The Last Day

Well, today is our last full day before it's wheels up at 0830 tomorrow.

We checked out of our inn and hit the road, heading eastbound for almost 2 hours when we came to the Slovenian-Croatian border.  The border guards could not have cared less about who we were or our passports.  They simply looked for a place to stamp, stamped, and handed them back without missing a beat in their conversations.  Then back we were in Croatia and onwards to the Zagreb airport to drop off Otto (thankfully).  We grabbed a cab and headed into downtown Zagreb to check into a hotel for the final time.  We are all exhausted and no longer that interested in sight seeing, but Kelly had read about a pen/pencil maker in Zagreb and wanted to buy one for her and her friend.  She asked the concierge where the shop was, and he informed her that they had closed the shop and you can only really buy the pens from the factory in batches of twelve.  Seeing as the pens average around €150 each, she sadly decided to pass.

We walked around town, said hi to Nikola Tesla, popped into the Museum of Broken Relationships giftshop and took a few photos of a cathedral with a tiled roof.

Having not eaten since breakfast and dinner time fast approaching, we grabbed a table in a busy square and enjoyed our last sit-down meal.  An ice cream cone on the way home, and we turned in for the night, as we are up at the crack of dawn in the morning to catch our flight: Zagreb to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Vancouver.

We Put the Fun in Funicular

Yesterday was our last full day in Slovenia, so we decided that we would head down to Ljubljana's old town and wander around.  After our 20 minute bus ride and a short walk and there we were, in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the city.

We read about how the city is an architects paradise and that when Ljubljana was reduced to rubble by an earthquake in the 1890s, they had a boatload of rebuilding money to play with from the Hapsburgs and decided to rebuild in style.

We walked throught the bustling Saturday morning riverside market, with locals selling the fruits of their labours and handicrafts.  After a short walkabout and we were at a funicular which leads up to a castle perched high on a mountain that looks over the city (similarly to Salzburg).

We poked about the castle walls and decided to have some coffee and cake in the courtyard.  Kelly ordered a choclate mousse and an iced coffee - turns out an iced coffee in Slovenia is two scoops of ice cream over a shot of espresso.

After a bit more walking around the castle, we headed back down the funicular.

We decided to check out some of the bridges that cross the Ljubljanica river, having already seen the triple bridge, so we checked out the bridge adorned with Ljubljana's mascot, the dragon.

Greek legen has it that when Jason and his Argonauts had obtained the golden fleece, they encountered a swamp where Jason slayed a monster- the swamp being where Ljubljana now sits and the monster being a dragon.  These dragons perch on the four corners of the bridge and watch over travellers, like the Lions at the Lions Gate bridge in Vancouver.

Next up was the Butchers bridge.  There are several points of interest on this bridge, the first being a salute to Paris' Pont de l'Archeveche "Love Lock" bridge.  Padlocks of different shades and sizes clipped on the wiring, each scrawled with names and/or phrases.

The second point of interest are the grotesque sculptures by Jakov Brdar which represent figures from greek and biblical mythology.

Back when we were taking our pletna ride across Lake Bled, the American couple we were speaking with told us that they had just visited the Serbian Orthodox church and that it was magnificent, so we decided to take their word for it and headed across town.

From the outside, the church looks plain - not nearly as ostentatious as some of the baroque style Catholic cathedrals we have seen.

However, once we entered, we were all completely astounded.  It was a church like none of us had ever seen.  The whole interior was painted floor to ceiling with icons and saints and their names scrawled in cyrillic.  Some of the nooks showed scenes from the bible and a giant chanderlier hung in the middle.  

After having said "wow" for the 40th time, we were greeted by a kindly priest who asked us where we were from.  When we said Canada, he was excited to share that his son was going to Toronto for a year.  He then eagerly shared some info about the church with us.  It is the only Serbian Orthodox church in Slovenia, and that during the communist period, Yugoslavia was declared an atheist state and he was forced to practice his religion in secret.  As for all the frescos, he said that Catholics have statues, Orthodox has the paintings.  He also said that in the old days people were illiterate and could not follow along in the bible, but they could follow the paintings on the walls and rather having their noses stuck in a book all service, they could look around and enjoy the beauty and colours.  There are no pews - everyone stands (except for the elderly and infirm). There is no photography allowed in the church, but he generously let Kelly take some pictures (with the flash off, of course).  He then spoke about how all he has wanted to do is to worship in peace and now that communism and the Balkan war is over, he is renewing his faith.  We stayed for a couple more minutes and then said our goodbye to the priest.  

