We are planning to spend a few days around Split using it as a base to explore some of the off shore islands as well as the city itself. Today we headed down to the city center to check it out and scout the best options to get to the off shore islands.
Split is a major port city and a ferry terminal for cross Adriatic ferries to and from Italy, as well as to the Croatian islands.
Split is an old town going back thousands of years. Today it is a sprawling modern city of 160,000 people. A lot of the apartment blocks go back to the communist era and to put it nicely are not very pretty. I think the term for the architecture from this period is Brutalist and that is an apt description.
This is a pretty Hapsburg era building though we never did figure out what it was being used for. We think a hotel.
Our first stop as often happens is the city market. There was nothing particularly remarkable about this market. It was the usual mixture of meat and vegetables with a few local artisans showing their goods. Ton found a pair of pretty fingerless gloves to replace the ones that have gone missing at home at one of the artisans shops.
This lady probably has a lot of interesting stories to tell.
Splits old town is pretty compact and can be covered in a couple of hours of walking. Split is known for two things its Cathedral and Diocletian’s Palace.
The bell tower of the Cathedral.
The Cathedral and the Palace are kind of mixed together as the mausoleum of the palace was converted to a Christian Church in the third century and the cathedral grew up around it.
Ton liked the juxtaposition of the diminutive pious looking nun with the very tall modern woman on her cell phone. You can also see the juxtaposition of the Roman Palace and the Catholic Cathedral in this picture.
Diocletian was a Roman emperor in the third century who was born in this area. He gets mixed reviews as he left the remains of this beautiful palace for us all to share which is a plus. The minus it was built by Christian slaves in 10 years at great cost to the slaves who Diocletian was trying to get to renounce Christianity because he believed he was a child of Jupiter.
The golden gate to Diocletian’s palace.
History is always complicated in the Balkans.
Part of the Cathedral showing how the Roman palace was transformed to a Christian Cathedral.
After walking around for a while we decided to head over to the waterfront for a lunch. Ton was deciding which meal to order when she asked the waiter the difference between two local fish, he replied they are like brother and sister, so she asked which one was the sister? This cracked the Croatian guy up at the next table, and caused our waiter to blush a little. We ended up with another excellent meal that had us skipping dinner later in the day.
Tons meal of fresh fish with mixed vegetables. This one is the sister.
We took one more pass thru the old town, cathedral, and palace. We noticed that another cruise ship had put into town so we decided to head on back to the campground.
After our great day yesterday in Piltvice NP it was time to take advantage of a low traffic Sunday to move 280 kilometers south to Split. It is the center of the Dalmatian Coast and also the second largest city in Croatia.
The drive was uneventful and we arrived at a large waterfront campground about 1pm. Sundays are pretty quiet in Croatia like much of Europe so we spent the afternoon being lazy and catching up with friends at home.
These folks were having an impromptu kayak race with the guy on the paddleboard recording the event for posterity.
The campground is in the middle of a suburb of Split with a short waterfront promenade. The highlight of our day was a sunset walk to one end of the promenade and then back to François for dinner. Some days are just meant to be quiet.
Plitvice Lakes National Park is one of the most visited places in Croatia and like a lot of National Parks in the US it is so popular that the Croatian Park Service has had to put restrictions on the number of visitors per day. When we checked into the campground yesterday the owner told us that we picked a good time to visit as the Park Service was offering a discount this week.
Ton really liked the fall colors in this picture.
We both woke up before 7am in anticipation of going into the park and I told Ton about the discount. While I was making our coffee Ton went on line and said to get the special price you had to buy the tickets on line. While the water was boiling I took a look on line and saw we could not buy tickets on line the day of the visit, but there was a place to see how many walk up tickets were available per hour of the day. I panicked a bit as between 8 and 10 am there were only a handful of walkups available, but before 8 am there were hundreds. We are located about 10 minutes from the park gate and when I made that announcement it was 7:20. We set a record for making François road ready and rolled into the park at 7:50.
One of the hundreds of waterfalls at the park.
We got our tickets for the day, then took a few minutes back at François to get our breath. Initially when we entered the crowds were pretty light. But as the day went on the crowds built quite a bit, so were glad we had rushed over early.
In a lot of the places the water was a beautiful clear green color.
The park was extremely well designed to give you a great walking experience. There were wonderful raised walkways over water, wetlands and woods. The Croatian National Park Service deserves kudos for the well thought out design of the trail system. It seems to strike the right balance between protecting the fragile ecosystem and allowing people to interact with the natural environment.
The combination of fall colors with the water and the white cliffs was fantastic today.
In general the walks were pretty easy, but there was some elevation change, and at one point we got on a little more strenuous trail that most people avoided, but it was worth it.
Another small waterfall among the hundreds in the park.
During our 5 hour hike thru the park I was impressed with the striking beauty of the place. I was also very impressed with how well the visitors behaved. There was no straying off of trails or boardwalks. People worked well together to enjoy the experience and share in taking in the beauty of the place.
Another series of waterfalls. There were many types of waterfalls and water features thru out the park. Also the diversity in the settings of the falls from wooded landscapes to long drops, to short cascades was very impressive.
We have visited many National Parks in the US and a few overseas and this one is really quite special. I think we caught it a good time of the year as the fall colors are at there peak which really adds to the natural beauty. We really recommend it to anyone. It is by itself almost worth a trip to Croatia.
Another type of waterfall.
Ton usually sends me five or 10 pictures to pick from for the blog. Today she sent me 71, this place was that special. We will be working on a photo album devoted to the park later in the trip.
We have moved from the coast up into the mountains near Plitvice National Park. I told Ton I was feeling lazy so I allowed Greta to use toll roads for the trip. The toll roads in Croatia are very nice, but quite expensive. We liked the mannequin flaggers they use here in construction zones if you are wondering about the picture today. I knew the last 60km’s or so were going to be on single lane roads, what I didn’t know was that Greta was going to use a short cut that sent us on a one and a half lane mountain road for 40 km’s. So much for our easy drive.
