93. Safety Regulations

Europe doesn't seem to have any. The Friend family has adapted pretty well to the laid back life of the Europeans. I have suffered through  shops closing during "siesta," people not understanding how to form lines, the weird meal times, and the lack of safety in most of the places we visit. Mom, who used to work for OSHA, picks up on this faster than me, but it is pretty obvious.

Today we toured the Scocjan caves, about an hour away from Ljubljana. We began the tour with a 10 minute hike to the caves where we crossed streets without reflectors or any type of safety gear on and walked through a couple peoples backyards.

The caves were outrageously loud so the few times our guide actually talked to us, she was basically screaming with a Slovenian accent. So we spent most of the time just walking and taking pictures.

There were two areas where the cave had collapsed, our guide assured us that this happened 250 thousand years ago, so that means it wont happen again... The smaller collapsed section that still had half of an old bridge that collapsed with it, the bridge looked a little more modern than what could have been built 250 million years ago. I didn't press the subject.

An hour and half of climbing up and down cave steps, and waiting for the same couple at each rest stop and we finally filed into the funicular that brought us back to the information center. We found a picnic table for lunch and bought some pastries from the cafe including some type of apply pie for Mom!

Dad announced we would be visiting the town museum next. There was a drop in group moral until we pulled up and saw what the museum was:

Us kids spent more time petting the dog outside than exploring inside.

When we had our fill of the cute St. Bernard, we piled back in the rented van to headed to Lipica Stud Farm. I'm pretty sure our guide had a personal relationship with every single horse there. I saw the pregnant horses, the teenage horses on siesta from school, and the show horses. Each one has a name to prevent incest, and they are all really friendly and love to be pet!

These are the same breed of prancing horses we saw at the Hofburg palace in Vienna. It was cool to see that most of the calves are black. They only turn white in adulthood. At the horse show we watched them prance around and even skip. Two of them came into the arena just to pull a carriage around. One did a little jump and kick action that everyone appreciated.

We ended at the Farm museum which was kid friendly so the complaints. This is where there was an unintentional home school lesson on horse breeding through video. Arden, Scarlet, and Brody had a horse drawing contest, I eves dropped on a tour walking through, and dad found this:

When we had our fill of horses, goats, and the playground we drove back home and Dad made some great stir fry for everyone. I think I am the only one concerned that all we have for breakfast before our train ride is raw rice, spaghetti, and lunch meat...