Provence

 I have skipped a few days because for a bit there I was just hanging in a quiet neighborhood in northeast Milan, visiting a wonderful friend who had a baby over the summer. I have LOTS of photos, but they are of someone else’s baby so I’m not going to post them. Instead let’s skip ahead to the also-fabulous visit I spent over the weekend in the Provence region of southern France with a really kind family who I met when I was in Sri Lanka over the summer. They foolishly told me as we said goodbye in Jaffna that I was welcome to visit anytime; I don’t think they expected me to say yes and show up less than three months later. But the visit was terrific beyond anything I could have expected. 

I won’t post all the photos of them, but luckily for this blog, Aix-en-Provence, Calanques National Park, Marseilles, Castellet village, and pretty much everything else I saw in Provence this weekend was crazy picturesque….

Ljubljana

 A beautiful capitol fit for this beautiful country.

Bohin and Bled

 More amazing Slovenian lakes and beautiful Alp foothills scenery…

Enchanting

 It really is so beautiful here. From Dolenjske Toplice…

…to Lake Velenje!

Piran

 Practically in Italy, in this charming Adriatic town, and it feels like it! Too lovely. 

Slovenia!

 I’m back on the road, mostly for the third of the four legs of my travel fellowship (Malta, here I come!), but with some just-for-fun jaunts on either end of the main event.

Twenty-seven years ago, I took a bus from Trieste, Italy, to Opatija, Croatia, for an afternoon and the bus crossed through the enchantingly lovely Slovenian countryside. Ever since, I’ve been wanting to return to explore, and I finally found a handful of days to do that.  Day One, I got to visit Predjama Castle and Postojna Caves in the karstic region. What a start!