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| Dragon Bridge |
Slovenia was under two hours away, and I would have taken
advantage of the flight time to watch a movie had my in-flight movie thingie
worked, but it didn’t. I was in an emergency exit row – had all the legroom in
the world – and therefore my screen was a popup kind instead of in the seatback
in front of me. I could not pull the darn thing up. The person sitting across
the aisle, who had to have thought I was an idiot, kept trying to show me, but
I couldn’t get it to work. I asked a flight attendant and he struggled, then he
brought the lead flight attendant, who couldn’t work it, either. That thing was
stuck.
So I didn’t catch up on my movies, which was a slight
bummer. I’d seen the start of “The Accountant” last flight but wherever that
was – Helsinki, I guess – didn’t have entertainment on the way back. But if
that’s the worst thing about any given air travel day, I’ll take it.
The worst on this was the fact I had to wake up at 3 a.m. to
get to the airport but I muddled through it all right.
Anyhoo, I picked Slovenia at random. I bought some kind of
package deal months ago on Expedia and did almost no research before going. I
certainly had no clue the First Lady was from there. All I did was book a side
trip, which turned out to be wonderfully successful, through Slovenia Explorer.
Ljubljana is a fairly small – OK, really small – city in a
fairly small – OK, really small – country. If I heard the tour guide correctly,
it’s only 256 kilometers across; you could bike it in two days. OK, maybe not
YOU, but some people could.) I figured I’d do the city for two days and do a
side trip to the big country sites one day. And as it turned out, I had plenty
of time left over, which was good.
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| I ate well, but not here |
First, the side trips: I went to Lake Bled, which is the
picturesque lake with an island (complete with nunnery that has 99 steps
leading up to it) and castle overlooking it. The waters were so clear I could
see big fish swimming!
We took the little boat to the island and putzed around for
about half an hour. The place was LOADED with Asian tourists, like 3-4 boats of
them. After living in a crowded Asian city and visiting many, many others over
the course of two years, I am over throngs of Asian tourists. At the nunnery, I
tried really hard to steer away from the many groups.
We went up to the castle after the boat ride back, and the
views were phenomenal. I also bought a cool little cross made of iron, which
almost didn’t make it back. The three ends on it (it’s a stand) are all
pointed, and you better believe airport security took a second look at that,
but they let me through. I had wondered about it and made sure to pack it with
the other souvenirs so they’d know it wasn’t some weapon for a vampire hunt.
The weather on the whole trip was love/hate. The first day
(more on that later) was incredibly hot, and Lake Bled day had torrential rain.
My little day trip group was spared the worst, because the skies opened after
we’d visited the castle and were sitting outside at a café eating little crème cakes,
for which Bled is known for. We’d finished and were chatting when the waiter
came and hustled us into the café and the skies absolutely opened. We made our
way to the van, and I could see lightning strike the castle we’d just visited. It
was really awe-inspiring, honestly.
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| Boat ride on Lake Bled |
So, in the downpour, we headed to our afternoon destination:
the Predjama Castle and Postojna Caves. The castle is built into a cave, though
not the Postojna one. That one was HUGE. I’m no spelunker, but I’ve been in a
few touristy caves, though nothing like this. The deal was, you got on an
electric train and it took you for a 10-minute, 5-kilometer ride through the
cave, so it was really deep. Then you got out and walked through another
kilometer of it, and it was simply beautiful. And, knowing that Slovenia is a
little bit of a seismic area, kind of gave me the creeps being underground.
The castle was pretty big, too, and had never been inhabited
by royalty. I don’t remember the guy’s name, but a wealthy man lived there and
the townspeople hated him because he was wealthy. One day – and this delighted
the 8-year-old on the tour – he went into the bathroom (an outside room of the
castle) and an employee stuck a candle in the window. That sent some kind of
signal to the townspeople, who then launched cannonballs at the bathroom,
killing the guy as he took a dump.
