We took a few thousand pictures so it took us a while, but we’re finally getting around to posting our Europe vacation photos. Below are 5 new galleries.

We wanted to make the trip to see Zvonimir’s parents before Gabe and Zara needed their own airline seats. Airline tickets to Slovenia were much more expensive this year compared to years past so we ended up buying tickets to Venice, which is about 3 hours from Ljubljana. An added bonus was that our connections were through Philadelphia so we were able to find a 24 hour layover and meet up with Grandma, Pap, Aunt Debbie, Aunt Patty, and Aunt Sue before our flight to Europe!

It was great to see our family and perfect timing that Pappy could give Gabe his first haircut. We saved the cute little curl for his scrap book.

View the pictures from our Vacation 2011 – Philadelphia family visit.

The next evening we had an overnight flight to Venice. We assumed that since it was a night flight that Gabe & Zara would sleep through the flight. We assumed wrong!! The kids are not used to being held while they tried to sleep, so that was a problem, as were the lights, people were walking around, and not having any room to spread out (you can’t sit in the same row with twins because you need an extra oxygen mask).  They also started the I want mommy and no one else phase so they were only happy when Amy was holding them (which a stewardess pointed out was not allowed).  Unfortunately, we were “those people” with the screaming kid (times 2!) and nothing we did made them stop crying.

We arrived in Venice with two grumpy kids and 2 very tired and stressed out parents. We were very happy that we booked a hotel in Venice because we were exhausted and in no shape to drive the 3 hours to Slovenia.

After trying several cars before we found one large enough to fit us and our stuff, we headed to the hotel, just outside of the old city. After we took a nice nap, we took the bus to the old part of Venice and rode the water taxi around the city. We enjoyed a beautiful dinner al fresco in the back streets of Venice. It is a beautiful place and worth the visit. I wish we had more time to explore!

View our Venice pictures.

The kids were wide awake at 2 am so it was a rough night with little sleep, but overall we were glad we stayed overnight in Venice. The next day we headed to Slovenia to see Baba and Dide (Grandma and Grandpa). It was much warmer in Slovenia than at home so was a tough adjustment. The kids also did not adjust well to the time change so sleep was tough for everyone. We had a great time taking walks, visiting the playground and markets in Slovenia, and catching up with friends. The kids had a great time with their grandparents and loved spending the days watching dogs and playing in the park.

View pictures from our Vacation 2011 – Slovenia visit.

Next, we headed to our family house on the Croatian coast. Lucija, Erwin and Eva flew in from France to meet us in Croatia. The kids are only a month apart so it was really fun to have the whole family under one roof. It was also great to catch up with our Croatian family and friends in Murter.

The weather in Croatia was quite warm but the kids loved exploring the patio at home. When we arrived in Croatia, both kids were still pretty shaky with their walking so they often ended up crawling then pulling themselves up. They did not like crawling on the rough patio stones so they learned to walk a little more quickly as a result. Grandpa also taught the kids to throw stones into the sea in Croatia so this was hours of fun.

View our Croatia pictures.

After our visit to Croatia, we returned to Slovenia for the remainder of our trip. On the drive back to Ljubljana, we stopped at Zvonimir’s grandparents homestead in Slovenia. The area looks very similar to where Amy’s grandparents lived in Pennsylvania. We enjoyed a nice picnic lunch on the stairs of the house and were greeted by a very friendly cat whose calm demeanor, despite 2 non-gentile kids, earned him some prosciutto from our sandwiches! Before the final leg of our journey to Ljubljana, we visited our cousins who live nearby. We had not seen them in a few years so it was great to say hello!

View our pictures from our last week in Slovenia.

The flights back to Seattle were very long but luckily we had an awesome gate agent who, not only blocked the entire bulk-head row but also gave us 3 seats behind that road so we had enough room to spread out and for the kids to take a nap.  Unfortunately Zara flat out refused to sleep so she was a mooing mess (she sounds like a cow mooing when she is tired, upset, etc.).  Gabe was a little happier after a 3 hour nap but the flight seemed never ending.  When we finally got to Philadelphia the kids we had to rush to make it through customs and to our next flight.  By the time we got on the flight the kids were so exhausted that they crashed and slept the entire trip to Seattle.  We were extremely happy to be home after a 26+ hour day!!

Posted in Europe, Friends & Family, Slovenia & Croatia 79 Comments »

After 5 days in Slovenia, we headed west towards France, where we would spend the remainder of our vacation. We always seem to visit Europe during heat waves and this year was no exception. We’ve become ‘soft’ after living in Seattle’s cool weather so 100 degrees was boiling for us!

We wanted to spend the bulk of our time in France so we planned to drive the entire first day in Italy (a very long drive!). On the highway outside of Venice I recognized the logo/name of my favorite wine – an extremely small vineyard, that produced a wine we often bought when we lived in VA. We stopped at the offices and once we found someone who understood English we tried to explain that we were trying to find out where to buy their wine in Washington state. Unfortunately for now, they don’t have a distributor here but hopefully we can buy their wine again in the future! They gave us a bottle of our favorite wine as a gift for stopping in!

