Positively passionate, pleasantly peaceful, perfectly peculiar, powerfully pretty, precious PIRAN!

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVED Venice and Rome, but Piran was something else.

My mom and I escaped to Piran, Slovenia for 10 days! It had everything: beautiful ocean, delicious sea food, wonderful views, lots of animals, and most importantly, SUN! We have had a lack of sun here in Vienna, so we took a small vacation from our Viennese vacation! This is going to be a long blog about some of the best 10 days in my life! Let’s begin at, well, the beginning!

The train ride was long and boring, like most train rides, but at least we had a pretty view! I don’t want to make this blog even longer by talking about a train ride, but let’s just say we got to Piran an hour late. It was 8 pm and we were tired, but our hosts, Vasija and Mira, kindly showed us around despite the fact they had a 2 hour drive to get back to their home in Ljubljana (pronounced loob-lee-on-uh, even though I say it la-joob-la-jon-uh). The apartment was nice, but small, and we slept well! The only problem was that we had no Wi-Fi! For dinner we went to a place with great pasta, and seafood pizza! It was pizza with mussels, clams, and other seafood on it! 

En Dan (day one (in Slovenian language))
Piran is small. People say to get lost in Venice, because you never really are lost, but Piran is even smaller, and all paths lead to the main square, or the water. We lived right next to the square and close to the water, so we went on lots of walks while we were there. Today was a super sunny day, but it was very windy! The first walk was up to the castle walls, which were old roman walls, no real castle still exists. These walls soon became my favorite place; they had a beautiful view that was looking down on the little peninsula of Piran!  We walked back to a restaurant near the rocky beaches and ordered sandwiches! My mom got a tuna one, and mine had lettuce, cheese, and the famous ham from that region, the karst ham! I am almost positive that my mom will mention karst and all that geographical stuff in her blog, but I am not as interested in it so I’ll leave it to her. We also ordered a giant plate of olives, ham, more ham, cheese, and tastiness!!!  That is also what we had for dinner! But before dinner we had a long windy walk to the border of Piran, and Portoroz (a place you will hear more about!)  
After dinner we went down to a place called Hotel Piran, which had a good cafe! Unlike in Vienna, the sun set really late in Piran, so we watched it every night! Mom ordered their house red wine, and I got hot chocolate. When we asked for hot chocolate, the waiter asked, 'Hot chocolate or hot cacao?' We asked what the difference was, and he said that hot cacao is what we would call normal hot chocolate, but hot chocolate that the hotel makes is like hot pudding! Of course, I ordered hot chocolate!
The sunset wasn't very good, but my drink sure was!!!

 Drugi dan (day two (in slovenian language))
Today we went to Portoroz just to check it out! We spent the whole day, wandering around portoroz, just hanging out, walking in the sun, and relaxing! We ate lunch at a little place, my mom got fried squid, and I had 4 cheese gnocci. It was okay, nothing exceptional.
When we got back we went down to hotel Piran's cafe and got the same drinks as last time and watched a not so good sunset!


Tridnevni ( day three )    
The most relaxing day ever! We went to portoroz, and went to a sauna park! You were wrapped in giant sheets and would wander into different sauna's! Different saunas were different temperatures, and had different specialties! One had salt to rub on you, and some had oils dripping so you could smell them while you relaxed! Some were wooden, and some were tile. There was a steam room, and a finish sauna that was 94 degrees! There was also a hot pool section! We were allowed to spend 4 hours in there! The pools weren't very hot, so we spent most of our time in the saunas! When we left the sauna park we were so relaxed! It was so peaceful and awesome! We went down to our usual spot (Hotel Piran's cafe) and got our usual drinks (wine for mom, hot chocolate for me)

Stiridnevni ( day four )  
 Today we had a lazy day! We ate at Cafe Neptun ( a cafe with delicious, homemade juices!) then for lunch we ate at a place called Pri Mari! After dinner in the apartment, we went up to watch the sunset up on the castle walls! Still not the greatest sunset, but you know how I love those castle walls!!!

