We got an early start to Slovenia Monday morning. The drive time between Milan to Slovenia was showing at 4.5 hours and we wanted to stop in Verona along the way. The timing ended up working quite well.
We've now named the GPS Neverlost to Sybil. I've had to break up several fights between her and Luey at this point. Those two do not travel well together at all. We rented a Fiat 500 and it was during this driving day that we realized I have some mad Italian driving skills. If you all are going to straddle two lanes and drive up on everyone's arse, well so am I! A large portion of the street signs were difficult to decipher (if we ever deciphered at all) and the toll booth system was an absolute guessing game on numerous occassions.
We found a parking spot pretty easily in Verona and headed into the center of town. The coliseum was really cool to see and by looking at it from the outside, it's hard to believe they still hold events there today. Noemi and Paolo had talked about seeing an Eagle's concert there. It truly looks like it's crumbling apart...not quite the same experience as seeing a show in the reliant stadium if you ask me!
We saw Juliet's balcony and then went into the town center. We climbed the bell tower and got a nice bird's eye view of the areas surrounding Verona. It was really pretty. We stopped for lunch and Luey made me try to take photos of the cute little waiter...I'm pretty sure he was only 12 years old and told her she's going to have to start taking her own pictures of very young cute boys!
We headed back to the car so we could get to Ben's house. We decided to sit still in the car for a bit while Luey fought with Sybil again and I spent 20 minutes trying to get comfortable in the little driver's seat. A car was waiting to pull into our parking spot and he ultimately decided to get out of his car, walk up to the window and proceed to ask us in Italian if we're planning to leave (at least that's what I think he said). When he read the confusion on my face, he repeated the question in English...at which point Luey responded with "Un momento" and I replied with "Ja!" The man then asked us if we were American. How on earth did he get that we were American when we threw out responses in Spanish and German?? He's really good...
We got another hour down the road before we had a good laugh about that one. It took us an hour to get over my new Italian style of driving that included a u-turn on the major road into Verona's town center (lots of stares came with that one) and last minute crazy driver decisions at each fork in the road while trying to understand what Sybil was telling us to do to get back on the highway.
Crossing the border from Italy to Slovenia was very uneventful. We just flew right past the country line. It was raining while we were driving and once we hit Slovenia the roads started getting smaller and smaller (in width)....the inclines started getting more and more steep and the bends in the road were more and more sharp. I could tell the scenery around me was beautiful, but I was more focused on not getting into a head-on collision with a car barreling around a curve on the mountain. I was really appreciating how small our Fiat was in those moments. Sybil was becoming less useful to us and this was a really bad time for her to do this. It turned out that it was partly my fault, as I thought Klavze 28 was the street and house number...but Klavze (pronounced Clause (sounds like house) - Sha) was really the city name we should have put in. We got that straightened out with Sybil but I was still confused with where the house was. Much to my dismay, it was down a steep unpaved road that I was trying to will myself not to have to drive down in the rain. We did have to drive down it in the rain.
I'm not sure that we can call what was done driving...it was more like a Hail Mary down the driveway...I'm pretty certain both mine and Luey's eyes were closed for the full length of this drive (i'm horrible with estimates, so let's go with 2-3 football fields?...someone can correct me later if i'm wrong here). There were a few things in play here that are very difficult to capture in words...mud holes due to the rain (so fear of getting the little car stuck); narrow driveway that looks straight down a cliff to the portion of river that runs through Ben's property (so fear of driving off a cliff, especially with closed eyes); and sharp steep bumps/hills in the driveway which caused the little car to bottom out. So. We creep down the driveway apprehensively for a short little bit, but start encountering the mud puddles pretty quickly. At this point, we still have room on both sides of the car (no cliff drops just yet). I didn't think we'd get so lucky as to stumble upon a lil'mule to help us get out of the mud if we were to get stuck, so I start coming up with the brilliant plan of gunning it.
What happened next is a bit difficult to remember because it was as if we were filming an episode of the Dukes of Hazzard. Instead of Bo and Duke Luke, you had Toby and Luey; and instead of the General Lee you had, well a Fiat 500.
We slid, we flew, we stared down a cliff wondering if we were going over, we probably lost the exhuast system due to dragging bottom so badly toward the end of the driveway. We pretty much just turned the car off and peeled ourselves out when we saw the house. I'm sure Ben would have appreciated us pulling up a little closer to the house at any point over the next two days...but we just had to walk away from the car at that point.
We immediately fell in love with everything we were looking at. The clouds and rain across the landscape just made it that much more stunning! I loved every bit of it. We also met the cats - Harvey and Vester. Ben cracked open the wine immediately and he fixed us up with meats/cheeses (YUM). We spent the evening outside drinking, talking, listening to good music. Ben cooked Garlic Pesto stuffed trout (the trout is a specialty of the area fresh from the river and the garlic pesto is made fresh from the property). Below are some pics of everything! It was a fantastic evening and everything tasted great. I think we polished off 6 bottles of wine as well.
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