That one blue dome in Santorini

Before arriving in Santorini, I felt like I had already been.  With all of the famous pictures out there, it is easy to conceive what it looks like.  Or so it seems.  While I did see a lot of familiar faces, like this blue domed church, the sheer impossibility of Santorini is something that must bee seen to be completely appreciated.

Some Santorini Greek food

 Best thing I ate all trip - peppers stuffed with rice and herbs with potatoes

Cruising the caldera in Santorini

We took an afternoon cruise on a catamaran in the Santorini caldera

The three domes of Santorini

The quintessential Santorini shot 

Creepy puppet store in Santorini

Could you sleep in this room?

Our cave housing in Santorini

Lots of Santorini housing is in "caves" which are built into the caldera.  We stayed in such a place and it was very cool.

The bluest caldera

I keep reminding myself that Santorini is a collapsed volcano and all of the water in the middle is from a collapsed caldera that the ocean violently filled.

Stars over Santorini on a hot night in 2013

On a clear Santorini night, the stars light up the sky.  Kristin and I checked into our room, left, and came back around 10:30pm to find that our cave house was sweltering and our AC did not work.  It is not a traditional hotel, so we had no idea what to do, other than sleep in a warm cave and deal with it in the morning.

This was all before two things happened - we got lucky and then we met Rado.

Santorini sunset HDR

Santorini is as strange as it gets.  The ridge of a volcano on a collapsed caldera oft-known as Devil's Island, there is no place like it in the world.

Magical Bohinj

The Bohinj basin is a magical area of Slovenia with old alpine houses, a very clear lake, absolutely perfect hiking.  There are many legends associated with Bohinj.  The Ottomans thought is was the end of the world.  There is another legend that the devil built a bridge here in exchange for the soul of the first to cross it.  The locals sent a dog across, enraging the devil.

My favorite, and probably the most fitting explanation for Bohinj is this:

"God was giving land to people and, as he finished, he realized that he had forgotten about a small group of people, who were silent and did not insist like the others. Because of their modesty and patience, he felt pity for them. That is why he decided to give them the most beautiful land of all, which he had set aside for himself. It is called Bohinj."

Lake Bled's briliant island church

 Like a jewel in a crown, Lake Bled has a small church on an island.  It is customary for Slovenian males to march up the steps carrying their wife after marriage.  The practice was forcibly abandoned during Slovenia's time as part of Yugoslavia.

Slovenia car train

It took us a few hours to go over the Vrsic pass of the Julian Alps.  For the way home, we were told to load the car onto the train and we go through the mountains instead of over and around.  The best part?  It would take about half as much time.  I did not know what it meant, until we did it.