Cutkovska Dolina

It was a day of very long walks.  Helena wanted to take  the cable car up to the top  of  the mountain and walk back down but I balked at the price.  She is definitely less reticent to spend money than I am and the kids, of course, are totally oblivious to the fact that things cost money, so I get to be the cheapskate of the family.

That’s O.K.  That’s my job, as it was my father’s job before me.

The Playground and Restaurant at Cutkovska Dolina

So, we took a walk into  the woods, even though the kids couldn’t see the point of that, and they  were totally fighting with each other.  Isabel was just pouting and flouncing around because Sam was….well, maybe he’d been bothering her at some point, I didn’t really notice what started the argument, but when I asked her what was wrong she said “Sam is LOOKING at me!”  Which he was, and laughing, and she would take a swing at him and he would dodge, and she was in tears and hysterics, and this made him laugh more.

There were plenty of ripe, wild raspberries so that, and the passage of time, mollified them a little bit.

Then we took a rowboat ride because we had a free certificate but it started raining so that was short, but we were actually  really  glad for the rain.  A bit of a break in the oppressive heat.

Then, after lunch, we took another walk, supposedly  in the direction of a waterfall and a lake.  It was very pretty, although what it showed us  was that, besides the apartments where we are staying, there are tons of other cabins, and hotels, along a road that winds up back into the mountains.  Once we got beyond those, however, it really was a wild landscape.  It reminded me of the playing  field in The Hunger Games.

We never found the lake or the waterfall but we did find a nice playground next to a small stream and a beautiful, traditionally Slovak restaurant, with walls of smoothly polished wood planks with carvings around the edges.  Helena and I  shared a cheese and nut platter and the kids had ice cream.

Their fight continued, off and on, for most of the walk, as it has continued, off and  on, for years now and I’m sure it will continue, off and on, until adulthood.  Both of them complain to  us that we favor the other one, so  I guess we’re doing O.K.

Isabel tripped on  the way home and scraped her knee and elbow really good so I had to carry her on my  shoulders for the last 2 or 3 kilometers.

I am beat.