More Words.

Okay, here’s the sequel to the last post. Like I said before, we took a night train to from Split to Slovenia and got there without any interesting happening (which really I suppose is a good thing). I guess the one exciting thing is that we got our passports stamped since we were reentering the EU (Croatia hasn’t been allowed in), but even the stamp we got is kind of plain and boring looking. Which is actually the exact opposite of our destination, Ljubljana (pronounced loo-blee-ah-nuh). Even though it’s the country’s largest city, it's actually quite small and can be pretty easily covered by foot, although there were bike lanes everywhere on the sidewalks and lots of bikers, few of whom actually used their designated lane.

I really don’t know how I can describe the city in a unique way, but I’ll give it a try. There’s a castle up on a hilltop looking down on the city, a small tranquil river that cuts through the city, various bridges connecting each side of the city and an abundance of popular outdoor cafes and bars that run along the side of the river. There are also a lot of big green parks where people go to spend the afternoons dog-walking, rollerblading, picnicking and other various wholesome family activities. I loved getting to wander around on some of the foresty tree-filled paths and enjoy some non-beach scenery. Another thing I liked was walking through the daily outdoor market… yeah of course there were overpriced tourist items, but only in one section – the rest of the stalls offered delicious looking and smelling produce, lots of flowers (I think especially b/c we were there the weekend before Easter), some odd looking sausage and meat products, and freshly made cheese. In an odd sort of way I almost felt like I was home (river, farmer’s market, lots of green all around), but at the same time everything was still very European and very clearly not the Pacific Northwest.

One of the days we took a bus to two different lakes a couple hours outside of the city. The first was a place called Bohinj, a lot more secluded than our second destination (Lake Bled), and one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. You’ll have to look at the pictures, but basically we were at a huge lake we pretty blue water with the Alps in the background. There are a lot of different hiking trails you can do from there, but unfortunately we didn’t know that beforehand and didn’t exactly come prepared for that sort of activity, so I very begrudgingly tried to satisfy myself with a short stroll along the lake. After taking pictures and puttering around for a couple hours, we caught another bus to Bled, about 30 minutes back in the direction of Ljubljana. This lake is much more geared towards tourists – there are hotels, cafes, restaurants, boats/canoes for rent, etc etc. Here we did pretty much the same thing – walked around, took pictures, pretty much just enjoyed the great outdoors. I should also mention that Lake Bled has a couple unique features. The first is a tiny island in the middle of the lake with an old church built on it (you can take a boat out to the island, but can’t enter the building), and the second is the castle located on a tall cliff overlooking the lake. We missed out on going in there, but really I wasn’t that heartbroken about it.

The last destination before heading back to Spain was Venice – a sharp contrast to the other places we visited earlier, but we found a cheap flight home from there and it’s actually a relatively short train ride from Ljubljana to Venice, so it actually made sense in a random sort of way… anyway, we were just there for a day, so we spent as much time as we could walking around the sidewalks and crossing over canals and watching other people pony up the 80 euro it costs to take a gondola ride. We wandered through a lot of different markets (food, fish, jewelry, more touristy trinkets), went to Piazza San Marco, ogled the Basilica there from the outside (a multiple hour wait to get in!), ate delicious gelato… yep, that’s about it. I was glad we were only in Venice for the day – there were too many big crowds and everything there was expensive… not my favorite combination.

Okay, so in regards to picture posting: first off, I’m warning you, there are a lot of them, so if you get bored, no offense taken. I got bored looking through all of them trying to decide which ones were worth sharing and then fighting with my internet to make them load properly. Second, my camera is going through a rebellious phase in its life and while at Lake Bled decided to have some sort of “Lens Error” that won’t go away. I’ve been hoping it would just fix itself, but it’s been days and still no luck. Anyway, this means I’m missing pics of Venice, but I’ll try and post a few of Erin’s just to make things a representative sample of the trip.

That’s all for now, adios!

Photos:

Semana Santa