Weekend in Bratislava

After a weekend in Bratislava, we've completed most of the travel options around Banja Luka.  It's a nice city, quiet not lots for tourists, but just enough for a few days of fun.  We started our trip by over-nighting at a thermal spa in Slovenia.  These are super popular here and surprisingly kid friendly.  We spent a few hours in the evening and in the morning swimming in the indoor pools, which the boys loved.

We spent our first day wondering around and checking out some great restaurants.  There was a Lego exhibit at a community center that we went to first and the boys had so much fun.  They had set up personal collections of people's Legos--from Harry Pooter to Taj Mahal. Foster was most impressed with the police figures and made me take pictures of all of the police vehicles so he could use them for ideas to build when he got home.

We visited the castle in Bratislava and walked all the way to the top.  We found a wonderful kids museum which brought paintings to real life.  For example, they had the mirror and ballet bar so kids could experience the Degas paintings.  The boys loved the Monet scene of a boat, we spent hours there.  And we finished our last evening at a restaurant where the boys could make their own pizza shapes.

And during this trip we learned about being resourceful and resilient, or more commonly known as parenting fails, when we forgot pants for Foster and a stroller for Kai.  But, as you learn when you travel, you just roll with it.  We washed Foster's pants every night and he didn't care and our Airbnb host let us borrow a stroller, literally saving our trip.

Srećan Božić!

In Banja Luka we get the fun experience of celebrating two Christmases.  The Serb Orthodox follow a different calendar and their Chistmas falls later in the month.  Just as we were winding down from our Christmas, they were just gearing up with trees for sale and decorations up.  Our good friends had us to their house for a traditional Christmas lunch, which includes lots and lots and lots of food--she had been cooking for days. A few traditions we learned about: they decorate with sprouted wheat seeds; they eat pork and the meal starts with a traditional bread, which has a coin baked in--whoever finds the coin has good luck for the year.  Foster was the luck winner of the 5KM piece.

An article about Serb Christmas traditions in BiH.

Life Lessons

As we got ready for a Christmas Dinner at our friend's house Kai got to wear his first tie. An important right of passage.  This is the second generation for the tie.  Foster first wore it in India.  My how different our lives are now, from that Christmas party in Hyderabad when there were monkies at the party.

Jumping into 2018 from Zagreb!!

We visited Zagreb for the New Year!  We spent time with our friends from Sarajevo, including ice skating and the zoo on New Year's Day!! We spent New Year's Eve with our Banja Luka friends Danijela and Filip, exploring the markets.  The boys were most impressed with the rides.  We came to the cars and the boys went on two rides, but kept begging for more.  They just stood forlornly looking over the cars and the person in charge of the ride took pity on them and gave them 20 minutes of free rides--letting the grownups have another round of New Year's drinks at the little bar adjacent to the rides.  There were fireworks and a concert util the wee hours of the morning.  Our Airbnb in the eves of a building downtown gave us a perfect view of the midnight sky.