubljana is an elevated loft which is reachable by climbing sturdy wooden ladder-like book shelves. We call it our castle where we sleep at, and she's crazy about it. So although it was past her nap time after we finished Postojna Cave, she was excited enough to see the Predjama Castle.

The magnificent view of Predjama Castle as we approached it

Audio guide is included in the entrance fee and they're available in many languages. Each room and exhibited object in the castle show a certain number, which you press in the audio guide (looks like an old cell phone) and you listen to the narration from it. This was babygirl's favorite part of the tour, clearly. She pressed the buttons all the time, put the device near to her ear and pretended to listen and understand what it tells her.

Predjama Castle, or "the castle in front of the cave" is known for the story of Erazem, a robber baron who came into conflict with the Habsburgs and killed their commander of imperial army. The Roman emperor sent army to have Erazem killed, so he hid and lived in this castle with his family. After a year, one of his maids betrayed him after he was bribed by the Romans, informing them when Erazem was in the toilet which is located on the top floor on the outer part of the castle; so they fired cannonball and killed Erazem.

The view from one of the castle's windows

The exhibited rooms are equipped with life-size dolls resembling the medieval life which was super interesting for babygirl. We climbed to the top floor and got into the original part of the cave. Although it's called the "castle in front of the cave", part of it is actually inside a cave. Parts of the castle don't have a roof at all because it's underneath the cave and practically do not need roof.

The upper part of the castle which is inside the original cave (left); Babygirl ringing the bell for good luck (right)

Despite the steep stone steps, we made it with the babygirl to the top of the castle, including to the original cave part to where Erazem and his family went hiding when attacks were going on. There's a bell on the top which used to function as an alarm system when the castle is in danger, but now believed as a lucky bell that makes your wish come true if you make one before ringing it.

The whole experience probably took us an hour and a half or so, before we went back out and returned the audio guides. After a long exciting day of Postojna Cave and Predjama Castle, it took babygirl three seconds to fall asleep in her seat in the car. We drove back to Ljubljana (which lasted less than an hour) and now have beautiful memories of the impressive cave and castle.

Postojna Cave: making a dark and cold cave child-friendly

My obsession with Postojna Cave started in 2010 when I moved to Croatia. Wherever I go and whenever I look in Croatia, there's advertisement of Slovenia's Postojna Cave. The worst thing was actually the fact that we didn't manage to visit the freaking cave since 2010. So when we finally did this trip, my husband made fun of me every single day for the week, sending me pictures to my cell and leaving me leaflets of the cave everywhere, in my purse, on the dining table, in the car compartment... that was lots of fun for him.

Postojna Cave is not even the most essential cave system of Slovenia, although it's indeed the most famous. The bigger and more important cave system is Škocjan Cave, which carries the title of UNESCO natural heritage site -this is on our list for next destination.

On the day of our departure I was ecstatic. My husband asked me whether after all these years my expectation of the cave had built up so high I might be disappointed when I finally see it.

I felt the need to prepare babygirl well for the trip. Caves are dark, wet and cold. A scary place for a toddler. I wanted to enjoy the experience, and the last thing I wanted is a toddler screaming and wanting to get out of it in the middle of the tour. She really liked Oziđana pećina Cave we visited in Krka National Park (about that trip here) but Postojna Cave is way bigger than Oziđana pećina, it's 24 kilometers long (5 kilometers are open to visitors -which is a huge surface for a cave). Then I remember how she really liked the bats and bats story in Oziđana pećina, so we decided to reactivate the bat-mood two days before the trip to Postojna. We told her we're visiting bats' house -although there's no bats in Postojna Cave, but she has the idea of a cave as the house of bats. This story got her super excited, to which her dad spiced up with the story about human fish (Proteus anguinus), a very rare species live in Postojna Cave.

Who wouldn't be impressed with such a natural wonder?

We arrived in Postojna at around 11am and got the tickets (I didn't manage to buy them online, but it would've been cheaper -you could buy here). We paid €32 per person for my husband, his mom (she was visiting us in Ljubljana so we took her) and myself for a combo of the cave and Predjama Castle (story about this Castle in the next post), and €2 for babygirl -this price for up to 5 year old. The organized tour (we took the English group) started at noon so we had the time to have coffee and buy babygirl a little magnetic miniature of the human fish (they don't sell bats, of course).

