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Slovenia #1: Ljubljana

The Alps are incredible mountains. I've done a lot of hiking and (a long time ago in my youth) climbing there. Back in the 1980's when I lived in England I visited most of the countries that the range passes through. More recently Sandy and I have hiked and toured through a lot of the Alps. I've been to the mountains in France, Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Italy and Austria. But there is one alpine country that I had never visited. Back in the day it was called Yugoslavia. During the Cold War it wasn't a good place for an American to visit. But after Tito died in 1986 Yugoslavia broke up into seven different countries. Today the eastern end of the Alps is in Slovenia, a country that is part of the EU and a member of NATO. Stable politically and doing pretty well economically, I no longer had an excuse for not visiting the eastern Alps. Sandy and I considered it a couple of times and this year we finally pulled the trigger. Instead of going on our own, we signed up for a Mt. Travel - Sobek trip "Hiking Slovenia's Julian Alps". We were going to let someone else worry about the logistics. We just wanted to hike in the mountains.

We were all packed up and ready to leave with a very early flight out of Boise. Sandy went to bed at a reasonable time while I stayed up. I'm a night person and usually can't get to sleep if I go to bed too early. Although we were getting up at five am, I figured I would just sleep on the plane. As I was going to bed at 1 am I heard Sandy's phone beep. I must have woken her up because she heard it too and got up to check what it was. It was a text from United Airlines saying that our flight out of Boise had been delayed, enough that we would miss our connection to Europe. Great. We hadn't even started our trip yet and we were already messed up. Sandy got up and called United. She had to spend a long time on the phone but she did a great job and managed to get our tickets changed. Unfortunately it meant that our departing flight from Boise was now an hour earlier. We called the cab company to move up our pickup time and changed our alarms to 4am. It was definitely a short night. Oh well, who needs to sleep anyway?

Although our trip didn't start well, fortunately everything went smoothly after our middle-of-the-night change of plans. Our flights to Houston, Munich and Ljubljana were all on time. We arrived in Slovenia around 11 the next morning. Because of the short night before traveling, for a change I actually slept a little on the flight to Europe. But I was still really tired and both Sandy and I had to struggle to stay up past dinner.

As we left the terminal there was a stand advertising a shuttle going downtown that would take us directly to our hotel for only nine Euros. That sounded like a great deal. After we paid our money we were directed to a shuttle stop across from the terminal for a "short wait for another passenger". The short wait was about an hour. Sandy got pretty irritated but I was too tired to worry about it. I figured that it was cheap and the shuttle did take us right to the place that we were staying, the Hotel Lev. Even though it was still early in the day we were able to check into our room. After dropping off our bags we headed for the central district which was only a ten minute walk from our hotel. We had four days free before our group trip started that we could use to explore Ljubljana on our own.

Slovenia is a small country with only two million people, not much more than the state of Idaho. The capital is Ljubljana, which is where we started our trip. With about half a million people in the metropolitan area, it's maybe twice as large as Boise. Seeing it's name written out is definitely intimidating for an English speaker. I thought that I was smart because before the trip I checked a lot of websites to find out how to pronounce it. It turned out that most of those websites were wrong. They showed it as three syllables, but after spending two weeks there I decided that the Slovenians all say the name with only two syllables. So best as I can tell, the name should be pronunced lou-BLYAH-nah. The three consonents in a row in the second syllable are definitely unnatural for an American but with practice I found that I could say them if I really concentrated. Maybe having been raised by my Polish-speaking grandmother helped me with my Slavic annunciation.

Sandy and I spent most of our time walking around the Old Town distirct, which is centered on the Ljubljanica River. There are multiple bridges over the river, one every few hundred meters. The most famous ones are the Dragon Bridge, which is decorated with statues of dragons, the symbol of the city, and the Triple Bridge, which connects to the main square, Presernov Trg. It's pretty along the river with about a mile long stretch on both sides that is a pedestrian only zone that is closed to car traffic. It was a very nice area to wander around.

Above and beyond the Old Town, Ljubljana Castle stood high on a hill providing a picturesque backdrop. The narrow streets in the city center were lined with restaurants, bars and shops and were full of people, both tourists and locals. There was a large open air market where we stopped at a food stand to get a snack (Sandy and I shared an order of pomme frites). It was a hot and sunny day and we just walked around for a few hours exploring.

