A Tree House in Luče

We’ve had a lot of great mini-vacations here in Slovenia, but few can match the past couple of days we spent in the tiny village of Luče near the Austrian border.  Luče is a picturesque smattering of houses (with the requisite church planted in the middle) along a crystal-clear mountain stream, surrounded by Alpine forests, and completely off the beaten path.  And to top off our visit to this idyllic little village, we stayed in a tree house. 

A couple of qualifiers: 1) As a family of five, staying in a tree house for two nights was a lot of fun; three nights and the novelty would have certainly worn off.  2) It wasn’t really a tree house, it was an old hayloft that was converted into a cottage, but the kiddos were a lot more excited about a tree house than they would have been about a converted hayloft.

In any event, it was about as unique an experience as we could ask for.  The mountain stream ran right by our cottage, and even though it was ice-cold we did our fair share of swimming, generally followed by a warm-up in the hot tub underneath our cottage.  Celia and Rosetta got to sleep in the prime real estate cubby-hole bunks, while Sy got the second-rate beanbag bed (although he was perfectly happy in it) and Mom and Dad got the low-headroom loft.  Breakfast was included, but rather than the Holiday Inn Express continental style, we had a table full of fresh ham, sausage, prosciutto, five different cheeses, yogurt, bread, homemade marmalade, over-easy eggs wrapped in bacon, hot chocolate, milk, coffee, fruit…ten times more than we could possibly eat.  Dinner was similar, five or six courses, and they didn’t even charge us for the kids.  The second evening during dinner, a polka band stopped at our Inn to eat and then got out their instruments and entertained us and the other eight or so guests – it reminded me of the Essen Haus minus the boots.

So, one more successful adventure in the books:  we had a great time in a beautiful part of the world and met some wonderfully nice people.  And none of the kiddos needed ER visits and we didn’t drive off the side of a mountain.  Life’s good.