The Ljubljana-Rijeka Line

It was a short two and a half hours by train through Slovenia down to the Croatian port city of Rijeka. The two cars pulled by the engine were barely full and it seemed like most of the passengers were people who'd spent the day in Ljubljana and were going home to small villages in the countryside. 

The scenery lives up to what I'd read about Slovenia being one of the most forested countries in Europe. The leaves were well on their way to their fall peak as large areas of bright yellow mixed in with dark hills covered in pines. Tidy terra cotta-roofed villages took on an alpine look as we wound our way through the hilly Karst region, crossing into Croatia at dusk and descending to the Adriatic coast in the dark.