 Peti dan  (day five)
So today, Gabe, Dad, Rachel, and George are coming!  Rachel is my art teacher, who has been in my art blogs, and George is her boyfriend and also an awesome student! Speaking of my art blogs I have posted more pictures so go check them out in the post: 'Sketchtastic!'  Anyway, my mom and I went to the aquarium in the morning! Now normally we wouldn't go to an aquarium, but this was supposed to be cool, because all the animals are local, from that area. I don't think I will ever see an aquarium cooler than the one in Atlanta, Georgia, but I liked this a lot! Oh, Doop liked it to! Look for him in the pictures!
Then my mom and I went back home and relaxed for a little while, until it was time to go to meet everyone at the bus station! When that time came we went over to Cafe Neptun, a cafe nearby the bus stop they would get off at. Soon, they arrived, and we all shared stories! After the students settled down in their hotel, and Dad, and Gabe settled into our apartment, we all met down at bar Danoi, (where my mom and I had the big plate of ham, cheese and so on) And my dad wanted to order the big plate of ham, cheese, and so on for the four of us to share!
Then the students came to dinner with us, and we had good meals, at place called restaurant Neptun (owned by the same people as cafe Neptun!)
When we left the restaurant, it was dark, but my dad wanted to go somewhere, so we took them to hotel Piran Cafe! We ordered hot chocolates and my dad didn't realize it would be pudding although I told him ten thousand times! He took a big gulp and made a weird motion. When he finally got it down he said,"it was like hot chocolate lava pouring down my throat!"

Dan sest (day 6)
It was a dark and stormy day in our sweet little Piran, so we hired a driver, and he drove us to an old church with frescoes from 1490 in it!   It was about a 45 minute drive to this church in the village called Hrastovlje. Our taxi driver had never been in and we insisted he should come see the frescoes, but he insisted he didn't want to, so he didn't come in! We climbed up a hill to the church and waited for 10 minutes for someone to come unlock the door. We looked around, and I was sure we came past there on our train ride! Everyone disagreed, until we saw a train pass by that looked exactly like the one my mom and I rode on. It turns out that the rest of them didn't come through there, because they came partway on bus, and we went on train! Soon, a man came, who looked about the students age, 20 or so. By the way, Rachel and George came with us in the taxi! The guy let us in the church, and told us about the amazing frescoes! My favorite was the most famous in the room, called 'the dance of death.' If you search 'the dance of death Hrastovlje' and go to images then you will see it! Then, we left, and my dad went back to give the guy a tip, and the guy insisted that we take two bottles of wine! They were homemade wines, from the vineyard sitting next to the church!
Afterwards our driver took us to the Skocjan Cave! The biggest cave in Europe! The third biggest cave in the world! It was astounding! You really should look up pictures, because I don't know how to describe it! HUGE! With giant stalagmites (the ones on the ground)! And really interesting stalactites (the hanging ones on the ceiling)!    
On the way back home we stopped in Trieste, Italy! We had the best gelato in our lives there! I guess I have to add to the Italy gelato count... 


GOOD GELATO:   FOUR                               NOT SO GOOD GELATO: THREE
When we arrived back in positively precious…bla bla bla Piran, Gabe decided to go climb on the rocks, or should I say fall off the rocks. Yes, Gabe fell into the Adriatic!

Dan sedem (day 7)
My mom wanted to go to these salt field things, so we spent the whole morning trying to get to them, and failing. We ended up eating at a restaurant in Portoroz that our taxi driver from the previous day told us about! It was wonderful, or in German: Wunderbar (voon-der-bar)!!! They had fresh bread, and delicious olive oil flavored with pepper, rosemary, bay-leaves, and garlic! I got a mackerel fillet, Gabe and dad got fish, and my mom got seafood pasta! Yum!
Again we went and watched a bad sunset down at hotel Piran!

Dan osem (day eight)
Our last day :(  ! We walked down to the salt fields with Rachel and George and this time we were successful! They were really interesting! It would be best to Google them (salt fields Piran), because there is no way for me to describe them--pools of salt water, I guess. It was the process that was cool!
Then, for our LAST-night-in-Slovenia dinner, all six of us went to the restaurant my mom and I went to our FIRST night! I got the seafood pizza that my mom had last time! We all really loved it! For dessert we ordered chocolate crepes, and they were delicious!!! 

In Zjutraj… (And in the morning....) 
We woke up and said goodbye to our positively passionate, pleasantly peaceful, perfectly peculiar, powerfully pretty, precious Piran!



pictures will be posted soon!