Croatia and Slovenia

We have had terrible weather since we got to Holland but that has changed now we are in Croatia. We hired a car in Dusseldorf and left for the South in pouring rain.  Very difficult driving on the Autobahns.  We stayed the night in Baiersdorf with Nick and Monika and then the next day headed south through Bavaria and crossed the Alps to the South Tirol in Italy without hardly seeing an Alp! The South Tirol is a charming part of Northern Italy where German is the main language and not Italian and consequently many Germans go there for their holidays. It has lots of guest houses and we stayed in one for the night before heading further South through the Dolomites (Limestone Mountain Range on southern edge of Alps) to Italian speaking Italy.

The rain continued!

As it was raining so much we decided to visited the Postojna caves in Slovenia as the weather doesn’t matter underground. The caves are outstanding. You first take a train journey along them for around 2km. Then its out onto your feet and a circular route through cavern after cavern. A very extensive set of caves  and one of the biggest in Europe.

Next day we drove to a farm in Croatia. Had a spot of bother crossing the border from Slovenia (which is in the EU) to Croatia as the sharp border policeman noticed that we had stayed in the EU for more than 3 months. He was going to fine us 400 euros but when he discovered we were married (albeit at present with different surnames on the passport) and Wendy was using a British passport (no limits on a stay),  that changed everything and we were sent on our way.

We stayed at an Agro Tourism bed and breakfast in Northern Istria, a province of Croatia. They have to make everything that they serve for breakfast and dinner from home grown or raised produce. So outside our bedroom was the pig sty. They had olive trees everywhere and made their own delicious wine. Food was basic, meat orientated but very good value. Using the farm as a base we explored the villages of Istria. We went down to Pula the capital and saw ancient Roman ruins including a huge amphitheatre.

We visited the picture postcard ‘fishing’ port of Rovinj and the lovely town nearby of Porec.

One day we drove to the Limski Canal a long fjord like waterway pushing inland for a long way and had a lovely lunch of local mussels and oysters overlooking the ‘fjord’.

We visited Groznan and Motovun ancient hilltop towns dating back to the 13th century. The weather was fine by now which made a huge difference, though there was evidence of flooding everywhere from the torrential rains.

Then it was a long drive to Plitvice National Park where there are the most amazing lakes that descend one to another with waterfalls in between each lake. The park is quite simply the best water land paradise in the world. It is set in a beautiful valley has lovely walkways going over falls, under falls and around lakes. It is fabulous, amazing and stunning. Go there before it is too late!

 

This is our final blog for this year and the final blog for Le Fabuleux as we have put her up for sale in Holland. She is not suitable for cruising France as she is too high and too deep. We get by but it is a chore. So next year we are off to the USA and Canada where we will be buying an RV and touring the high roads and by roads for a few years before returning to France in another boat. Stay Tuned.

Full Circle

Today we are back in the Netherlands not far from where we left 3 1/2 months ago. A lovely warm autumn day at last after a wek of cloudy and drizzly weather.

On Monday We continued don the Mosel to the very beautiful town of Cochem which happened to be having its annual wine festival. We had a great mooring in the centre of the town and we walked over the bridge to the medieval town with its fairy tale castle atop the hill.

In the Market square they had setup stalls for wine tasting and we drank a few glasses of the 2009 Cochemer Klostergarden Riesling. Lovely and fruity and extremely drinkable. Afterwards we dropped into a typical German restaurant for a meal of pork trotter (boiled and then roasted) and pork steak.

It was also very tourist place but when we were there the hotel boats that were in port were serving dinner so it was just us and the locals. It is without  doubt the prettiest village on the Mosel River.

The next couple of days we continued down the Mosel in drizzly conditions eventually reaching the last lock at Koblenz early on Wednesday morning.

Going through we discovered that the Rhine was in flood with a raging current that picked us up and hurled us downstream at 22km/h. (our normal speed is 10km/h). Barges were labouring upstream and the river was 150cm above its normal level. Town after town passed by until we eventually turned to stem the current which we could hardly do and pulled into a small marina off the Rhine at Mondorf. We were guests of the Pirate Club. It was a quiet mooring far removed from what was going on 200m away.

Next morning we edged our way out to a slightly better day (it wasn’t drizzling) and once more were enveloped by the rampaging river. We got as far as Dusseldorf that day and stopped in an old hafen (boat harbour) that had been converted into pleasure boat moorings. We were right under the famous Dusseldorf tower reminiscent of the Sky Tower in Auckland. We walked the 1.5km into the old town of Dusseldorf and it was a bit uninspiring – probably heavily bombed in WWII, and these days full of restaurants and beer gardens. Still it was a nice walk.

We continued on the river and it slowly eased in strength both because the level was going down and also because we were reaching the low lands where the gradient is much less. All the same we were still going 17 km/h. Then today we called into a favourite place at Bijland Plas, a small old gravel lake off the Rhine just inside Holland, where we are at anchor in calm conditions. A great way to finish off our holiday. 

This is the last blog from Le Fabuleux. We are off soon to Croatia and Slovenia for 3 weeks. As we don’t know whether we can get cellphone coverage there we will publish the next blog from the Plitivice Lakes National Park in Croatia in a couple of weeks time or so, where our Bed and Breakfast has Wi-Fi. Then after Croatia, we are off to the wedding of David’s nephew Michael at Lake Bled in Slovenia and then to Frankfurt Airport via Austria.