all know that the best laid plans sometimes do not work out, so flexibility and ‘go with the flow’ have to be the name of the game. This is our tenth trip with Marilyn and we have become experts at changing plans depending on weather, crowds, minor health challenges, etc. Our plan on leaving our air bnb Kristan in Lake Bled was to head north to Kranjska Gora and  then cross Vrsic Pass and go south. We were aware before we left Canada that sometimes it was not possible because of weather conditions in November but given we were traveling in October we never thought this was a concern. Tourism, however, informed us the day before we were to leave that an early ban had come on and you could not go through Vrsic Pass without snow tires but Kranjska was OK.  This meant rerouting or backtracking to Bled and then heading south which we thought we could manage with the time we had, knowing we always wanted to be off the roads before dark.  However in the morning when we woke up it was raining and close to zero degrees so we decided not to head north but to go straight south in hopes of finding warmer weather and sunshine……..a no brainier for sure!  What surprised us along the way was snow which had fallen the night before and although the roads were clear the fields and sides of the roads were covered. Thought about taking a picture but no doubt you can picture this easily as it is a familiar site in our world and not sure if you have had any yet or not, in Nova Scotia that is!   Before too long the snow was just a distant memory and we started to come into very warm weather with sunshine, people on bikes and finally hit a temperature of plus 17 , all within a few hours!    Time to stop we thought so we ended up in a little place called Solkan on the border of Italy close to Nova Gorica and decided to settle down for the evening.  Nice hotel, good food and great service was all we needed to call it a day…….and so we did!

The next morning we knew we had a travel day ahead of us and given that rain was called for later in the day we agreed that going for a two hour hike before we all piled into the car was in order.   Off we go on a hike that brought us to what has been described as Nova Gorica’s most treasured architectural monument – the Solkan railway bridge.  It opened in 1906 and its 280 ft high arch is the biggest of any stone-built bridge in the world.  It was blown up during the first world war by the Austrians and rebuilt by the Italians in 1927.  Although you’re not allowed on the famous bridge you are allowed to hike around it and not too far away on the hiking path you are walking with one foot in Italy and one in Slovenia………of course we had to do that!

After the snow…..getting warmer!

Famous Nova Gorica bridge – hiking with one foot in Italy and one foot in Slovenia