One Cab Ride in Rome

The Pantheon at night.

That sentence sums up my last trip to a tee. Like the one cab ride I took in Rome, my 2 weeks in Italy were exhilarating, thrilling (no seat belt in that taxi) and empowering. While I hung on for dear life as my driver whipped me around the narrow alleyways of that old city, the old Patty would have been praying, "Dear Lord, let me live to eat one more gelato", but the Patty in Rome was giddy, laughing the whole way and raring for more!

I've been back for over a month now and have been working on keeping the same feelings with me in my everyday life....personally and in my work. I figure it doesn't have to go away just because I'm not surrounded by the freedoms of travel, a wonderfully old and crumbling city or yummy pasta. I can be more go-with-the-flow, more accepting of what is and not focusing on what isn't. I can be more independent and not let my brain gremlins get the best of me when encountering new situations and new people. All of these things were already there, but for some reason I needed to go to Italy to figure that out! Not that I'm complaining of course.

What can I figure out on my next trip?

Here are some of my favorite photos I took in Italy:

The tiles in Siena's Duomo.............................................Looking out from under the Pantheon, Rome.

Festivities leading up to Il Palio in Siena.

A favorite moment...sitting high above Il Campo, people watching with a beer and a sandwich.

The backside of Siena's Duomo.

One of the many religious reliefs on the walls of Siena.

Il Campo, Siena, at night.

In the Jewish ghetto in Rome.

More Surprises from Slovenia

I didn't think Slovenia had more surprises for me, but when we left Bled (which by the way, looking back on our photos, had a very "Sound of Music" like feel) and took a bus to the country's capital, lo and behold, we found ourselves in the most charming, compact and just coolest little European city that I had never heard about! Where have I been? Why was Rick Steve's the first person to let me in on the secret and why are people not talking about this place? Ok, this could be due to the fact that it's called Ljubljana and this alone may cause some to panic, but once you know it's pronounced Loob-lee-AHnah (said quickly) then you can just let out a sigh of relief and get to experiencing the loveliness already.

I REALLY loved this place.

Preseren Square. This is the heart of the city that has a triple bridge spanning the river designed by Ljubljana's famous architect Joze Plecnik. He's like Barcelona's Gaudi and he built many a beautiful building, statue or bridge in town.

The city is very bike-friendly so we rented bikes on our second day and made our way around every nook and cranny. Here we're trying to take a picture of ourselves on our wheels but it seems as though we were mistaken for some famous couple as this man and his kid couldn't stop gawking. I don't know....maybe it's the hats, glasses and his n' hers REI rain slickers??

One church had huge metal doors complete with life-sized pope heads. Sticking out. A little creepy but I dug it.

There were two spectacular churches from our whole trip and this was the first. This Serbian Orthodox Church was striking. It was painted inside from head to toe in bright blues and golds with a black and white checkered floor. There were no pews inside as worshippers stand during the service. We stayed for quite a while and noticed people lighting candles as prayers. Unlike a Catholic church that uses little tealights, these were long spindly candles that you propped up in water filled tubs with sand on the bottom. The effect was really beautiful.

Some fun graffiti and some not so light-hearted. The first one says "Pray, bombs are falling".

Preseren Square and the Triple Bridge at night.

This is us waiting, waiting, waiting for a 2 am train to Budapest. At the time we thought it was a great idea, giving us a very long and full day in Ljubljana but after we returned our bikes in the early evening and lots of things closed down in town (including the actual train station) we were left to either wait outside or in the walkways underneath the tracks. Here we are in the bowels of the station where I'm changing my mind.

Slovenia....Go for the Cream Cake!

This is Part 5 of my trip down memory lane where I've been posting photos of our trip to Eastern Europe 2 years ago. See the rest here!

Today, we're in Bled, Slovenia. I don't think I ever gave much thought to where Slovenia was on a map. Which is a shame because maybe I would've gotten my butt there much sooner. This place was so quaint and lush and just so European.

Below is Lake Bled, a glacial lake in the Julian Alps which you can't see any of (Alps, that is) due to the bad weather. Chris still has not recovered from this to this day - we were going to rent a car and drive through them, but alas.....cloud cover. I personally liked the overall gloom and mistiness.

There is a romantic 15th century church in the middle of the lake where many weddings are held. We hired one of the special boats (called a pletna) that take you to the church. No motor, one guy, two oars. He had some rowing power!

There are 98 steps leading up to the church and it's tradition for the husband to carry his new bride all the way up to prove he is "fit" for marriage. Chris didn't offer to carry me.... but I'm thinking he was waiting to prove his strength on ringing the wishing bell inside. Right? After 12 years of marriage you let some things slide.

We were told that we HAD to enjoy the town's specialty, a cream cake called kremma rezina. It's a layer of cream and a thick layer of vanilla custard sandwiched between sheets of delicate, crispy crust. I'm not a huge fan of these kinds of desserts so thinking I wouldn't really like it, I ordered a huge slab of chocolate cake and thought we'd share. Well, I was wrong. So very very wrong. You can see that we ate both, easily, but we were not happy at all to share that cream cake. It was that good! You can see Chris below lamenting that there's one bite left.

