Hansons Home: Winter Break

Gordon and I spent 2 weeks backpacking around Slovenia, Austria, and Hungary.

We left on Friday, December 22nd at 8am on a 16 hour bus trip to Ljubljana, Slovenia. We stayed at a hostel called Alibaba for the first three nights in the western part of the city, about a 20 minute walk to the downtown area. We attended church on Sunday and Gordon saw many old friends he knew when he served his mission from January 1992-October 1993. We did a lot of walking around the city and some ice skating. We went hiking around Lake Bled, Lake Bohinj, and up to a waterfall Slap Savica. We stayed with two lovely families, the Lotrich's and the Juhart's. We were able to borrow a car from the Juhart's and travel about 1 hour south of Ljubljana to the Postojna Caves, that are the third largest in the world.

Gordon with some of the missionaries he served with in Ljubljana (third from the left) in 1992.

Gordon and I enjoying the view after hiking up to the waterfall Slap Savica.

We spent New Years in Vienna, Austria. We rented a room in an apartment that we found on craigslist.com which was again about a 20 minute walk to downtown and close to a big shopping street. We went to see the Vienna Imperial Orchestra play several pieces from Mozart, Beethoven, and Strauss with some opera and ballet. We went to a Leopold Museum featuring art pieces from Klimt and Schiele. We met up with two colleagues- Jonathan and Katherine to venture about the city. We went on Vienna's giant ferris wheel to observe the city from an almost aireal view.

Jonathan, Gordon, Kathryn and I eating desert at a cafe in Vienna.

A colleague, Kathryn and I, showing off our new "Uggs"- fuzzy warm Australian made sheep skin and fur boots, purchased in Vienna.

We took a 3 hour train to Budapest, Hungary on Friday afternoon January 5th. We spent the days walking around and visiting museums, thermal baths, going to the movie theater, and shopping at second hand stores.