Beautiful limestone: the kind of view seen during our train ride

40 visitors made up our group, led by a guide called Sandra. Except babygirl, there was only one other child in the group, but she was a small baby sleeping in a carrier. So obviously, my toddler was the loudest creature during the 1,5 hour tour. I mean, she's naturally loud, plus the good acoustic of the cave? Oh how she entertained the whole group with all her (super loud) comments -the ones like: "mama where are the bats though?? oh maybe the mommy bats and the daddy bats are working now so the baby bats are in the daycare. That's why there's none here, right??"

The path of the walking tour: easy, safe and child-friendly

We entered the cave by the electric train which drove us around 2 km. What can be more exciting to toddlers than train?! Temperature fell drastically as we drove into the cave -it's constantly around 10 degrees Celcius inside. We were ready with jackets, babygirl even wore her rubber boots so she could walk comfortably even in paddles. But if you don't have warm clothes, don't worry, they rent coats for €3.5. After we got off the train in the Great Mountain hall, we continued the tour walking (around 1.5 km), while our guide lady explained about the history and the nature of the cave, the creation of stalactite and stalagmite, the development of the cave and the ecosystem in it. We walked through the Russian bridge, the three most famous chambers -the spaghetti chamber, the white chamber and the red chamber,  the tunnel that lead to Pivka cave, the most beautiful stalagmite called Brilliant -which as well the symbol of the cave, the aquarium with some human fish in it, and ended up in the concert hall (oh the great acoustic of the concert hall!) where the train drove us back outside through slightly different route from the one we entered.

The "gothic" and "brilliant" stalagmite, the two most famous stalagmites, which are also the symbol of the cave

The aquarium I mentioned, with the human fish, was also a highlight attraction for babygirl. We saw at least three big human fish in it (they're averagely 20 centimeters long) and learn some interesting facts -that they live up to 100 years and could survive without food for up to 10 years!

When we got out of the cave, the rain was pouring. Babygirl was hungry so we decided to have lunch in one of the restaurants in the cave park complex called Jamski dvorec. Babygirl and I shared pumpkin soup and spaghetti bolognese, my husband got roasted porcini mushroom with salad and my mother in law got autumn risotto -with turkey and mushrooms. Once we're done with lunch, which was very good, at a fair price of around €10 per person, the rain stopped, so we walked back to the car at the parking lot (which cost €4 for the whole day).

So, if you've been thinking about going to a cave, but afraid your toddlers would not like it, don't worry! If you prepare them right, they could actually love the experience. Our did! Caves (even the big ones like Postojna) could be child-friendly too :)

As for my high expectation my husband questioned about, did the cave actually meet it? Absolutely. 

Slovenian coast: Ankaran, Izola, Portorož and Koper

Although we thought we're officially done with this year's summer vacation (read the post about our summer vacation here) now that we're in Ljubljana (read the post about the reason why we're in Ljubljana here) we decided to spend one weekend at the Slovenian coast. Slovenian coastline is only 43 kilometers long so we basically saw most of it in one weekend. It might be short, but doesn't mean it needs to be missed, right?

For financial reason I booked us a hotel in Ankaran, which came out much cheaper than hotels in more famous areas such as Portorož or Piran. We got a triple room at Hotel Arija for €55 per night with breakfast, in a resort complex with private beach, outdoor and indoor pools, children playgrounds, restaurants, basketball and tennis courts. It's just a little more than an hour drive from Ljubljana so we drove off right after my husband's done with his work on Friday afternoon.

Babygirl and her dad dipped themselves a little bit in the sea before the sun completely set, when I realized that I lost my new bathing suit -which we bought along the way because I forgot to pack myself one- then we just rested and spent the evening in the hotel.

After breakfast the next morning they ran off to the beach for a swim, then realized that the water was just way too cold and decided to dip in the outside pools by the beach that were filled with sea water -I was still without bathing suit.

Babygirl and her dad's game in the pool. Obviously looking way too dangerous for me.

Around noon we headed to Portorož, around half an hour drive from Ankaran, to grab have some lunch. We chose a family restaurant by the beach called Prego, where babygirl and I shared spaghetti with seafood (with huge prawns that amazed her) and her dad had grilled calamari. After a long walk along the coast full of hotels and casinos, we sat down for coffee and ice cream next to a playground where babygirl played with slides and tunnels.

