Category: 2010-09 Berlin to Pula

This morning, we had to check out and move to a pension that the receptionist had kindly booked us the night before. We weren’t quite sure what to expect as it was very cheap, but we were welcomed so warmly by the owner, who was a real character. He showed us around everywhere and let us have the keys even though it was only 10am! We were really pleased as it was not somewhere we would have found ourselves.

The rainy weather continued, but we wrapped up and left for the day, and were soaked within minutes in a torrential downpour. We took shelter in a cafe and had some more hot chocolate while we waited for it to pass.

About an hour later, it was still so heavy that we didn’t think it would ever stop! Our plans to walk up to the castle were quickly replaced by a trip on the funicular railway, which we were sure would have had a great view if the cabin wasn’t totally steamed up.  At the castle, we climbed the viewing tower to get a closer look at the clouds. We could barely see the ground by this point, but we went as high as we could anyway to get our money’s worth…Ljubljana was nowhere to be seen! To avoid heading back out into the rain, we had lunch in the castle restaurant, which was a lot more posh than we’d initially realised. As we sat there in our hoodies smelling of wet dog, more and more businesspeople in suits turned up. Somehow, they didn’t seem nearly as wet as us! Oh well, it was a lovely meal and really warmed us up. We shared a venison goulash and some Slovenian sausages with roasted potatoes, yummy.

After exhausting all the castle had to offer, we went back down into the main town to have our first proper look around. We joked about how all we’d seen of Ljubljana so far was in the dark and/or pouring rain, but we liked it anyway. We ticked off as many sights as we could whilst cowering under any shelter we could find to read the guidebook, then finally gave up and went back to our comfortable pension to dry off.

We spent the afternoon booking hotels on the handy computer in our room, and then headed out later for dinner. After wandering around for a while looking for a restaurant, we finally settled on a Mexican which had been mentioned in LP. We popped our heads in and saw that there was a queue so nearly left, but then the heavens opened once again so we decided to stay. This turned out to be such a good choice! It was without doubt the best meal of our trip so far – each main included three sides which were all delicious and we were totally stuffed by the end of our meal. The decor was amazing too, with colourful rag rugs covering the walls and used as placemats. The restaurant was probably a reason to return to Ljubljana in itself!

We stumbled out with full tummies but needed to break some notes for change so we just had to have an ice cream (what a pity). Once again, Oli got in trouble for trying to pay with a large note. We must have looked quite a sight in our raincoats and flip flops holding an ice cream while sheltering from the rain! We heard some really loud live music on our way home which we guessed was coming from the Ljubljana Festival, but we were way too full and tired to investigate further. Despite the awful weather, we really liked Ljubljana – it was so pretty and chilled out.

We left early the next morning to catch our train to Piran, accidentally buying half the station bakery for breakfast on the way. We seemed to be the only ones eating anyway, as some men in station uniforms who were sitting on the neighbouring table had already started on the beers. This was a bit worrying as it was only 9am, but we convinced ourselves that it must have been the end, rather than the start, of their shifts! 

We woke up to beautiful sunshine in Ljubljana and got dressed for the warm weather, our first time in real summer clothes this trip. A brainstorm over breakfast led us to decide that it would make more sense for us to visit Bled, a lake-side town in the mountains, as a day trip today rather than tomorrow (we couldn’t stay in the hotel for an extra night so would need to move). After breakfast, we headed off to the bus station where we were served by a grumpy ticket man who didn’t like our 50 Euro note one bit… whoops! Anyway, we got on the bus for our one-hour journey where we planned to look at the mountain scenery on the way. In reality, though, Sara fell asleep and Oli couldn’t see the views as it started to rain! Not a good start. When we arrived, we decided to make the best of things and began our 6km walk round the lake as planned, even though we were wearing sandals. Thankfully, we had remembered our waterproofs so we didn’t feel too silly, at least half of us stayed dry!

A short distance round the lake, the rain eased and we stopped for lunch on a jetty with some inquisitive ducks for company and an amazing view of the whole lake and the church on the island in the centre. We were pretty impressed that the lake really was emerald green just as we’d heard. How??!!

Although we were a bit tired after our walk (our many days of sightseeing were catching up on us!) we decided to climb the steep hill to the castle. At the top, we found that we had to pay for entrance even to visit the cafe (contrary to the info in the guidebook) but we were glad we did, as the views alone were definitely worth the money. Neither of us had ever seen anything quite so picture-perfect. Unfortunately, the tour group (S’s and B’s as Sara’s Grandad would say) that descended on us were a less attractive proposition, so we didn’t stay too long!

After the castle, we decided it was only fair that we should give Bled the opportunity to impress us further with its speciality cake (kremna snežna rezina), which was cream and custard cream sandwiched between flaky pastry. Very tasty! Oli had some lovely hot chocolate which was so thick and rich you could eat it with a spoon, so he did and got it smeared all over his nose!

After this, we headed back to the bus for our return journey to Ljubljana. We followed a Lonely Planet recommendation for dinner and visited a Serbian restaurant for a really nice (and very funny) meal. The menu proved our Serbian language skills weren’t quite up to scratch, but thankfully the waitress helped us out. Even so, we didn’t have too much idea what we would be eating, but had a tasty meal of sausages and meatballs in delicious soft bread with butter/cheese – we still can’t agree what it was, but it tasted good!

We had a great laugh at our neighbouring table (who were British and also had a copy of LP, everyone else was local) because after a few glasses of wine she accidentally ordered a balaclava rather than baklava for pudding. They didn’t find it quite as funny as Sara did, but thankfully didn’t notice her giggles! We topped off the meal with some ice cream from the main square on the way back to our hotel.

We boarded our train in Budapest at 2pm with no problems finding our seats. We were thrilled that we seemed to have a compartment of six seats to ourselves, but couldn’t quite relax as we knew that someone could join us at any time (although later on, we realised that there was barely anyone on the train!) Anyway, it made for a really comfortable journey with lots of space.

We started on our packed lunch and found that Oli’s strawberry yoghurt had exploded, so Sara was very proud she’d thought to put it in a plastic bag! Later on, Sara napped while Oli continued to read his new copy of Marley and Me, which had him laughing lots and reading out extracts whenever Sara opened her eyes.

The weather was beautiful and Hungary was too, so we both spent a good amount of the journey gazing out of the window. The food we’d packed also had to last us for dinner too, so it was good that we’d bought bread, crackers, cheese triangles (one pack of many), Pombears, yoghurt, Haribo and lots of chocolate! As it started to get dark, we crossed the border to Slovenia and discovered that we had to move onto a different train, which was a bit of a surprise. We grabbed all of our things in a hurry and narrowly avoided forgetting Oli’s beloved trainers. The new train was just the same, and we drew the curtains which made it so cosy and feel like a bit of an adventure!

We arrived in Ljubljana about 11.30pm and found our hotel easily after a short walk. It was nice, simple, modern and clean, and we were really relieved to get to bed after a long day of travelling.