Our chariot, Brano's car, was full and after just a bit of excited chatter from the back seat -- Karol and Kaja fell asleep. We wouldn't hear from them again until we'd gone through Austria and had landed at the boarder of Slovenia's expensive highway.
We by-passed the highway and took the old roads through the rather manicured small towns outside Maribor. So far so good. The Croatia entry was smooth and we wound round serpentine roads until the first sight of the Adriatic from up above the mountains.

Sometimes when you travel you encounter locations and frankly ask yourself why would someone settle here? In the desserts of the Southwest, or in the deep crevasse of an isolated mountain range -- but as you cross the rolling hills of the Adriatic coast and come to the steep sloped villages on the coast, you feel a sense that this is paradise. (Well except for all the tourists :).
We had arrived to the small town of Dramalj.
We communicated with our friends who had arrived days before and found the pension in which we would be staying. The "house" of 4 floors was owned by a Dutch man and Croatian woman. We occupied the ground floor, with its lovely patio and table. Our friends (Nora, Rasto, and lovely Dadi) were on the 4th and had a view of the sea.