Around 3pm we headed to Izola, a small coastal town on the way back to Ankaran, because my husband wanted to visit the maker of his childhood favorite canned mackerel (in tomato sauce) produced in this very town -the brand called Delamaris. But of course we didn't check their working hour, and their official shop closed few minutes before we arrived. We sat down in the oldest bakery and cake shop in Izola to have frozen yoghurt and izolanka, a signature dessert of Izola which is vanilla cake filled with layers of vanilla and chocolate cream, orange cream and walnut.

The beautiful old town of Izola

After the cakes we walked through the beautiful old town and witnessed a wedding that was going on in the main town church. The town itself looks similar to most old Italian towns in the Croatian part of Istrian peninsula, hilly, narrow passages, full of colorful stone houses with the main church and a main tower in the center, all looking onto a small port where fishing boats are docked. I got myself a bathing suit in a small shop here (finally!) so when we came back to our hotel we all went swimming in the salt water pools until sunset.

The view of sunset from our hotel backyard

After breakfast the next day we continued the salt water pools routine until noon, and we decided to go to Koper after checking out from the hotel. The hotel staff told me nicely that even though we checked out, we could use all hotel facilities (pools, sauna, gym) until the end of the day if we wished too, which was nice, but we made up our mind already about Koper.

Koper is the main trading port of Slovenia. It has an old town part like Izola, but it's mainly industrial. My husband works mainly for transport infrastructure -like ports and railways- so he wanted to visit the port since the first time we got to the country. After seeing around we grabbed fried sardines and fried calamari for lunch. As babygirl was asleep on her dad in the carrier, we decided to head back to Ljubljana immediately. It was a day of parliamentary election of Croatia, so my husband needed to go to the Croatian embassy to vote -to which he previously registered for voting outside his residential address.

Following our short visit I personally think the Slovenian coastal towns are, although a little underestimated, worth to visit. One might not find turquoise colored sea with crystal clear water like in the southern part of Adriatic sea (the part you'd find in Croatia), but the towns are beautiful, local people are welcoming, and you can eat (and drink!) really well in this area.

Would you move abroad with a child?

I did move abroad. Six years ago. For good. But I didn't have a job then. I didn't have a child. Would we move abroad, now that we're a family, with jobs and a mortgage? Honestly, we probably would.

We don't have any good reason yet to move for good -like that dream job offer, for example, in some place warm by the sea. But there are some shorter terms options, like secondment my husband might someday get, or longer-term research I might have to do for my study in some other country. Sounds exciting, right? You get to live for some period in a new environment you're not familiar with, take your child to new parks -maybe even find a new daycare, explore the new city in a new country, visit everything, eat everything along the way?

Or not? Would it be too scary? New language, cultural and climate shock for a child?

This week, though, we began an adventure in some sort of a new home for the next three months. My husband got some kind of fellowship -more similar to short term secondment, to work in the same office but in different city and country: Ljubljana, Slovenia. Babygirl and I joined him now for a couple of weeks, then we'll be back in Zagreb because I need to go to work for some more weeks, then we'll be joining him again in here.

Enjoying Tivoli Park (with ducks and squirrels) in the heart of Ljubljana

Before coming here, we told babygirl all the time that we'd be moving into a new apartment in a completely new city. She didn't seem to care. She didn't seem to listen. Until one day in the last week in Zagreb, she got upset for some reason, and got into a fight with me. In her frustration, she actually yelled "I want to go to Slovenia right now!" :)

Slovenia might not sound "abroad" to most Croats. Ljubljana is literally two hour drive from Zagreb. But I can tell you that the experience for babygirl is priceless. She realizes that the people here speak different language -which she doesn't understand. The easy part is, most Slovenes understand our language (Croatian), but we don't understand theirs. Everyone is too kind and would speak back to us in Croatian. She notices small things which she figured out by herself, like when she pointed out how the buses in Ljubljana are white (they're blue in Zagreb), how the garbage trucks are white (green in Zagreb), how there are squirrels everywhere (she's never seen them before so that's super exciting), how the police officers are on horses, how the banknotes look different, and plenty of other things. It might sounds silly but these are actually amazing facts when a 2-year old actually made an observation and conclusion by herself.

Exploring Ljubljana, while waiting for daddy to come home from work

We spent our first day home adjusting (although we could tell babygirl is settled in the new apartment from the first hour we got in), then I took her to Tivoli Park on the second day. When we found one of the many playgrounds in Tivoli, she excitedly asked "is this my new daycare?" I had to explain to her that we'll be here only for a short period of time and that she won't have to go to a daycare, but I could see that she took the idea of "living in other country" very well.

