Trips

On our way to lunch, we stopped for a special “learning and discovery” involving hunting truffles. Valdi, and one of his truffle hunting dogs, who is part German short-haired pointer and part Labrador, showed us how the dog finds the truffles. Valdi had planted two truffles and he showed us how the dog smells them, starts digging, and then he (Valdi) can dig them out. There are black truffles that can be hunted all year and rarer white truffles that can be hunted from September 15 to December 31. Truffles grow on the roots of oak trees. They release an odor after 40 days of growing and that is how the dog finds them.

We ate lunch at an agronomist-tourist fruit tree farm and had truffle pasta, bean and corn soup, and stewed apples in red wine. I really don’t like the smell or taste of truffles.

Truffle hunting	Orchards and vinyards
Road problem	Our last stop was in the Istrian town of Buzet at the Aura distillery. They produce 22 flavors of brandy, 7 kinds of jam, and brandy dark chocolate. We saw where they ferment, distill, and macerate the grape juice into the various flavors. We sampled Tarantino with 10 spices at 15.9% alcohol, honey brandy at 29.5%, and mistletoe at 37.5%. Mistletoe berries are poisonous - they use the leaves. We also tasted prune, fig, and dandelion (from the yellow flowers) jams.
Aura distillery
Bottling	Sampling!
It was a sleepy ride back to our hotel. Marge and I walked north along the Lungomare pedestrian path along the sea. We passed two pebble beaches and many cement patches where brave swimmers could enter the water and hopefully avoid the rocks.	Opatija harbor
Rocky pool	"Beach!"
Fri., 6/15/18 - Overland to Ljubljana, Slovenia and the Postojna Cave Park We left Croatia this morning and crossed into Slovenia. Even though Slovenia and Croatia are in the EU, they are not part of the Schengen Agreement so we had to have our passports stamped to enter Slovenia. Slovenia is on the Euro so it will be easier to use money here. When it was part of Yugoslavia, Slovenia had 60% of the industry in all of Yugoslavia. They still have a lot of industry including: pharmaceuticals, campers, Goodyear tires, assembly plant for French Renault cars, and credit card chips for Europe. Melania Trump is Slovakian and was born in Sevnica and educated in Ljubljana. We stopped at Postojna Cave Park to visit the huge cave system there. It was awesome - 24.7 km in all. We got audio guides so we could move at our own pace. First was a tram ride into the cave, then a 1.5 mile walk, and tram ride back out. One cavern was called spaghetti because of the thin stalactites hanging all across the ceiling. There was the white cavern with no impurities in the limestone drips and the red room with iron-oxide making the forms dark red. We learned that the curtain shaped stalactites are called spathites. We went down to the deepest part of the cave walk, 40 meters below the cafe entrance. Down deep is where the Brilliant stalagmite and Skyscraper Pilar, the symbols of the cave are. There is a “ballroom” and a “concert hall” cavern rarely used for those purposes. Some 150 organisms have been found in the five caves of this system with the Proteus being the most interesting. It is a “man-fish” because it breaths through external gills but can live out of water for three months. It’s skin has no pigment, its eyes have atrophied, and it is shaped like a long lizard. The tour was very interesting - spectacular for its size rather than beautiful with artificial lighting, etc.
Flag of Slovenia	License plates with the coat of arms of the region of the country in which the owner lives
	Cave train that carries visitors into the cave
Cave train	Cave formations - many have names but I won't identify them - please just enjoy the photos
	Brilliant, the symbol of Postojna Cave
	Dam at the end of the cave tour

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