Late in the afternoon we took an hour long boat ride on the river which gave us a different view of the city. Afterwards we stopped at an open air cafe and shared a pizza for dinner. It was pleasant sitting outside next to the river and it was a great spot for people watching. By the time we finished we were both really tired so we headed back to our hotel. We were in bed and asleep by seven that evening.

...which meant that we were up the next day at three in the morning. It was a good thing that we had lots of books loaded on our Kindles and were able to read until it got light.

According to the weather forecast it looked like we had another pretty good day ahead of us. It was supposed to be sunny and warm although thunderstorms were predicted for late in the afternoon. We started out by exploring more nooks and crannies of the Old Town before heading for our main objective, Ljubljana Castle.

It's possible to ride a funicular to the top of the hill but since we are mighty hikers we decided to just walk up. It was only about three hundred feet of elevation gain and we found a shaded path which climbed the wooded hillside. It was pleasantly cool even though it was a warm day.

Going through the castle, I thought the most interesting displays were in the basement. There were nice exhibits showing excavations of the really old fortifications which are now totally buried beneath the current structure. They dated back over a thousand years.

Climbing to the top of the watchtower was also pretty cool (queue the Jimi Hendrix music). There was a spectacular view over the whole city. I didn't think the rest of the castle was that interesting. Much of the main section was devoted to museums which had weird exhibits, like a display by a photographer who did covers for fashion magazines. It was too artsy for us. Even the souvenir shop didn't have anything interesting (translation: they didn't have any tshirts).

When we finished touring the castle we bought some cold drinks and found a cool, shady spot where we could sit down on some steps and take a break. After that we decided to head back to the hotel for a rest. That's when disaster struck. As I stepped into our room I realized that I didn't have my glasses with me. I knew that I had taken them along so I must have left them somewhere. Since the only place that we had stopped was our rest break in the castle, I figured that I must have set them down and left them there.

No rest for the wicked, or in this case, the stupid. While Sandy stayed behind I raced back up to the castle. When I got there it was only an hour since we had been there, but my glasses were no where to be found. I asked at the restaurant next to the steps and at the place we bought our drinks. No one had seen my glasses.

This was a serious problem since I can't see well without my glasses and there were still two weeks left in the trip. I had my prescription sunglasses but I knew I would look kind of silly wearing them at night, besides not being able to see in the dark. I didn't have any choice though. I just hoped that people would assume that I was somebody famous. Maybe they would come up and ask if they could take a selfie with me. Of course I would be gracious and say yes.

That afternoon we found an Italian restaurant where we had an early dinner of really good pasta. While we were eating a thunderstorm rolled in right on schedule at four pm and we ended up walking home in a downpour. Even wearing our GoreTex rainjackets we both got soaked. It was a preview of some of our hikes later in the trip.

We had two more days before leaving for the mountains but it rained most of the time. It wasn't a big deal since we had already seen a lot of the town. We spent a lot of time in our hotel room reading (and drying out our wet clothes from the day before). It did stop raining for a while in the afternoon so we ventured out to check the castle one more time. Sandy suggested that I try the info center. I went in and asked about a lost and found. When I told them about my glasses they pulled out a log book. The lady smiled and said yes, a green glasses had been turned in. Only then did she pull out a box and look through it to find them. Sure enough they were there. I had to sign a receipt to claim them. It was quite an elaborate procedure but I wasn't complaining. I had my glasses back and disaster had been averted.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped for dinner at the same place we had eaten the night before. Once again it was really good. That night I think we made it till 7:30 before we fell asleep.

Our last day in Ljubljana was another rainy day. We finally met up with our tour group in the afternoon. One of the guides did a walk around the town but since we had explored it on our own we decided not to go out in the rain. That night we had a group dinner and afterwards had a nice walk home when the rain finally stopped.

Next morning we were up early. It was easy because we were still off cycle or jet lagged or whatever you want to call it. After breakfast we met in the lobby and piled into the two vans for our group. The weather had finally changed again and it was a sunny day. The forecast for the next several days was good. It was time to head for the mountains!