My travels for the past few months have not been exotic. I have been to Victoria and Uclulet and Whistler but in August I finally got back onto a plane and went back to Montreal. On August 1 I flew to Montreal and spent Wednesday night with my friend, Val, and then the next day at night at my friend, Linda's and then I headed to the Eastern Townships where I am from originally.
My first stop was at the Eastern Townships Tourism centre off the Eastern Townships Autoroute where I took this picture. It had been dry in Vancouver but not here and everything was lush and green.
I had decided to stop in Knowlton but managed to miss the turn off (it may have said Lac Brome rather than Knowlton)so ended up taking the next one and ended up on interesting back roads. I couldn't help but imagine criminals lurking in the woods from a Louise Penny mystery. And this is where her famous series is based.
It is lovely countryside. That is Brome Lake just ahead…
Soon I was in Knowlton, now officially Lac Brome (the Quebec government likes combining towns and sometimes giving them new names). This part of Quebec, the Eastern Townships just north of Vermont, was settled by English speaker settlers. In this section many were actually Loyalists from the states.
And this is where author, Louise Penny, now lives, although the first home of her and her late husband was just outside another nearby town, Sutton. If you are not familiar with her books, the fictional town where her main characters live is called Three Pines.
I was shocked by how busy it was in the town, but the last time I was here was last year at the end of April, definitely not tourist season. I wanted to visit Brome Lake Books, which had moved into a new building since my last visit. This is great bookstore.
I liked this Three Pines sign outside and the bench is dedicated to Louise's husband, Michael, who died last year. The owners of the store were early supporters of Louise's writing and she has been a great supporter of the store as well.
As you can see it has a pretty setting as well.
And you can see there is a special section devoted to Louise Penny's books.
I ended up buying some favourite soaps with Eastern Townships scenes and book bags for gifts for my cat sitters. And then for lunch I confess I had a maple walnut ice cream cone ( we are now in sugar maple land).
I stopped for a picture of Brome Lake before I took a quicker route back to the Autoroute. Long ago I spent a few days at a cottage on this lake.
I thought it might be useful to provide you with this map. As I was leaving Knowlton and my next destination was North Hatley which you will visit in the next instalment of this blog!
We sadly left Ljubljana and although it was not far, 144 km, we had to cross the border again and get out twice and actually have our passports stamped twice again so it took about three hours with one other pit stop Zagreb is the capital of Croatia and the largest city and we felt more like we were in a city than we did in Ljubljana. We were dropped off at entrance to Old City and had a tour and then free time returning to hotel by 3 but we did lots of walking
Again Zagreb has a temperate climate and felt cold when in the shade and the wind blowing but high today was 17 so it was warm in the sun later on
This is the main square located in the Lower Town, initially the spear was turned towards Hungary because he put down a Hungarian rebellion to the Austrian Empire. During communist
Yugoslavian regime, the statue was taken down as but when Croatia became independent again he was resurrected and the sword now pointed towards Serbia
We took a quick funicular ride up into the Upper Town
And got to hear the ear splintering noon hour cannon!!!!!
Chestnuts and I think popcorn
In this area there are lots of museums including the Museum of Broken relationships and no, I didn't make in inside
There is a museum about the famous Croatian inventor.
Also parliament etc is in the square...
I rather liked this window
Every evening it takes about two hours to light the gas street lamps here which would be fun to see
This is the remnants of the city walls and the gate which has become some sort of religious shrine
A balcony I liked below
A shop with Croatian products -sorry folks you are not getting any truffles from me!!!
A locally made egg-Denise ended up posing with this!!!
Now we are at the cathedral
And this is a shrine to the Bishop who refused to make the Catholic Church controlled by the communist government and was jailed etc.
We had lunch, Greek if you can believe, along this popular street full of cafés and bars
Note the menu...I didn't have the Kesar salata, but I did have a gyro! After lunch I searched in vain for a gelato. Now if we had been on the Adriatic I am sure I wouldn't have any difficulty. Zagreb seems like quite a neat city and we wished we had another day to visit the museums etc. Oh well...
We were taken to our nearby hotel and worked on packing as our plane was very early the next morning! Then we were taken off to our final dinner with the group. That part was a bit sad as it really was a nice group of people and a great trip.
It was a lovely Italian restaurant in a beautiful building
I had eaten half my black and white truffled pasta before I took this picture. It was delicious.
I resisted taking pictures of each course but I knew you would be happy to know that I did get gelato.
It was a beautiful evening but fortunately we were home early because we had to get up at 4:30 am to leave at 5:30
Ned, our tour guide was up ready to make sure we all left safely.
The airport was new and lovely in Zagreb
I loved this sign although too early for gelato for me!
We flew Croatian Air to Amsterdam and it was less than an hour and half flight. I liked the snack boxes.
In Amsterdam I was fascinated by the beautifully packaged chocolates
and I finally settled on buying these ones, which I gave away (I did keep the fridge magnet).
We had time for a nice lunch and the nine hour flight home wasn't too bad at all. I watched a few more movies!
By 3:00 pm I was home, having dropped Sue off at her sky train station (the miracles of being nine hours earlier earlier here than Amsterdam).
It was a fantastic trip. I certainly had a crash course in the history and the politics of that area. Our only rainy day was the day we were mainly on the bus, and we had really perfect touring weather. It was a fun group and easy to get along with. Our guide and driver were excellent, and the local tour guides as well. And costs in this part of the world are still very reasonable. We were impressed by the diversity and the beauty and the peacefulness we found there.
Thanks for coming on my journey!
After a scenic 50 minute drive we were in the beginning of Julian Alps at Lake Bled
And onto a boat ride-thank goodness we didn't do this on rainy Sunday
Our destination was Bled Island, the only island in Slovenia-it has a bit of Adriatic coastline we went through on our way to Opatija from Venice but even there there are no islands
Here is a shot of the other boat
This was once Tito's summer palace or home when he was the head of Yugoslavia.
And here is the main structure on the island, the church, no longer in regular use
Lovely-people got to ring the bell and a couple of people did climb the bell tower but I skipped those stairs
Back in town we could see the alps again…
a pretty day and more stairs…
People were actually collecting leaves (from Florida and Southern California but I knew I would have lots of autumn leaves at home. I still was happy to get to see the colours though.
It was afternoon tea time and time to sample a cream cake renowned here.
I think Bled might be famous for its friendly cats as well.
it was time to head back to Ljubljana and we caught the sunset from our hotel room.
The concierge recommended a restaurant near where we went up to the castle, but we decided to go to the cafe by the river we admired earlier with heaters right in the table.
