Slovenia

After Venice, I hopped a bus to Ljubljana and met up with @martin_travels - it's a pleasant city with a nice river promenade and lots of bicyclists, but nothing crazy. 

The excitement came when we headed to Mežica to kayak 1km underground in the abandoned lead and zinc mine, which was active from the 1600's until 1994 when it became uneconomical. For 300+ years, miners followed the veins of ore rather than a regular pattern, so it was a honeycomb of twisting passages and dead ends. We started with a terrifying train ride into the bowels of the mine which felt like the Mine Cart Carnage level in Donkey Kong. Once we were on the water in our kayaks, our guide laid out two rules:

1. If somehow you find a waterfall, don't go over it.

2. There's only one way out of here, so make sure you find me there before we leave in 45 minutes.

We set forth, choosing from a handful of tunnels before us. Several minutes later there were unanimous cries of "dead end!" and we regrouped in the cavern where we had started - but our guide was gone. We saw that there were other tunnels on the side from which we had entered. Exploring those passages, we found her after about 30 minutes. 

Overall, 0/10 saw no Balrogs.