Hi it’s Zane I’m here to tell you a little about the farmers market in Rovinj. It happens every day. There is also a fish market. Dad and I walked through there today they have lots of fish (whole) and mussels. In the farmers market there are lots of fruits and vegetables too. You can also buy garlic, peppers, olive oil, and truffles.
My favorites are mini plums, mini pears, and raspberries. The plums and pears are grown near Motovun. Sandra drives here every day in the summer to sell fruit. She starts coming when the cherries are ripe in May. When we were there today she had an assortment of peaches, plums, and pears.
If you like food, you’ll love Rovinj.

Today I woke up at 7:40 in the morning in Rovinj. We wandered around town and shopped at the market. We bought raspberries, watermelon, grapes, cantaloupe, mini pears and plums.. yum! Mom calls me a fruit bat. I guess I am. The weather was cloudy and a bit rainy. We tried to take a boat to an island to swim but they were not going because of the weather, so instead we walked and walked and walked around to the other side of the bay. We found a stone pool and I had my first swim in the Adriatic Sea. We kept on walking to another beach and we swam and swam. We explored some more and found a rocky area with crashing waves and a tide pool. Then we headed home. We chilled out and then headed out for the evening. Me and Dad bought a Croatian soccer shirt and shorts. Eva did a little shopping too. Then we had dinner; I had fish filet for dinner and oysters for dessert. We walked and shopped (and of course ate ice cream). While Eva was eating her ice cream a man starting singing Suzanne by Leonard Cohen. We listened to some other songs. Now it is 10:50 PM and we are getting ready for bed with a trumpet playing in the street below.

We left Zell am See in the morning on Wednesday and we drove on a very turny road. It went pretty high over some mountains. We saw a lot of cows, sheep and bikers working hard going up and speeding down. It was very pretty. When we got down from the mountains into a a valley we drove a long way through a lot of tunnels to Ljubljana, Slonenia. It was really hot. Like 100 degrees. In Ljubljana we walked around and had drinks and dinner. We went to bed late- it was hot!

Today we woke up in Ljubljana and had breakfast in our hotel. Then we went to the market and hit the road. We drove about an hour to see the Lipica stallions from the Spanish riding school. Now my Mom is going to describe it since we couldn’t take any pictures during the training session.

Jen says: it was awesome to see the Lipizzaner stallions! We watched a morning training session. Five riders and stallions practiced in an indoor ring. They went through all their moves (for those who know and care: lots of collected warm up work, circles, cantering at an incredibly cadenced, slow gait, half passes, passage, pirouettes, and even mini caprioles. A man brought a sixth horse out and worked him from the ground. The horse went from passage to fully balancing on his hind legs. All the horses did their own work, never even coming close to colliding). As you can guess this was not as mesmerizing for my family but they were good sports and sat through it all.

After Lipica we went to a hill town in Croatia for lunch. It was delicious. Mom says this part of Croatia looks like Tuscany. Now we are in Rovinj. It is a beautiful town on the shore of the Adriatic Sea. We are staying in really awesome apartment.

We drove to Bad Hofgastein this morning. It is a very pretty valley. We met our guide, Gerhard. We put on harnesses and we went to the top of the mountain on a funicular and tram. Then we started climbing. We went on a practice route first and then we went on another route. You can see route just past the cow. it was a rocky spine. It was pretty easy but it was also hard in places. Then we went to another route and climbed up a spire, then did some “tightrope” walking, then a zip line and we were done. It was overall fun but it was also scary. It was a really fun day.

Kaprun, Austria

We had a really fun day trying to balance on the ridge. Sometimes it was scary but mostly it was really fun. We walked by sheep and cows. We had a really nice lunch at a mountain hut. I loved our hike. I am really sore and tired so am going to bed.

Hi it’s Zane! At 6:00 PM we took a red eye out of Boston and arrived at Frankfurt at 7:00 AM their time. We took naps in the airport. Then we caught a plane to Salzburg. At Salzburg we grabbed out car. it’s a Nissan. We drove to a castle. That will be another post with pictures. Now we are in Zell am See. We are getting ready to go hiking and i will post about it when we get back.

G