One of the playgrounds in Ljubljana zoo

I decided to take her to the zoo on our third day, which turned out to be a great experience. Ljubljana zoo is smaller than Zagreb zoo, with less number of species, but I've got to say I like it better. There's no cemented area, no asphalt, no industrial cages. Everything is built in line with the natural habitats, trekking paths are just like in the real woods, animals have plenty of open space and children playground are all built with natural materials and colors.

We saw leopards, tigers, different kind of apes, giraffes, camels, zebras, elephants, brown bears and many other animals, and her favorite were: the seals! We had to go back to the seal pond at least three times, and she made me buy her a stuffed seal in the souvenir shop.

At this point I don't know yet what we're doing tomorrow -I'm thinking maybe the castle (funicular ride!) or botanical garden. Whatever it would be, I'm sure we'll enjoy our stay here. So babygirl, welcome home for the next three months! And you, we'll keep you posted of our adventures :)

The beginning of our Croatian National Parks tour -Krka

Last year my husband won two free tickets to enter Paklenica National Park. Sadly, we never managed to visit Paklenica until the end of the validity period of the tickets. As we're very sorry to never make it to visit Paklenica with the free tickets, we decided to commit ourselves to visit all eight National Parks of Croatia, at least one park in one year.

Earlier this year he won (again!) two free entrance tickets to Krka National Park, so we decided to start the national parks adventure in Krka. While summer vacationing in Nin in mid August, we took a one day trip to Krka NP which was around an hour drive from the coastal town of Nin near Zadar. When I googled about Krka, Skradinski buk attracted me the most. I thought, that was what I wanted to visit in Krka. Following our 6-year-old outdated GPS, we ended up in Roški slap entrance of Krka. We parked the car and consulted with a young girl at the ticket sale point about our destination. She checked the tickets my husband won, and she told us that they are only valid for the northern side of the park, which starts from Roški slap toward the north, and not valid for Skradinski buk. Meaning we actually were on the right spot. My husband packed babygirl on his back with Ergo carrier, we got a ticket for my mother-in-law who was with us (cost 60 kn for her -around €8) and started following the map the girl handed me.

Roški slap waterfall at the northern part of Krka National Park

We walked along the Krka stream which was very tranquil and breathtaking, learning about the biodiversity of the area on the boards along the hiking track. Babygirl was delighted by the amount of fish she saw along the crystal clear water, and many ducks that swam along the stream. The track is flat and wide, easy enough even for a 2-year-old and a 63-year-old (my husband's mother).

After crossing a small wooden bridge to get to the other side of the stream, we slightly went out from the walking track and decided to climb the 517 stairway up toward a cave called Oziđana pećina. The 517 steps were a little intimidating for both my husband and his mother, but I was determined (I even carried babygirl halfway, with a carrier on my back). We took a short break for water and peaches at around 250 steps (there are benches for resting) and finished all the steps quickly and went into the cave. We didn't see bats, but the story about bats thrilled babygirl that she went to the daycare in the next three days in bat costume.

The view from Oziđana pećina Cave

After getting back down the stairways, we were back on the track and stroll along to reach the ethnological village to see the traditional water mills. While looking at the old houses along the streams, we found a unique eating place (with a water mill) where the tables are set next to little waterfalls, on the water, allowing the guests to chill their feet in the clear cold water while having their meals. This point was probably the best experience for babygirl, because we had to bribe her with ice cream to get her to leave the place when we were done.

The concept of the place thrilled us, we got to bathe our feet while eating

Everything served here was home-made and home-grown. We got delicious plate of goat and cow cheeses, freshly baked bread (with the flour milled in the water mill inside the house), and beautiful salad plate of home-grown green olives and tomatoes dressed in home-made olive oil. We got both home-made red and white wine, although we liked the red one better. For a big plate of cheeses, a big plate of salad and a basket of fresh bread, including all the wines we had, they charged us 70 kn (€9) for all four of us!

After the food-and-drink break, we walked down the hill to go to the beach, which was looking toward the famous Roški slap waterfall. At this point my husband and babygirl couldn't wait to take off the clothes and jump in the water. But the water was way too cold for me. The water was unbelievably clear though, with lots and lots of fish you could swim together with, and there are smaller waterfall around the beach area where people are gather to bathe.

