Rastoke

Rastoke is a little village that used to be full of Slovinian mills – 22 of them – but now is a tourist destination. A little geography: the mountains here are made of limestone, the water flowing through the limestone picks up calcium carbonate which it then deposits at the bottom of a fall of water creating travertine. (Think Mammoth Falls in Yellowstone) Over time this travertine creates barriers which make these very cool waterfalls. (Any geo-physicists out there who want to comment/correct, please do so.)

I am now swapping my teacher’s hat for my tourist sun hat. The buildings are set in little islands right in the middle of the falls. Bear felt it was worth 47 photos which, you notice, I can’t post all of here. After a bit of wandering in Slovin Unique-Rastoke open air museum (www.slunj-rastoke.com ), we decided to have lunch at a tavern/restaurant Pod Basiokim Krovom which is attached to the museum. Talk about a fabulous meal, we had some more of that dried, salted pork like we had in Zagreb with some local cheese (one had hot paprika in it and was WONDERFUL) and bread made with 5 kinds of flour ground at the mill in the museum. For lunch we had grilled trout which earlier we had watched them pull from the trout pond behind the restaurant. As soon as the fish appeared so did the museum cats. These were by far the most prosperous looking cats we have seen in Eastern Europe.