Plitvice Lakes

 12/14: Our Advent calendar says we will wear costumes tonight. We’ll see how that goes! We had hoped to take another walk in the park before packing up, but we awoke to strong wind and rain. So we had a leisurely start, Bob made a cup of instant coffee, and we left Split at 11. On the way to Plitvice Lakes, we stopped at the Klis Fortress.

The prisoners

A religious space for both Christians and Muslims - interesting! That’s a first for us.

The scenes we have experienced continue to amaze us

We arrived to Hedgehog’s Place (our Airbnb) about 3pm. Our host was there to greet us and show us around his farm. When Bob found this place, we knew the kids would love it (especially Quinn). Our host showed us around to meet the sheep, the wild boar, the ponies, and the cows. My new shoes are coming in handy in the soft muddy ground! The inside of our place was so eclectic and festive - they had a small Christmas tree, gnomes, and so many cute decorations to look at!

The base of the sink is an old sewing machine

The espresso machine matches the old cabinetry.

Unfortunately it doesn’t work so well and we have to wait a few more days to see what coffee maker our next place has!

Mason jars for lights, bedside table one my dad would love

The master bedroom with a tub - we let Simone sleep here because we wanted the view in the other bedroom upstairs! Plus she needs lots of darkness:-)

Our bedroom - we loved waking up to this view. He has his “hedgehog” on the throw pillows, hand towels, etc.

His wild boar

Meeting the ponies - we would buy extra apples and carrots to feed them later

Meeting the cows - 4 females and 1 bull. Our host said a few of them may be pregnant and may give birth in the next few days. I asked him how he knows how far along they might be (ie their size, the way they are behaving/walking, etc) but he didn’t have a good answer for me. That would be cool to see a baby if that happens!

The ponies:

We left the kids at home while we went into town (10 minutes away) for our grocery run. We came home to make Daddy’s yummy chicken dish in the kitchen with the least amount of counter space ever. We improvised with the sauce because we forgot to buy a sauce packet at the store, and they didn’t have red peppers so Bob found a jar of canned ones. We’ll see what this tastes like!

Thankfully the kids were hungry and gobbled it up before we finished Christmas with the Kranks before bed.

12/15:

We had a leisurely start to the day, and checked the weather to see if we should go into the National Park today or tomorrow. We decided to go today, instead of tomorrow on the day we travel to Ljubljana.

Attempting to make Turkish coffee when the stovetop is too big for the pot.

One of the two farm cats. This one apparently is the boss of the whole area. He definitely would come in if we let him!

Our host told us we could give the animals our leftovers, and we had part of a chicken carcass from our dinner last night. We asked our host if that was ok to feed to the animals, and if so, to which ones? He said to leave it out for the cat. Eww. So…we did just that and this cat ate the whole thing in very little time!

 I packed our lunch, and we drove the 30 minutes to Plitvice Lakes National Park.

Very pretty - we bet it’s stunning in the summer and fall with the colors. Unfortunately there is too much snow on the lower path so it’s closed. We think this might be the first time on our trip where the weather/time of year prevented us from doing an activity that we wanted. It was still a lovely hike on the upper trail, but the lower one was supposed to have the best views.

The lunch bag lives on!

 We came home and the kids fed the animals our scraps again. The lighting was a dream for Bob our photographer.

Getting a bit too close

This next sequence scared me when I thought about it in bed in the middle of the night. Bob was with him while I was in the house with Simone. Bob didn’t realize Quinn had food in his pocket that he was planning to feed to them. I don’t think the cow liked it when Quinn didn’t have any more to offer.

I’m very thankful this guy didn’t hurt Bob or Quinn 🙏

We enjoyed our leftovers for dinner, and played sheepshead before bed.

12/16: Bob took some last pictures of our place before our departure today. We all got our exercise and enjoyed our last morning here. This has been one of our favorites for sure.

Looked like a wooden suitcase as a shelf

He had a bunch of handmade items for sale - I wish the coffee mugs I like were an option!

As we were packing the car, we heard our host yelling from the field for us to come join him. We all hurried towards him to the field where the cows are, and we saw that a calf had been born!

Our host bringing bread to feed them and get close to the calf.

The females around the baby. He said he would need to take special care in the next few days/weeks so that predators would not kill the calf.

It’s a girl!

We can’t believe we were here for this momentous occasion! Our host was so thrilled - he has been waiting for a calf for 2 years he said. The gestation period for cows is 9 months - I can’t believe one was born in the 48 hours we were here!

We left later than we had planned because of this special event, and took a 30 minute detour to try and buy a coffee mug for me. I loved a few mugs in the kitchen here, and our host directed us to the local artist’s shop where he thought we could find them. It seemed easy enough, but what we didn’t know was the extra 30+ minutes would be on a narrow, windy road and her ‘shop’ was actually her house. She was a kind lady who would have talked with us for as long as we wanted to stay, but we needed to keep moving to Ljubljana. The real bummer was that she didn’t have the mugs I wanted. Boo! The rest of the drive to Slovenia was very twisty and turny, and Simone and I alternated who got the front seat to manage our nausea. The constant sharp turns would not stop the whole way to Ljubljana! I felt badly that the detour was a total bust and that meant we arrived to our new city in the dark (something we try to avoid). Thankfully the checkin instructions for our new place were clear and we got in no problem.