We then decided to walk back to the old town, passing the city's opera (this season they are doing Tristan und Isolde, Salome, Carmen and Orfeo and Euridice) and several other galleries.

We were then stopped by a woman with a walkie-talkie at a street corner.  We looked around and there was movie equipment and cameras - they were filiming a movie.  We had to wait until the scene was done filimng and then had to scuttle across the street in a hurry while they set up the next scene.

Once back in the old town, we settled at a river-side cafe to have some Slovenian beers and people-watch.

We finished up and paid the tab and decided to make one more detour before heading back to the inn, and that was to check out some Roman ruins and a sarcophagus.  The ruins have been discovered and preserved in a pedestrian underpass, and the school of graphic design has been allowed to highlight the area with some artistic accents (it was too dark to take pictures and flash would have looked terrible), but if you are ever in Slovenia and are trying to find them, look for the gold roman centurion.

It was then back on the bus and back to the inn where we had a quick bite, then started packing and turned in for the night.

Here We Go A-Spelunking

This morning after breakfast we loaded up Otto and headed south-west on the A2 to Slovenia's Karst region  Because of the amount of limestone in the Karst, there are many many cave systems.  There are two main caves there, so we decided on the caves that are Slovenia's self-proclaimed "most famous", the Postojna Caves.  These caves are also Slovenia's most visited tourist attraction.  We pulled into one of the numerous parking lots alongside a slough of tour buses.  Right away we were all surprised at how commercial everything was there - gift shop after gift shop, cafe after cafe.  We bought our tickets (probably the most we've paid for a single attraction on the trip) and headed towards the mouth of the cave.

At noon, a whole gaggle of us were herded down a hallway and onto an open-air train that took us a mile into the mountain.

Once the train stopped, we all got off and started filing down well maintained paths.  The formations are really incredible.  Stalactites, stalagmites cave curtains and pillars everywhere, strategicly backlit.

The caves were chilly - 10 degrees, and we got randomly dripped on.  Our tour guide told us that the cave is about 3 million years old and that each centimeter takes about 100 years to form.  It looked a lot like Fraggle Rock, or like Smiegel was going to pop out at any moment.

We were allowed to take photos, but no flash as the light is bad for the caves, and some caverns have actually started to grow algae from the light already in there.  Also, the tour guide telling us to turn the flash off doesn't mean people listen.  

We walked up and up the inside of the mountain and then down, for a total of a mile.  Sometimes the lights would turn off showing everyone how dark it is in there and also making Kelly think that this is where and how she dies.

There is one kind of animal that lives in the caves, and it's a little pink salamander-type lizard.  They are completely blind (as they live in the dark), their heards beat twice a minute and they only need to eat once every twelve days as they hardly move.  The original cave explorers were scared of them as they thought they were baby dragons and that grown-up dragons lived deeper in the cave.

At the end of the tour we got to a giant cavern that apparently has a 5 - 6 second echo, a gift shop, and the world's only underground post office where you can get a special postmark on your mail.

An hour and a half later all said and done, it was back on the train to the mouth of the cave and into the blinding daylight.  We stopped at one of the many cafes for lunch, paid for parking and headed to another point of interest 9km away in the nearby hamlet of Predjama:

Predjama Castle is a medieval castle built half into a giant cave, still in the Karst.  We had read that it is not worth the money to tour the inside of the castle - just viewing it from the outside is magnificent enough.  We also read a little bit about the history of the castle: one of the main occupants, Erazem, was a 15th century Robin Hood-type figure who stole from the rich (but kept for himself). This obviously enraged the rich from whom he stole, but even laying siege to the castle didn't work as Erazem always seemed to have fresh supplies (he had a secret tunnel).  Attackers finally discovered a way that they could get rid of Erazem for good, and that was when he was on the shitter, located on the outer wall of the top floor, a treacherous servant raised a flag and a single canonball was launched, catching Erazem with his pantaloons down.

After getting a few snaps and a few longing glances, we went back to the car and headed back to the inn for happy hour, dinner and bed, getting ready for our last full day in Slovenia.