Grey Graz

The weather turned, was damp and 15 degrees cooler than the previous day. Those continental climate extremes...

We've been lucky with AirBnBs on this trip and despite the description of the Graz one (a 'loftlike' apartment that was actually on the dingy ground floor next to a banging gate), we appreciated the host Alain from Belgium letting us linger in the room.

Graz was gloomy but still pretty and chilled. We drank coffee and ate eggs during a rainstorm, then shopped for chocolate. Ruby is a great travel companion as she teaches me the art of just wandering and being with no real agenda. My brain normally wants to be doing frenetic activity and it's a challenge to make it work at a pedestrian pace.

Our whistle-stop tour continued on a bus to Zagreb in Croatia. The route travelled through Slovenia which passed without us even registering. Much faffing and boarding, re-boarding and deboarding buses at the Croatia border. I got a passport stamp, thinking those days were long gone when moving inside the EU. At one point I made an accidental smug comment to Ruby whose Australian passport may not allow her to move quite so freely as mine in Europe. 'Enjoy it while you can darls,' she said.