Day 11

 It's Adam yet again! 

Well...cooped up on top of a mountain, I guess it can be expected that we did not sleep all that well. I woke up in the middle of the night with a stuffy nose and sweating because our room had gotten so warm. Jessica and Ryan were awake on and off throughout the night. I think Luke was the only one who got a solid night of sleep. The only advantage of this is that it made it pretty easy to pop out of bed when my 4:30am alarm went off to hopefully go see the sunset. I first checked the (now cracked open) window in our room, half expecting everything to still be completely in clouds, but nope, just as our waiter friend promised, the sun was just starting to peek out over the mountaintops. 

Not wanting the next storm to come through before I missed my chance, I hurried upstairs and out into the observation platforms. Needless to say, it was definitely worth it. The rising sun and surrounding clouds were shooting off all sorts of different colors - from orange to red to purple. It was a pretty cool sight and I even got the drone up to take some additional pictures. I lasted about 15 minutes out there before I needed to come back inside. I checked afterward and the temperature was a brisk 35 degrees (F). Back inside the "comfort" room, I was thankfully able to fall back asleep for another hour and a half or so, but remained groggy for much of the morning. 

Once everyone was awake, Luke started the day by watching some TV while we packed and got ready to head up to the cafe for breakfast. For breakfast, we had some croissants and our dessert from last night (the waiter said it would take 20 minutes to wait but that we could just have it in the morning if we wanted). The weather was still fairly clear at this point (around 8:30am), so we cautiously took the boys out on the observation deck and got some pretty cool pictures. 

At 9:05 our cable car had arrived to take us back down to Skalnate Pleso where we would have a more robust breakfast that was included in this overnight package. The breakfast was great - sausage, eggs, bread, more croissants, cappuccinos, OJ for the boys. Ready to get our feet on solid ground, we then continued to the gondola and then to the chair lift to get us all the way back to our car in Tatranska Lomnica. What an experience. 

Unfortunately, it had begun to rain again, so we hopped in the car and started driving to our next destination - Kezmarok. It was close by - maybe only a 30 min drive or so. But, it was raining pretty good at this point, so we just hunkered down in the car for a bit while Ryan napped. Once the rain died down slightly, we hurried out to the restaurant U Jakoba for lunch, even though we were still pretty full from our breakfast. At the restaurant, Luke was thrilled when he saw there was a little pond inside with some fish. He even made a friend named Monica who joined in watching the fish and also watching Luke's TV shows on his tablet with him. It was quite impressive when Monica (who couldn't have been older than 5 or so), immediately switched from speaking Slovak to English when she heard Luke talking. We had a light lunch - chicken in a garlic/wine sauce, french fries, and a placky (potato pancake dessert pastry) that we all shared. 

After leaving the restaurant, I had hoped the rain would have died down a bit so that we could walk around the town, but nope! So, back to the car we went. Our next overnight location was about a half hour away near the town of Vychodna. Along the way, we stopped to stock up on groceries, then made our way to the Vychodna Farm to check-in. When we checked in for our cabin, in addition to the keys, they also gave us a loaf a bread, a variety of 4 different cheeses, honey, and tea herbs - all which are made at the farm. We had originally planned to tour the farm today so that the kids could see the animals, but with the weather so bad, we decided to wait until tomorrow for the farm tour.

Our cabin was another 10 minute drive down a bumpy gravel road that went out into the middle of the forest. Once we made it, we all came inside to unload and warm up. The cabin was pretty amazing - clearly recently constructed with a rustic/modern vibe, it has a full kitchen, huge bathroom and shower areas downstairs, large bedrooms upstairs, and massive windows throughout to admire the surrounding forest and meadows. We spent some time relaxing inside while Ryan roamed throughout - opening drawers and cabinets, and getting into just about everything. Thankfully, the stairs are all gated off, so that was one less thing to worry about. 

Still raining, we hunkered down inside and I prepped an easy dinner of pasta carbonara with some lardon (basically bacon bits), which seemed to go over well with everyone. After dinner, we went downstairs and showered the kids in the massive shower room. Luke was having a blast sliding around on the wet tile pretending to be a "sea creature". From there, it was bedtime for Ryan who didn't seem to want to go down easily. Then it was Luke's turn who surprisingly went down without too much of a fuss. Around this time I noticed that the storm was finally breaking up, so I went outside to explore a bit. With the sun also setting, it made for a very cool experience. Now we are back inside winding down ourselves - I'm writing the blog and Jess is reading a book. Tomorrow should be better weather and a pretty easy/relaxing day, but we'll see!

Stay tuned!!