Lets just walk. It can't be THAT far.

Well, today was not our smoothest, most experienced day as travelers. But, it wasn't our worst either.
We started our morning with a lovely breakfast of eggs, a chocolate croissant and chopped fruit, made by Sue in our adorable little apartment in Piran, Slovenia. We left fairly early to catch a small bus to the town of Portoroz, about 6 kilometers away. Being Sunday morning, we were unsure as to whether the bus would come regularly or not. We were in luck, and after only 5 minutes of waiting, it arrived. We hopped on and were on our way. Until we passed the travel agency that gave us the key for our apartment. This is approximately 45 seconds after departure. This is the moment that Sue remembers that we need to return our key to the travel agency before skipping town. Luckily, the bus stopped just at the edge of town to let more people on the bus. Janna was forced to run a small old Sloveian (or perhaps Italian) lady doing her Sunday morning shopping off of the bus so that we could get out the door with our suitcases. Hmmm...no one was expecting anyone to get off after just two blocks. Keep in mind there is a free and frequent bus that takes visitors to the parking lot at the edge of town.
After successfully returning the key in the dropbox (I hope), we discovered that the next bus was not for more than half an hour. Drat. Here is where it is important to note that Janna does not pay close attention to distances on maps (or anything detail oriented as a matter of fact) and she insisted that we just walk to Portoroz. Well, Sue is always up for a morning hike (with the rolly suitcases through many casinos and cobbled roads and resort beaches) so we set off. We were quite enjoying our shady morning walk, and Janna was chatty and happy....until we got back on the main road and the bus that we would have taken 30 minutes later passed us. A quick mood change. It was no longer fun for anyone.

After walking awhile longer (because 6 km is in fact more than 3 miles....with rolly suitcases) we arrived in Portoroz, a large resort town, and began our search for rental bikes. We found these quite easiy and stowed our luggage and headed off on our bikes to some old salt mines south of the town. There were two ways to go. A slow meander around the coast, or up and over the very large hill. Pressed for time, up and over it was, and we were both breaking a good sweat by the time we flew into the mines.

That's good that the sweat didn't come until then; we were trying not to break a sweat until 9:30 given that it was Sunday.

The mines looked very very cool and there was a lovely bikepath and wonderful museum and reenactments of old fashioned salt panning.....But, by the time we walked to Portoroz and then biked to the mines, we had to snap a picture at the entrance and huff it back on our bikes (again up and over) in order to make an 11:23 bus from Portoroz to Rovinj.

We returned the bikes and Sue waited at the bus stop with our suitcases while Janna ran to the grocery store to get us some food for lunch (we were starving at this point, as you can imagine). When she emerged from the store, she was carrying a FULL, HUGE bag of groceries. Sue made her promise that we would not eat it all for lunch.

Soon after the bus started rolling, (we were still downing our gigantic lunch) we crossed into Croatia and said goodbye to Slovenia. Leaving Slovenia we got a stamp, and entering Croatia our passports got less than half a glance. Apparently a notebook from Kinkos was enough to get you into Croatia. With our stomachs full of food we both passed out with sleepiness.

We arrived in Rovinj without further incidence and had a lovely afternoon swimming, eating, shopping and wandering. And taking a microbiology test.
Our second snafu of the day came with our swimming adventure. We were not sure if the weather was going to turn; the bus had driven through some intense rain enroute to Rovinj so we headed out into town ready to wander and swim only if the chance presented itself. Well, it got hot and we saw the beautiful Adriatic and lots of people swimming, so we decided to change into our suits and swim. Had we been Croatian, we would have just sat on a rock, taken off our clothes, and slowly put on our swimsuits. However, we went against some rock cliffs, taking turns holding towels up and avoiding the man photographing the rock and clouds above, and got our suits on.

After a lovely swim, we walked back down the hill into town. Janna wanted to make sure that we had the room key and that it didnt slip out of her pocket while changing so we emptied the backpack (spewing our underwear, passports and change of many currencies in someones doorstep). No key. We quickly repackaged our goods and headed back to the changing rock. Bam. Orange tagged key there, hidden in the long grass. Crisis averted. Good thing noone else needs to hide while they change. Really, we're just waiting to lose our passports.
And so after another new day of finding new places and doing new things, and the closest we came to disaster was having to tell our hotel (which is the fanciest we have stayed in yet) that we lost the key to the room we hadn't paid for yet.
Looking forward to free breakfast in the morning. What are you looking forward to?