I can't remember, but he better have given me the last bite since he didn't carry me up those stairs!

Part 4 - The Journey Continues

I've been posting some highlights of our trip 2 years ago to Eastern Europe. You can find more here, here and here.

This next stop blew us out of the water. Well, actually, I had a big fear of falling INTO the water while visiting this National Park, partly because the waters were running pretty swift in some areas and partly because, like so much of Europe, no one here had ever heard of a good ol' handrail.  You know....to protect you from slipping or going over a very, very large drop.

On our big drive to Zagreb to catch our train to Slovenia, we made a stop at Plitvice National Park. We had read that if we could, we should definitely try to visit and I'm so glad we did. This place made our jaws drop. It was like a Disneyland on steroids, without anything fake or mechanical and no creepy songs. It was like a lush stage set meticulously built for a prehistoric dinosaur movie. I could go on! But you get the point. Check out the pics of this forest with waterfalls, turquoise lakes and miles of plank walks.

It's hard to tell but the water was lapping over the plank walkway and from underneath, making it a little sketchy to walk along. Chris, of course, had no problem with this.

Walking through Supljara Cave. Apparently in the 60's, many German and Italian spaghetti westerns were filmed at the park and in one of the famous ones the treasure was hidden in this cave.

Gorgeous.

Eastern Europe - Part 3

More photos from our trip 2 years ago. Check out parts 1 & 2.

From Korcula, Croatia, we headed out to Mostar, Bosnia Herzegovina....but on the way, we made an important stop. Ever since I was a kid, I've wanted to visit Medjugorje. I know this is because of stories my aunt and uncle told me about when they visited this town in the 80's, back when it was in Yugoslavia. It's also to do with my Catholic upbringing, mainly from my Mexican side, that was filled with stories of apparitions, choir voices appearing out of nowhere, blood-crying statues, people spontaneously speaking in tongues, an unexplainable image imprinted onto fabric combined with possibly, and an unhealthy dose of the Twilight Zone since the age of 5. Needless to say, since a young lass, I've always been intrigued with religious influenced stories of the unexplainable. From an agnostic point of view, mind you.

If you've never heard of the place or are not into crazy vision-seeing, miracle stories, Medjugorje is a popular religious pilgrimage site due to reports of apparitions of the Virgin Mary to 6 locals (who happen to be brothers and sisters.) She's apparently only speaking to 3 of them now, but that doesn't deter 1 million people from visiting each year. Anyway, when I looked on a map and saw that Medjugorje was on the way to Mostar, we made a stop!

Pilgrims walk up these craggy (and frankly, very dangerous) rocks called Apparition Hill. There were lots of people with canes, and I'm assuming, people who were ill. I was concentrating hard not to sprain an ankle.

When we got to the top, there was a young man praying on his knees with a lot of fervor. Having a Catholic background, I felt it appropriate to say a little prayer and then I promptly sat to do some people watching. During our short visit, nothing much happened....ok, I'll admit, it would've been cool to see something go down, but instead we enjoyed walking through some beautiful fields and poking around the town a bit. There were crappy tourist shops every 2 feet selling every rosary known to man, so of course I bought a few for the Catholics that I know. This place was definitely what you would expect of a touristy-pilgrim destination (lots of tour buses, Americans in their white-white sneakers and fanny packs) but hey, I can now cross this place off my bucket list!

Here we are (below) in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina. If you look closely you'll see a guy jumping from the bridge (which is an Unesco Site). They're trained and do it for money. I've heard it's quite shallow down there. Eeeps!

Mostar was one of our favorite stops on the trip. A great balance of history, drama, beauty and walkability. It has a very tragic story, but it still remains a really beautiful place. This was the first city I've ever visited to have such a mix of cultures and faiths. I'd never been to a mosque before Mostar (there are so many minarets!), nor had I ever heard the call to prayer ( 5 times a day). It was so moving and gave me goose bumps every time.

You can see remnants of the siege they had in '92 -'93, like all the bullet holes in the pic above. The host of where we stayed told us a little bit about what it was like back then, how you had to travel around at night so you wouldn't get shot (her B&B was right near the front line) and how her and her family had to eventually flee to Germany. She came back to an empty shell, like the rest of the city, but she rebuilt her home and turned it into a lovely B&B.

Eastern Europe - Part 2

See part 1 here.

From Dubrovnik we rented a car, drove north and hopped a ferry to Korcula, an island off the coast of Croatia (and some say the birth place of Marco Polo!)

I've never seen so many cats in one place like I did in Dubrovnik and Korcula. I loved it, but made sure not to get too close. These were rough n' tumble street cats with eyes missing and notched ears....but I still couldn't get enough of them.

Our sweet host Tomas. This pic was taken right before we found out the ferry we got up really early to take didn't even run that day and we ended up running several miles (with our backpacks on) to catch a ferry on the other side of the island. I don't think I've EVER run that hard!