Bathing at the smaller waterfalls around the main Roški slap waterfall

After spending the afternoon bathing and enjoying coffee (babyccino for her) by the beach, we went back to the point where we we started. There are still lots of spots like ruins of castles and other waterfalls we could've visited, but at this point babygirl was deep asleep and grandma was way too tired. So we decided to go back to the parking lot and drive back home.

Overal, we were delighted by our experience of Krka. It's too bad we didn't get to the southern part (Skradinski buk), but we'll visit that some other time. This part that we visited are family friendly, with hiking path that are good for visitors of all ages. There are plenty of sitting places to take a break while enjoying the scenery and the animals living there, and the offers of foods and drinks are not overpriced. My husband likes it here because they actually let you bathe in bathing areas, while in other national parks like Plitvice for example, swimming and bathing are strictly forbidden, which, could be frustating when you're hiking and strolling around inviting crystal clear fresh water on a super hot day.

Summer vacation with a toddler

Most Europeans spend two or three weeks on their favorite coast for a relaxing summer holiday. This year we decided to break our summer vacation to three parts because we wanted to "save" vacation days from work and spend as little paid-vacation-days as possible. This way, my husband could stay longer (probably three weeks) when I give birth in the end of this year.

Our summer vacation this year looked like this: three days (long weekend) of Lovran, three days (long weekend) of Moščenička Draga and five days (extended long weekend) of Nin. All destinations were of course, Croatian coast (the first two in Kvarner, the last one in north Dalmatia). These were our third year taking babygirl to summer vacation, and here are some tips we could share:

 

Learn what your child likes, and it's probably sand

After many beaches, if there is anything we learned, it's one thing: babygirl loves sand. She prefers sandy beaches much more to pebbly ones. As much as we love crystal clear waters on rocky beaches where we can jump into deep waters, we now go to sandy beaches with easy entrance and shallow waters. She tried to kill herself several times in pebbly and rocky beaches (by tripping, falling and bumping into big rocks, and once by trying to eat and swallow a pebble), so we only go to her kind of beach now. Plus, most family with small children prefer sandy beaches anyway, meaning there would be many other children. And that means lots of new friends to entertain your child (if you're child is as social as mine) so you get more chance to just relax and sun bathe.

She can play with sand for hours and hours. And when it gets too hot, she walks to the water and dip herself in.

 

Protect him (and yourself) from over-exposure of sun

I've seen these kids around the beach with hats and UV-protected wet suit, and they're like that the whole day. Nope, my child is not one of them. She's the nudist kind. She'd wear a hat for like one second before throwing it away into the sea. And she takes off swimming suit. So we just let her be naked all day, and got a good and easy-to-apply sun screen. For the last two years we use the Organic Children SPF 30 from Green People on her, which I re-apply probably every two or three hours. If your product comes with a spray, I swear God it's much easier to apply.

 

Invest in a good beach tent

If your family is okay with no shade all day long, then you don't need a tent. Or if the beach you're going is full of trees with good shade. Normally we need a tent so every once in a while we can take a break from the sun and be inside, but you can also choose a parasol if you prefer. For three years we suffered from our conventional tent, which, quite okay but take so long to set up (it has the sticks that need to be put together, and then need to be inserted to the provided holes in the tent), so we swear we're getting a new 2-seconds-Quechua beach tent which, literally sets up in 2 second when you throw it away in the ground.

 

Start early, time his nap well

Before baby we'd wake up during vacation probably at 9am, have breakfast and coffee in peace, and arrive at the beach around 11am, and stay the whole day until sunset. With babygirl things changed. She wakes up around 7am, so we start our day earlier. We're usually already at the beach by 9am so she can enjoy before the sun gets too strong for her. We'd do two or three rounds of swims, she gets several hours of play, before lunch time comes. At 1pm the sun gets too strong so we'd leave the beach, get some lunch and she'd sleeps nicely in the hotel or apartment that we rent, for three or four hours sometimes, before she wakes up at 5pm and ready to go back to the beach. By 5pm the sun is quite friendly at the beach, so she plays for another three hours before the sun finally sets.

She gets three to four hours of play in the morning, and then another three hours in the afternoon

Mind the diaper, if your child is not toilet trained

It's okay to pee in the sea. Who doesn't? But bigger (poop) accident won't be nice. If your child is still in diaper, buy a good swimming diaper. I've seen these babies in regular disposable diapers floating and dipping in the water, their diapers soak up so much water that by the time they get out of the water their diaper is probably heavier than themselves. You can buy disposable swim diaper if you like, major brands have 'em. When babygirl was in diaper, (she was cloth-diapered) we put on swimming diaper from Close Parent (the maker of Pop-in diapers).

