Blur of travel

Sunday night, after celebrating our nephew Aidan's 12th birthday, we boarded a plane and flew to Munich.  It was about as good as a trans-Atlantic flight can be - on-time, half empty, quiet.  We all had room to stretch out over multiple seats, though Georgia stayed up almost the whole time watching movies.  Best of all, as we prepared for take-off the captain shared via the public announcement that the dog on board was settled in and doing fine.  We are big fans of Lufthansa!

Bobo seemed no worse for wear upon reuniting with us.  No accidents in the crate.  The car rental people saw all our stuff and suggested we get a larger vehicle.  So we ended up with this 9-passenger bus (an Opel Vivaro in case you were wondering, Dexter)!

The drive through the Austrian Alps was spectacular.  Amazing peaks that reminded us of the Canadian Rockies.  Equally impressive, at least from an engineering perspective, were the elevated highways through these deep valleys and multiple 5-6 mile long tunnels.

We decided to take a tiny detour to have lunch in Salzburg.  We didn't want to miss such a storied city, birthplace of Mozart, or was it Beethoven?  Bad idea.  The bus was hard to navigate in those narrow streets, and impossible to park.  We were all jet-lagged, hungry and irritable.  We finally found an nice cafe and ordered some food.  We didn't think to ask if they took credit cards, but sure enough the check came and they said cash only.  

Our efforts to withdraw euros at the airport ATM had failed, and we didn't have enough Euros to cover the check, even with Dahlia's 5 Euro babysitting tip (thanks, Scott).  The owner, despite being an American from North Carolina(!), wouldn't accept dollars.  Banks were closed.  The girls were mortified.  Salzburg seemed charming as we rushed around trying to find an ATM (we found one), but I don't think I got the full flavor...  

And we were 1.5 hours late to meet our landlord in Ljubljana, with no way to contact him to let him know.  He was waiting outside on the street when we pulled up.  Luckily, he was not upset at all.

I suppose the lesson is that things tend to work out and being flexible is probably just as important as being prepared.

More soon.