We continued to a hill town in Italy called Apricale. It’s incredibly beautiful in this area and we hope to spend more time in this region some day. Next, we headed to France. We drove the beautiful coast and visited several seaside towns before heading to Monaco. I wasn’t all that excited about seeing the huge boats/fancy cars when Z told me about Monaco, but I’m glad we went. It is incredible! Think Vegas grandeur but not fake.

We met up with our friends from Seattle who were also in the south of France on Vacation one day and headed north to Provence the following day. We spent most of our days driving through wine country and the agricultural regions of France, and stopping to explore the little hill towns in France. I have never seen as many cherries as we did when we drove through the cherry orchards in France!

We also headed to Lyon to meet up with Lucija and Erwin in their new home city. We had a great time touring the city with Lucija on the Velo’v bike rentals. It’s such a cool program and a great way to enjoy the city.

We spent our last day driving from Lyon to Zurich where we spent our last night.

It was a great trip and we saw a lot but covering over 2000 miles in 2 weeks is a little much and I don’t know that I would recommend that for everyone!

View our photos from Part 1 of Vacation 2009.

Posted in Europe, Slovenia & Croatia, Travel 75 Comments »

One positive of the downturn in the economy is cheap airfare to Europe! We found a great deal on tickets to Zurich, Switzerland (which were cheaper than we usually pay to fly to DC!) . We had a direct flight from Seattle to Frankfurt, a short layover, then another flight to Zurich. The direct flight from Seattle goes very far north so it cuts off a lot of travel time. With the direct flight, the Seattle to Frankfurt flight is only 10 hours (DC to Frankfurt is 8 ½ hours but if you fly Seattle-DC the flight is about 5 hours!).

Since we flew so far north it was sunny the entire flight. We completely missed the nighttime. When we arrived in Zurich we were pretty exhausted. We spent our first night at the Hilton in Zurich relaxing. Zurich is about 8 hours from Z’s family in Ljubljana, Slovenia but we had a night in Innsbruck, Austria to break up the drive.

En route to Innsbruck, Austria. On the way we stopped at Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany which was the inspiration for Disneyland and Sleeping Beauty. The castle was very pretty but pretty isolated and you don’t get a great view of the castle (check out wikipedia – the castle is pretty beautiful but you never really see that view from anywhere!) The drive through the Bavarian countryside was incredibly beautiful. We had one of our best meals on the trip in a restaurant where no one spoke any English and we just kind of pointed to the few words Z knew (chicken, asparagus, and potatoes). Outside of Innsbruck, we visited the Swarovski factory which was a little bizarre!

Z’s sister, Lucija, also flew to Slovenia to visit while we were there. We had a great time hiking, walking around the town, and enjoying some of the local cuisine. Check out part 1 of our vacation pictures below.

View our photos from Part 1 of Vacation 2009.

Posted in Europe, Slovenia & Croatia, Travel 85 Comments »

We visited Zvonimir’s parents in Ljubljana, Slovenia for a much needed vacation. As usual, we packed a bunch of activities into our trip.

We spent some time on the Istrian peninsula of Croatia and visited a couple of medieval hill towns that were really cute. We visited a great little shop where a local made glass pendants. I can’t wait to make them into necklaces!

We then traveled to Murter to relax and visit family. Zvonimir’s little cousin Niko visited daily and chatted non-stop. He was sad when we left because he “still had more things to tell us.” So cute!

View our Slovenia & Croatia 2008 photos.

Zvonimir participated in the annual race of traditional sailing boats with his father. He had a great time and it was a beautiful fall day.

View our Sailing photos.

Posted in Europe, Slovenia & Croatia, Travel 106 Comments »

After our time in India we traveled to Slovenia to visit Zvonimir’s family. We were pretty drained after our trip from Delhi-London-Munich-Ljubljana!    We changed locations every few days in India so we were pretty happy being lazy and relaxing in Slovenia. Unfortunately, the hot temperatures followed us to Slovenia and Z had a bit of a cold so we relaxed at home and didn’t do very much.

Our suitcase From India smelled pretty bad (we had done laundry in the sink in India but I guess we were still pretty smelly!).  Luckily we had sent a suitcase back to Slovenia with his parents (who came to the states for graduation) so this gave us fresh clothes.  We had traveled in India with a very small pullman suitcase with 3 outfits and were happy to have more clothing choices!

I finished 4 books.  We attended a Slovenian Independence day concert  (they were at war for 10 days in 1991).  We also spent time visiting the excellent fruit markets in Ljubljana and hiking.

View our View our Slovenia Photos photos

Posted in Europe, Slovenia & Croatia, Travel 296 Comments »