 

Pay attention to other offers in the area

When you go to the beach, most probably it's not just about the beach. You need other things to enjoy and get the whole experience. We try to find some beach that is close enough to other destination where we can do a day or a half-day trip to break the routine, such as an old town, a natural or national park, or some mountains for hiking. At the beach itself, our basic needs include trampoline (babygirl can't survive without trampoline), showers (we don't want sand castle in the car), coffee shop and some snack bar (she usually likes pancakes and boiled corn at the beach). Based on all of these above-mentioned category, our last year's star of the summer was Paradise beach (Rajska plaža) on Rab Island, while this year's is the Queen's beach (Kraljičina plaža) in Nin. Next year, we're planning to go to Sakarun beach in Dugi otok.

A spark, a cactus, and a hurricane

Six years. One child. Seven countries. 120.000 km. This is a story about our little red Chevrolet Spark. Which we sold today. This morning we signed a contract with the buyers and we handed the beloved car to them. And I'm feeling very, very emotional about it.

Not many people feel so emotional about a car. It's just a car. But I love cars. I watched Top Gear more than I ever watched Friends in my life. Or Sex and the City. Or anything like that. My mother used to work in a car industry and my father is a car maniac. It's genetics.

We got our Spark six years ago, brand new. We didn't have much money so we got a small budget car for our daily need. The car was mostly rested during the week -except for regular house errands- because we take trains to work. But we'd go to road trips and weekend getaways whenever we could. It's been to beautiful places. It witnessed the growth of our family, and now as we're growing even more, we needed  a bigger, stronger car.

You will be missed <3

My favorite story with the Spark is the hurricane story. I was 8-month pregnant with babygirl, when my husband had some job arrangement in Rijeka, 160km from Zagreb. I decided to go with him so I could take a walk in the city while he was solving his thing. By 8pm he was done with his work, but he wanted to stay a little longer in some coffee shop to watch a handball match. We were ready to go home around midnight when the game was over. And that was when the hurricane came.

Rijeka and places around it is often hit by a very strong wind, called Bura. That night, the strongest kind of bura came, called Orkanska bura, or Hurricane bura, which could reach speed up to 220 km/h. We came to the entrance of the highway for Zagreb when we found out that the highway is completely closed for all vehicle due to security reasons, so we decided to go back to the city. The wind was so strong we lost our radio antenna. The whole car was shaking when parked. We went to a gas station in the center where the wind was blowing less, and decided to just go to sleep in the car. Due to my pregnancy bladder, we had to walk across the street at least three times during the night to use the toilet, fighting with the wind so it wouldn't fly us away every time. We woke up around 7am to a great sunny day, so we expected that the road should be okay by now. No wind whatsoever. We went to the highway just to find out that it's still closed. The officials couldn't confirm when it will be reopened, so we decided to go back to Zagreb via the so-called old road, through the mountains of Gorski Kotar.

Our little car climbed slowly on the road of the mountainous Gorski Kotar which was literally covered by one meter of white snow in the middle of March. It was a beautiful, beautiful view along the way. We drove passed by small villages that just were waking up to the morning sun, so we decided to stop in one of the villages to get coffee. Until we realized that we had no cash. We looked for ATMs and some guy told us that there is no ATM in the village. We thought maybe the coffee shop takes card payment, but of course they didn't. We came back to the car to see if we have any coins in the compartment, and found exactly 15 kn (around €2). We had hopes. We got back to the coffee shop and asked how much was an espresso. 7 kn. There we go, two espressos and a great view. Long story short, we arrived in Zagreb safely that day, around midday.

As for the car, we're upgrading to Citroen Cactus. It's bigger and twice stronger, should give us spacious feel even with two child seats and a grandmother in between sometimes. Babygirl asked me already twice today where our car is, as she saw her carseat in our living room waiting to be put into the new car. I know she loved the Spark as much as I did. But she will go to more adventures with the new car, together with her little sister, who's going to be called Iskra, meaning Spark in Croatian :)

Eating Vienna, with a toddler

So my husband and I met when we took a Master study together in Nice, France, seven years ago. We both graduated in summer 2010 and are still in contact with some of the friends we studied with back then. Several months ago we agreed to all meet in Vienna for a weekend in July this year. Friends were coming from all over the world to meet up, so we decided to drive to Vienna for a weekend getaway on the 9th of July.

