Mukilteo Musings

Favorites From Our Trip

1. Venice, Italy. This city is astoundingly beautiful if you stay away from St. Mark's Square. Our travel guru is Rick Steves. His business and home are right down the road from us in Edmonds. Culturally, he is very much like us so his opinions and recommendations have worked well for us for years. On this trip, I had his book about Eastern Europe always in hand. Anyway, he tells people to walk out of the touristy areas in Venice to find gems. We discovered that a canal side cafe off the beaten path had prices exactly half those of the cafes on St. Mark's Plaza. Plus, there were no people. We do not like tour bus loads of folks who inevitably seem to be from Texas. With Rick Steves, we have managed to visit places where we have found true local flavor without the masses.


Rialto Bridge, Venice


More Venice


Half Price Cafe on a canal.

2. Ljubljana, Slovenia. This city is amazing. It was spotless. In fact, we would see teenagers dressed in black pants and skirts with white shirts and bow ties or white blouses and white gloves cleaning the streets of litter--dressed up to clean garbage. I could not even imagine??!! The architecture was gorgeous and the city was small enough that we actually drove a car and parked. I highly recommend a visit here. Many people speak English and are warm and friendly though it is a little more pricey than Hungary.


And a River Runs through it.


Typical Restaurant near river with adorable English speaking waiter who took this.

3. All of Slovenia. Slovenia is mountainous and reminds me a lot of Montana with its lakes and rivers. We even explored caves and caverns which were like the Lewis and Clark Caverns in Montana only much more massive. Another difference is Slovenia has medieval castles built right into the cliffs and caves. And castles guard its Flathead Lake (MT)--like places.


Pedjama Castle


Lake Bled with Castle