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Showing posts from December, 2015

Bled, Slovenia: Almost a Fantasy

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After a visit to a wine cellar of a small village in Bled, where we were entertained by two lively dancers dancing to a lyre-playing boy muse, and a hearty dinner of the famous Slovenian sausage, we returned to our hotel by the lake. The fairy-tale setting before me could have been a dream; it was surreal. I was lying in bed, staring at the brightly lit castle on top of the hill and its reflection on the water. Bled was like a fairy-tale setting where the center of it all was the lake. Oh wait, was it the island in the middle of the lake or the castle up on the hill? Oh well, I’ll let your imagination run wild in the mist covered hills, the lake's shining waters, the ducks and swans gliding in the water, small churches and gingerbread houses by the lake, the castle on top of the hill, the moon setting with the beautiful view of the Julian Alps in the backdrop, and the sounds of the church bells and birdsong captured in my video. Below the hill was a small church

Montenegro: Our Lady of the Rocks

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After a fun filled day and a windy night in Dubrovnik, we headed for Montenegro, a small country in the Balkans, on the Adriatic Sea. So, I planned on sleeping during the bus ride to Montenegro, but the stunning showcase of Bayside beauty before me; miles of shoreline and blue waters and granite mountains rising above the water’s edge, kept me awake.     One of the highlights of our trip to Montenegro was a visit to the Church of Our Lady of the Rocks in the Bay of Kotor. I heard about it as a pilgrimage site, but had no idea about the sheer physical beauty of its location. Soon we reached the little town of Perast where we set off to take a short boat ride to the island known as Our Lady of the Rocks.  There was a group of pilgrims inside the small church, so we had a few minutes to explore the tiny museum behind the church and listen to the local guide explained about the history of the church. Story has it that sometime in the 15th century, native sailors from Perast fo

Zagreb: A Tourist in Croatia, Part 5

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“How many museums have I mentioned so far?” asked our local guide. It only had been a few minutes since we left our hotel and we were already on museum no. 4. We were on a city tour in Zagreb, the capital and the largest city in Croatia, and just passed the Zagreb Ethnographic Museum. Our local guide was counting the museums while explaining the city's rich history and culture as we headed to the historic upper town. Zagreb boasts a number of museums – from the Archaeological Museum, which displays artifacts and mummified bodies dating back to ancient Egypt, to Croatian Museum of Natural Sciences, which displays ancient human remains, to the Arts and Crafts Museums, which displays Old Master Gallery to Municipal Museum to Technological Museums. Great for the locals, I thought. But for a tourist like me who did not have the time to visit all the museums, the best way to get a feel of the city was to visit the old town, which also houses the parliament and government buildings, ol