Travel Day ~ Slovenia to Italy

When we planned this trip (many months ago), it was/is $1,000 more to rent one car for the entire time - getting the car in Dubrovnik and returning to Venice (our final destination) than having one car for our Croatioan/Montenegran/Slovenian (and apparently Bosnia and Austria😉) and another for the Italy portion. So that's how we ended up in Ljubljana for the day - we needed to return our rental car to the airport. We drove 1,997km (1,241miles) in Car #1.

We had a leisurely breakfast at the hotel - definitely not the American Best Western fare!

Then grabbed a Flixbus,,,,,

..... to The Marco Polo Airport in Venice, Italy....

..... to pick-up our rental car for this leg of our trip. Interestingly, Italy was the one country (within the European Union) that stopped us and checked all the passports of passengers. (Maybe because we are on a bus. 🤷‍♀️) Yet - no passport stamp - bummer! 😟

We picked-up our rental car (a long process for some reason - probably about an hour). The rental guy told us stuff like we needed an international driver's permit and if we are stopped by the police then that will "complain" - whatever "complain" means.  We looked at the US Department of State travel website and it said nothing to that fact, so not sure what the guy was talking about - just wasting our time.  Anyway, we finally got the car, settled in, and drove the two hours north to Cortina D'Ampezzo in The Dolomites.

It was a gorgeous drive up here, although we struggled to find our Aiirbnb once we got to town - Brad ended up driving the wrong way on a one-way street (it happens!) and we asked some locals. We finally found the parking spot (no thanks to Google maps) and got settled. It was a bit of a long day, gotta admit. 

We had a good dinner (albeit late for us), unpacked a bit, and went to bed (on too full a stomach) to get ready for a day of hiking the next day.