Slovenia-A Little Paradise for Us!
Tuesday, November 20th, 2007After a long travel day-from Hvar (island off of Croatia) on a ferry boat to Split (mainland Croatia) where we took a bus to Zagreb, then caught the train to Ljubliana (hope I spelled that right), we were finally in Slovenia! And what a beautiful country it is. Slovenia is like an outdoor paradise. Even the capital Ljubliana is still a relatively small city, very easy to get around and very charming. The houses reminded us a lot of Amsterdam, tall and narrow, sharing outside walls with the neighbors house. There is a pedestrian area with cobblestone streets, outdoor cafes, and a beautiful stream with walking paths. This was definitely one of our favorite cities. It still hasn’t hit the tourist route, so you won’t see many other travelers, which is nice. However, everyone spoke English. Apparently they learn English as early as 4th grade, so most are fluent, which makes traveling super easy.
Our main reason for coming to Slovenia, however, was to take advantage of the outdoor activities it’s known for. So, we headed off for the little town of Bled and we were not dissapointed! Bled is incredibly beautiful. The town is situated around it’s Lake, which has a walking path that wraps all the way around it (I think for about 3 miles). We were lucky to be there in the fall to see the leaves changing around the lake and very little tourists to have to share the view with. We felt like we stumbled on our very own paradise. We stayed in a pension just outside of the town set back into the forest, so it was amazingly quiet. One night, we were the only guests and had the whole place to ourselves! The owner was amazing and let us use two of his bikes to cruize back and forth from town to the pension. Of course, we can’t just ride to town…so we ended up riding about 24 kilometers (about 15 miles) outside the city and into the mountains just to get a glimpse of the snow covered Alps! It was an amazing and of course tiring ride because we still had to get home….which gave us a grand total of about a 30 mile ride that day on bikes no better than beach cruizers! It was fantastic, even though are butts were sore for a few days after. Oh, and the food!!!! We probably had some of our best meals here and it was actually inexpensive compared to the other countries we had visited. Steve had some calamari that was probably the best I have ever tasted and I had some of the softest, sweetest tasting chicken ever. Plus, we always had wine with dinner because it was about a dollar per glass!!! Not only that, Christy was able to continue her hot chocolate quest and wouldn’t you know it, she found a winner in Slovenia. Maybe it’s because we stopped to get it after our long bike ride, which made it taste even better, but it was very tasty, just the right amount of whip cream! God bless Slovenia, we will visit here again for sure!
Steve