Better late than never.  Here is the story of our special tour with 7 Mexican couples in Slovenia and Croatia.  This was my first time to the region and with Stephan's expertise we learned a lot about the region's history. For instance, the war in Slovenia only lasted 10 days, it seems like the Yugoslav government had no desire to fight over this mainly christian part of the country, so they were spared. Croatia, on the other hand, the war lasted 4 years. It seems that this area, with its coastline, has always been wealthiest part of that region. The Istria Peninsula has been a very important region since 2000BC. The Romans, Turks, Venetian, Austria and the Germans all occupied the region at one time. The biggest architectural influence came from the Venetians. The area looks very similar to the Italian coast, without the traffic.

So our tour started in the Austrian town of Klagenfurt, just across the border from Slovenia. Our group was a private tour of 14 couples from Monterey Mexico and were very nice people and great riders. Here's a photo of the group in front of the hotel getting ready for the first day.

Stephan, in the picture with the high viz helmet is the other tour guide. He's from Austria and runs several tours in the region. Between Austria and Slovenia there are some southern Alps that we just had to cross. We went over the Loiblpass and started our crossing of Slovenia. The first night in the area we ended up staying in Grad Otecec, a castle surrounded by a river by Novo Mesto.

Here are some more pictures of the group coming over the bridge and into the castle.

and going through the gate.

The food was great there and so was the dining room.

The next day we headed towards the coast to Novi Vinodolski, across from the island of Krk. The coast there is spectacular and as I mentioned before hardly any traffic.

It seems as though everyone was having a good time, even when we were stuck at at light.

The next day we head to the National Park Plitvicka Jezera. This area is actually where the war started but was then declared a world heritage site and was protected from any further conflict. Some pics of the place.

After that we headed up the coast to the town of Rovinj. A great port town and you can see that they are really getting the tourism business going there.

Of course at each dinner our tour guests brought some of their own aperitif and shared it with us.

On the rest day we headed south to the town of Pula with one of the oldest and largest colosseums still around.

On the last day we headed back to Austria and what a better way to tour than on a motorcycle.