With the plan to go to Zagreb in the morning locked and loaded we went to bed on Saturday night. It wasn't until the morning that we discovered, unlike Italy, everything is closed on a Sunday not a Monday. Armed with this knowledge we resolved to make the most out of our remaining drive to Zagreb on the Sunday and then visit it properly on the Monday. Since we loved Slovenia so much we decided on the way out we would pop into another Slovenian town of Novo Mesto which didn't dissapoint. One cute alpine-looking city and a forrest walk later we were back on the road. Well we would have been back on the road sooner were it not for these cyclists. On arriving in Zagreb we stopped at a favourite of ours, poorly maintained ruins. Not Roselle, Cosa, or Dvingrad but this time Susegrad. A 13th century castle involved in holding back the Turkish expansion and abandoned in the 17th century it was not the most impressive of the abandoned sites but still pretty cool. Arriving at our park up...

All recovered from our 5 day stretch of rest in the bay of Naples we hit city after city from Ravenna all the way to Rijeka. Freshly tired, and with Rob's birthday around the corner, we decided to stay put for another few days. Finally all recovered we are now back on the road again making our way to Vienna. Wednesday consisted of a nice walk around Rijeka which, while the weather was beautiful, was not the most exciting city to make our way around. A few shops, a tunnel, and 20,000 steps later we decided to call it and move from Croatia back into Slovenia for a few days. A decision that would lead us to perhaps one of our favourite countries yet. The need to stay put for a few days around Rob's birthday meant that we needed a paid park up and where better than a sanctuary for rescued animals. Pictured is Rob's new best friend who repeatedly kept trying to sit on him. After 3 nights still in the sanctuary in the hills and forests of central Slovenia we headed into Ljubljana...

On our first proper day in the Balkans we started at the southern end of the Istria peninsula and worked our way through a couple of sites and back up to the top but this time on the eastern side. We spent most of the day in the lovely Pula which is a wonderful example of the cultural melting pot that is Istria. Controlled by the Romans, later Venetians, Austrians, Italians, and finally Croatians the city was a mix of types of architectures and histories. We figured a good place to start was with the Temple of Augustus, one of the most impressive standing Roman buildings outside of Italy. This was once part of a triad of temples on the forum and now the modern main square. Although not technically the original: it was bombed in 1944 and then put back together like a massive jigsaw in the 1950s. Further into the city the layers of cultures overlapping one another is portrayed by the massive complex of the house of Agrippina. Now only partially uncovered and covering the entire space bet...

Our last stop in the land of pasta, ruins, and horrible driving today was in Trieste, the meeting place of Latin, Slavic, and Germanic cultures. We started the day with a walk along the marina and up the only section of canal in the city the, somewhat pointlessly named, grand canal. Part of a wider canal building programme designed in the 1740s but cut short by the rather sensible logic of Maria Theresa of Austria.  Without planning it we were pulled back into some classical history with the roman basilica of Trieste.  In our first Austro-Hungarian fortress of the trip we came across a whole arms museum. Trieste is very much at the crossroads of Italian and Austro-Hungarian history and the series of statues from both powers present in the city attested to this.  The real question is who is your money on, Rob or the sump gun? Up on the top of the fortress we were afforded with a huge panoramic view of the port of Trieste with this mysterious silver ship moored right in the...

Still working our way up Italy's east coast we visited Ravenna and Venice on our journey towards Trieste, our last stop in Italy Choosing Ravenna as a stop on the Italian itinerary was an early decision for its long and important history from the end of the Roman Empire all the way to the 8th century. Ravenna was the new home of the western roman imperial court from 402 AD after it was moved from Rome, its proximity to a port and natural defences of a marsh make it an obvious choice. The defensive nature of Ravenna also made it an ideal choice for the invading goths in the late 5th century to use as a capital once the final remnants of the Western Empire fell in 478. Ravenna was then also used as a capital of the Byzantine attempt in the 550s to 751 to reconquer Italy for the Empire, now exclusively existing in the east. All of this dramatic and politically important history has in fact left very little trace. Regardless, there was a museum with this cool stamped lead pipe from the...

Back up to our usual antics we started exploring not only a new country today but also a new city: San Marino. What I had mistakenly assumed would be a very expensive and exclusive micro state was actually really cheap and super friendly Starting the day with some public transport we took the cable car from the base of the main mountain in San Marino, Monte Titano, to the top.  Its safe to say that no one living on this mountain is wanting for views. Given its very narrow nature and sprawling squares and medieval walls, wherever you are in this old city there is a breath-taking view of the surrounding countryside. From the heights you can get a really clear impression of the different terrain present here from the other side of the Apennines in Tuscany. Where Tuscany had gentle rolling hills down to a coastal plain, Emilia Romagna has these sharp rocky precipices all around making large settlements away from the narrow coastal strip rare. One of our first stops in the old town was ...

 Now that we had decided to leave our temporary home in the bay of Naples we hightailed it north, but not before a stop at Naples itself Something that really surprised us about Naples was a souvenir that the original inhabitants of the city, the 5th century BC Greeks, left behind which was these enormous tunnels. The Greeks, in order to build their monumental structures, quarried out lots of rock from under the modern city and in doing so created these enormous caverns. Not one to waste an opportunity, the ancient Greeks then decided to fill them with rain water and use them as cisterns for their city, a role which they stayed in until the 19th century when they became infested with cholera. Pictured here on the right is the ledge from which the Greek maintenance workers would pick out anything unhygienic from the cistern. On the right you can even see all the original white waterproof plaster that they left including the red and black water lines they painted on. Also underground...