Unlike our Paris trip (read here) this Vienna trip wasn't personally designed for babygirl. An itinerary was offered by a friend and we followed his lead (which was great, but is very different from our usual toddler-friendly plans). And because the idea of the trip was to see and talk to people we hadn't seen in a while, sightseeing was not our focus. We wanted more of conversations-over-drinks kind of thing. And we ended up eating all the time :)

We left home early on Saturday, around 5am. Babygirl was asleep so I just moved her (in pajamas) into her carseat. My husband arrived home the night before around midnight from Brussels, so he was completely sleep-deprived and he made me driving mostly.

Taking a little break from driving

We made our only stop after we passed Graz, in a rasthaus somewhere 100 km before Vienna. Babygirl woke up and she needed to go to the bathroom so we decided to stop to have breakfast and coffee. The rest area has a cute little playground so we spent some time to play.

After driving for another hour, we arrived in the hotel we were staying in at around 10am. All our friends were already there so we had another coffee, talked, caught up a little, and decided to walk around the city. We stayed at the AllYouNeed Vienna Hotel 2 by the Danube at Schwedenplatz, so we crossed the bridge and walked all the way to Stephansplatz. After spending some time in the city center and enjoy the sight of Stephansdom (which was being renovated), we decided to go eat lunch at the Museumsquartier area. We had Wiener schnitzel (the Viennese steak -very thin breaded pan fried cutlet of veal) and some refreshing lemonade while babygirl (and another toddler of our friends) playing in the green area in front of the restaurant. There were some fountains the kids enjoyed, but surprisingly no playground. She didn't enjoy the veal steak so we ordered her (an overpriced) baby-sized spaghetti napoletana (spaghetti with basic tomato-based sauce).

After lunch our friends were going somewhere (I'm not sure but I think they might have gone to Belvedere?) and we decided to split with them in front of Hofburg palace and get ourselves back to the hotel to check in. After sleeping three hours straight (all the three of us!) we met our friends in the hotel lobby and went off for dinner. Our host (one of us in the group, Austrian) promised us a very traditional Austrian dinner in an old place called Heuriger 10er Marie.

Our great dinner place: Heuriger 10er Marie

We took a metro from our hotel to Ottakringer, which was extremely exciting to babygirl (remember her impressions from Paris metro?) walked a little, and there we were! A beautiful old family-house-looking restaurant with friendly staff who sat us all (thirteen of us!) in one cozy table in the corner of their garden on the side of the house. Foods were amazing! We ordered wiener schnitzel (AGAIN, of course!) this time the chicken version, at pretty cheap price (€9 with side dish included, huge portion). This time around babygirl enjoyed the steak! The side dish are served in buffet we can choose by ourselves, I took corn and bean salad and my husband took potato and onion salad. We all drank wine spritzer like real Austrians (mixture of white wine with bubbly water) which is kind of funny because it's actually also a traditional drink called gemišt (basically adapted word from German word gemischt -means mixed) in the region where my husband comes from in Croatia, Zagorje.

The restaurant has huge garden with some empty area where the two toddlers play football and climbed fences (there was no swings or slides meant for children whatsoever, weird, right?) until around 11pm when we decided to leave because babygirl wanted to go to bed.

The next morning after enjoying breakfast at the garden of the hotel, we went to the Alte donau where our friends enjoyed the Danube with the pedal boats and went swimming. Babygirl refused to go on the pedal boat so we stayed at a bar on the river bank and let her play around. By the lunch time they're back, and we walked toward the Donauinsel (the Danube isle) across Ponte Cagrana and had lunch at a Greek restaurant called Taverne Sokrates. Rather nostalgic to our Greek trip last year, my husband got chicken souvlaki with greek salad, while baby girl and I got greek lamb chop with grilled vegetables on the side. With great view of the Danube full of swans, the lunch was excellent, at just around €13 per main course.

Babygirl and her dad on coordinating jumps

After the great lunch, we said goodbye to all of our friends, then we let babygirl jumped her energy out on the floating trampoline on the Danube (which cost €3 for 10 minutes -but the lady let my husband jumps along babygirl), and went straight to take our car at the hotel and drove straight home. We didn't make a stop because babygirl was deep asleep the whole ride, so we made it from Vienna to Zagreb in one leg in less than 3 hour, with our beloved little Chevrolet which by today, is no longer ours :)