A Day Off Vacation |
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5 Oktober 2023 - Postojna
Today I took a day off of vacation to write code. I don't spend the whole day writing code very often anymore, so it was mentally challenging. I decided to build something in Next.js after discovering that create-react-app is no longer supported. Next.js builds on top of React and lets one develop a frontend and a backend for an application in a single framework. The recommended default Tailwinds UI was new to me, so I gave it a try and was quite underwhelmed. I wasn't willing to shell out the €250 required to access the premium features though. It's disappointing that an open source project like Next.js defaults to a paid product like that for CSS, but everyone needs to eat I suppose.
As you may have noticed on this blog I take vacation very seriously. Too seriously, sometimes, to be honest. The number of things I've seen and done this week before today would be enough for anyone else in the whole week, much less half. This frenetic pace means I often come home from vacation exhausted and needing a break. Which I think is backwards of how vacations are supposed to go. Yesterday I hiked two river canyons, one above ground and one below. The video I took in Vintgar is on my last blog, but the Škocjan Caves were on a whole nother level. I've visted Mammoth Cave and Carlsbad Caverns and many other caves, but I was not prepared for the experience yesterday. Because a river (Reka) runs through Škocjan Caves they've put the walking path 50 meters above the river cut out of the cliffside to avoid flooding. 2019 was the most recent time it was under water though. The Reka flows through 3 km of underground canyon and then a further 32 km underground to where it resurfaces in Italy near Trieste before flowing into the Adriatic Sea. Photos were not allowed inside the cave (what is it with Europeans and their Unesco sites?), so most of the ones I snuck are shite but this one descending from 90 meters above the canyon floor perhaps captures the scale:
After that we crossed the bridge that I think Gandalf fought the Balrog on and I was very greatful none of the Chinese tourists had to toss me. There's another big cave system here in Prostojna that has a train inside and a cliffside castle that I'm planning to visit as well. Apparently I could have even booked a hotel room in a cave, but that seemed a bit much.