The kid on the tour just loved it. He went on and on about
it, which made the adults pretty much laugh, too.
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| My kind of bouquet |
We had good weather for the castle, and when we were in the
cave, it poured again but since we were underground we didn’t notice or care.
The day before, the weather about killed me. My flight
landed before 9 a.m. and I had expected to catch the bus into town, getting
there about 10. But I found out the bus only went every two hours and wasn’t going
to leave the airport until 10, so I took a shuttle to the hotel, landing me in
the city about two hours before I’d planned. After dumping my bag at the hotel
and grapping a map, I set into the city, well before 10 a.m.
It was flipping hot. I think it topped out at 91 degrees,
which isn’t bad if you’re in air conditioning, but Europe doesn’t do air
conditioning. I tried to stay hydrated but wasn’t sure if the water was OK to
drink (it is; it’s straight from the Alps). I was wandering around and realized
I was starting to get sick from the heat.
So I found a place to sit and eat – I was famished – and had
a great grilled salmon and some kind of garlic-spinach-potato goulish-ish side
dish. (It was listed as “side dish” on the menu.) That came from a food stall
at this amazing outdoor market and oddly, although it was pretty cheap compared
to what I’ve seen in my travels lately, wound up as the most expensive meal I
ate.
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| Predjama Castle |
By 2 p.m., I was full and had pounded lots of water but had
a vice going on in my brain, so I headed back to the hotel, about a 15-minute
walk away. After checking in, which took forever because of some
high-maintenance tourists before me, I crashed in the room and discovered the
whole no-air conditioning thing. Considering my state, this was not good. I
opened a window – which was kind of odd because I was on a ground floor and
there was no screen; it was basically another door. There was also construction
going on outside, so I could hear their conversation.
Anyway, I was feeling pretty miserable and just wanted to
catch a nap to make the migraine go away. I took an emergency migraine pill but
it was too late. The nausea went away after I tossed my cookies -- and the
goulish-ish side dish – and I eventually managed to fall asleep, or at least
nap enough to make it go away. By 8 p.m. I was fine, and I went back into town,
where I discovered the whole little market area morphs into a lively
entertainment zone of sorts in the evenings. Lots of street performers and
throngs of people, which is pretty amazing considering the country only has 2m
people and the city about 225k.
All I did, which is all I ever do, was wander around and
take pictures. There’s a river running through the city, so that made me happy –
I just love water and boats. Plus, they had an awesome garden that I hit the
last day. It was the end of rose season but the hyacinths were in full bloom.
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| I'm a sucker for boats, water and flowers. |
Since the river winds through the city, there are bridges
everywhere, like every block. They all have names and personalities, too. I did
the free city tour the last day and there was much on the main architect of the
city, who designed the bridges to be wide town square-like areas with art on
them to encourage milling about instead of just crossing.
The most photographed one is the Dragon Bridge. There are 20
dragons on the bridge, and I think I took 5-6 pictures of them myself, in as
many different lighting ways as I could.
Dragons are big there because one lives in the castle, which
overlooks the city. I heard the legend a couple of times, but didn’t really
grasp it all. Something about Jason and his Argonauts; they had to take the
Argo apart and carry it over a mountain, running into a dragon along the way,
or something like that.
I tried to absorb some of the history, as I know barely anything
about the breaking up of Yugoslavia. It seems the Slovenians miss Yugoslavia,
for the most part, but their role in the breakup was peaceful. Something about
Serbs – there weren’t a lot of them – and questionable borders. Slovenia has
really distinct borders – two rivers, a sea and the Alps, so there really wasn’t
much of a question as to what Slovenia would be, so the breakup was quick and
peaceful.
But it was kind of odd to me, to talk to the tour guide
about it. I’ve never studied the breakup of the USSR – it wasn’t in my high
school textbooks because it hadn’t happened yet – and it was odd to hear it
from a firsthand witness. He was born in one country and now lived in another,
although he hadn’t moved. That’s a weird concept for me to grasp.
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