Central Europe Road Trip
Throughout December 2017 we clocked up an impressive 1,500km’s on serene roads meandering through wine regions, mountain passes and deep valleys, but for the large part on intense highways where everybody was doing 50km/hr over the speed limit, feeling like their sole purpose in life was to run you off the road if you could not ‘keep up’. Needless to say, whilst our Scoda Fabia was a trusty steed, it did provide some anxiety raising moments.
After 36 hrs in transit from Australia, we finally arrived in Budapest. You know the feeling you have as you wearily wait at the airport baggage carousel thinking ‘a lot of bags have come out now...and been collected...and still not mine’. Well, unfortunately, the airline had lost our luggage (due to a tight transit through Stuttgart our bags were now MIA for 2-5 days). After some quick changes to the itinerary and a quick trip to the shops for the basics, it was onwards and upwards (come on you know us...it wasn’t quite that calm haha).
BUDAPEST
We enjoyed 2 nights in Budapest, indulging in the culinary delights of the multiple Christmas markets and going for a walk up a big hill to Buda Castle and surrounds. This provided a pretty amazing view of the city and introduction to tease us until we would return at the end of the trip.
VIENNA
We picked up a car in Budapest and made our way to Vienna. We walked the streets and found ourselves oh‘ing and ahh‘ing at the grandeur and elaborate nature of the architecture. We also found a great little restaurant in the market area serving delicious homemade pasta and wine by the glass that stood up to any white we have had. Encouraged by the positive wine experience, we went to a wine bar with a long-lasting history. We had many glasses and good banter with one of the wait staff re: tennis.
KREMS AN DER DONAU
We drove alongside the snaking Danube river to Krems An Der Donau, a region known for its wine production. The town was gorgeous and historic, with cobblestone streets, many antique stores and of course wine waiting to be purchased. We drank some amazing glasses, including a gorgeous Cabernet Franc, to our surprise when we asked to purchase a bottle, it was only €11 and was an absolutely stunning bottle of wine (we both walked away wishing we had bought many cases). We also stopped in at a local wine producers cellar door/shop and had a long chat with him and his friend about his wine and the travel opportunities Austria had in store for us. We got a solid bottle of here.
SANKT STEFAN OB STAINZ
Heading south, we spent 2 nights staying in a cute cottage high up on a hill with majestic views out across the foggy rural valleys. This offered time for true relaxation with barely a shop being open in the town.
THE INCREDIBLE DRIVE FROM AUSTRIA, THROUGH ITALY, AND INTO SLOVENIA
Given the alps stand between Austria and Slovenia, the drive was quite interesting. Driving most of the way through precarious mountain passes, often 1 lane wide, with high walls of snow, or sheer cliff drops on either side, and many blind hairpin turns. However in the midst of this, if you could remind yourself to breathe, from every window of the car was breathtaking scenes of a white winter wonderland. We randomly found one particularly stunning stop at Lago del Predil.
KOBARID
We had now made it to our night of fine dining, which was lucky as it made up for the absolutely freezing conditions that this accommodation and place was offering us. We had a delightful 11-course dinner with matched wines at Hisa Franko (as featured on the Chef’s Table series). The food was impeccable.
TOLMIN
Just when you think the scenery could not get any better...there was the Soca Valley. A Valley with a crystal turquoise water, almost too perfect to be real. As it was winter, we had the amazing local walking trails to ourselves, offering us an intimate exploration of the stunning valley, spectacular waterfalls, scenic snow-capped mountains in the distance and even discovering World War I history including trenches.
LAKE BLED
The drive to Lake Bled from Tolmin was quite insane, navigating roads that should have been 2 lanes, but were actually 1 due to a large amount of snow. The mountain passes were hairy but also quite special, coming across small ski fields hidden amongst the amazing scenery (definitely wish we had our boards!). Lake Bled itself was very picturesque, an extensive lake, surrounded by looming and great snowy mountains. Thanks to a tip from friends we knew this was the place to try Kremna Rezina (or Cream Cake) - we bought a piece before we set off to our next destination and patiently saved it for a few hours...when we did finally devour it we were sad that we had not purchased 10 pieces...it was simply divine!
LJUBLJANA
Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia was quaint and beautiful. The town is based around a cute river and from almost anywhere in town you can look up and see the castle (built in the middle of the 15th century) in the mist on top of the hill - quite a magical scene. The weather in Ljubljana was impossibly freezing, we layered up with almost everything we had and it simply did not offer any promise that we would not get frostbite. Imagine the type of cold that makes you want to hibernate because it simply stings! In hindsight, Ljubljana’s weather was an incredible blessing in disguise, preparing us well for the winter we would soon need to live through in the UK (which would be a breeze compared to this).
MARIBOR
Maribor is famous mostly for continuing to grow the oldest grapevine in the world, now 450 years old. More than this though, Maribor is an important wine growing region based on the Drava River. The town itself was very cute with trendy cafes, restaurants and wine bars. We stayed outside of town in a very cute cabin that was next to a man-made dam… that was FROZEN (quite novel!). Boni made a grand plan for us to walk to a ‘nearby’ winery to have a pre-arranged tasting, however, the walk ended up being incredibly muddy, remote and steep so we quickly aborted the mission and opted to drive there (now with 2 inches of mud caked to our shoes). We arrived at Chateau Ramšak and were met by two young guys who hosted us for over an hour. The story of the winery is quite cool and contemporary for the area. The story goes that the property had been owned by the guys' grandfather in the past but had been removed from him. Many many years later (and a lot of history later) the property was returned to the family. Those, times of economic hardship, the Government established an initiative that encouraged people to start up businesses across certain sectors, the family jumped at the chance to pay homage to the wine producing land and to set themselves up financially. Today what you see is a very old wine cellar, the largest wine press in Europe, and a graft of the World's oldest vine. The wine was amazing.
BUDAPEST
A long drive from Maribor to Budapest took us right past Lake Balaton, the largest lake in central Europe. The freshwater lake extends as far as the eye can see and the still air makes it look almost fake.
Now for Budapest, take 2...with luggage! We found Budapest to be a very cool city, one that you could imagine yourself moving to for a significant time. We arrived in Budapest around 3pm on the 24th December with grand plans to head to the grocery store and stock up on treats of all sorts to make our Christmas day truly indulgent. Little did we know that pretty much every single shop (literally) would close from 12pm on the 24th, only to re-open on the 27th December. After a few hours of walking around with no success of finding food (apart from a few very overpriced and average tourist restaurants) we began to panic, and ended up paying a small fortune for a large pretzel and some strudel at the Christmas market just to guarantee that we would have some kind of sustenance on Christmas Day. After a few more hours of internet research, we did end up finding one very small convenience store the next day where we creatively planned a menu that would hopefully satisfy. Thankfully we had travelled with some amazing bottles of wine from Austria and Slovenia which definitely helped the whole situation.
We attended an amazing midnight mass on Christmas Eve at St Stephen’s Basilica, along with 5,000 to 10,000 others - a very cool experience, despite not being able to understand a word.... sorry no photos of this, Boni would not allow it.
Other highlights of Budapest for us included: finding cute cafes with genuinely great coffee; listening to live jazz performed by local artists; and the amazing Gellert Baths. The Gellert Baths opened in 1918 offering medicinal water treatments using the same deep underground springs the Knights of St John used in the 12th century, and later on the Turks to feel the invigorating powers of the mineral rich waters. We spent a long relaxing day exploring the beautiful Art Nouveau building, running (it was cold outside of the baths) between the different baths all of different temperatures and trying find ourselves neat little spots to enjoy all to ourselves. Staying until our hands and feet were pruney - we had an amazing day!