This area was extensively fought over during the break up of Yugoslavia. The mountains where we are at were a mixture of Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians. Over simplifying things terribly, they all speak the same language (Serbo-Croat), but are of different religions. This region was very heavily contested between the three different groups, and unfortunately a fair amount of ethnic cleansing took place. As we were driving on our unexpected back mountain road we saw plenty of evidence of the fighting from the 90’s, including one house pockmarked with small arms, and another house that had its roof caved in by an artillery round, as well as well maintained graves of soldiers who died fighting in the area. Many of the houses were abandoned on this road as a result of the cleansing. Also, on this road we saw for the first time soldiers from the Croatian army driving vehicles. When we arrived at the campground I realized that our route today had taken us within a couple of miles of the Bosnian border.
A nice table at our cute campground near the national park.
We arrived at our campground around 1:30 and decided to take the rest of the day off. We did polish off a very nice bottle of Croatian wine.
We are wrapping up our very short visit to Istria today as once again the calender is getting away from us. We visited two cities today, one really caught our fancy and the other missed catching our fancy but was interesting .
Ton liked this store front in the old town of Rovinj.
Rovinj is advertised as the most picturesque town in Istria, and the advertisements were correct. When we first arrived and parked François we were overlooking a working harbor with the fishing fleet just coming into port to off load their catch into trucks. The process was interesting and we enjoyed watching the crews working to pack the fish into ice and load them on the trucks. Also, occasionally a local would walk up to one of the fishermen and buy a couple of fish or a kilo of sardines literally off the boat.
The fishing fleet just in to offload. The seagulls were out in force looking for spillage.
From the commercial docks we could see the old town, but it was not the picturesque views Ton remembered from her research. As we got closer to the old town it was interesting to see the construction where some of the houses actually acted as a kind of sea wall for the town.
When the ocean is angry it must be very interesting to be living in one of these houses.
The town clearly had character. We were climbing up to the church that sits at the top of the hill that the old town is built on, when we both noticed how worn the paving stones were in the narrow alleys. A lot of people had walked these streets over the centuries.
The paving stones in the roads were rubbed shiny from all of the feet that had crossed the town over hundreds of years.
It was a good climb to the top where the church dominated the town. The church itself was not overly impressive, but we did like the image at the top of the tower of a sailor steering a ship. This is clearly a town dedicated to the sea and the old town was until the late 1700’s an island. In the 1700’s they filled the small canal that separated it from the mainland.
The church tower with a sailor on top dominates both the commercial harbor and the leisure harbor in Rovinj.
On the descent from the church Ton was telling me that what we had seen did not quite match the pictures she had seen when researching Rovinj. Just then we emerged onto a square on the other side of town where a beautiful waterfront and leisure harbor opened up in front of us. Ton laughed and said these are the pictures I remember, and then went off to take her own.
This is the view Ton remembered from her research.
Rovinj is a beautiful and picturesque place. We debated having lunch here but decided to instead head on to Pula as the day was getting away from us.
One last shot from the old town in Rovinj.
Pula is an old city and was the center of the Roman government for this area. It contains a few very well preserved Roman buildings and we were looking forward to seeing them. What we didn’t expect was that Pula was a big bustling industrial port. We had really enjoyed the small scale of the towns in Istria so suddenly finding ourselves in a busy city was a little bit of a shock.
A view to the busy industrial harbor. The ship in the center of the picture appears to be an old cruise liner that is being broken down for scrap.
After a little adventure getting lost, for once I will concede that Gretas directions were correct, I just didn’t follow them. We headed over to the Roman amphitheater following Googles walking direction. Google told us it was about 1km mostly flat. Ton and I laughed about that the whole way as we were either going up or down pretty sizable hills and we debated where the person who characterized the walk as flat had grown up.
A Roman arch in Pula. This section was actually pretty flat.
Google then lead us to a dead end and we had to improvise our way to the amphitheater which involved climbing some pretty good hills and stairs. We finally got near the amphitheater but found a fairly modern fort in our way and decided to give up as it was closed for repairs. From the fort we could see the Roman Colosseum in the distance, checking with Google it told us it was a little over a kilometer away. For some reason we both thought it was closed for maintenance so we decided to pass on the walk.
The Roman Colosseum in the distance. It is the sixth largest one in existence and the only one with all of its walls intact. It is still used for concerts.
We walked down to the old town and found the last Roman ruin which was a Forum. After a few photos we both realized we were hungry and decided to call it a day.
The Roman Forum in Pula.
Pula is the kind of town that we usually enjoy. It is a little rough around the edges, but has a lot of interesting sites. But today we did not connect with it. I think we had adjusted to the smaller towns we had been in and the size put us off a bit. Also, we were a bit hungry having skipped lunch. I think if we had more time we might return because it turns out we were both wrong and the Colosseum is not closed for maintenance and would probably be very interesting to tour.
Today we set out to explore Northern Istria. Ton had picked out a couple of towns she wanted to check out, and she told me that we were going to look for a wine tasting room to drop into if we saw one.
It was a perfect day to be out exploring. About 70 degrees and a great sky. This picture is from our first stop of the day Vrsar.
Just south of us is the small town of Vrsar which Ton said had a pretty harbor We were there in about 10 minutes and the parking lot I chose was supposed to be paid, but the barriers had been removed for off season so it was free. This lot allows overnight parking so we lamented the lost opportunity of a couple of free nights, but decided we deserved the luxury we were living in our resort campground.
In addition to being a working harbor there were quite a few 30 to 40 foot sailboats and motor yachts, as well as one 100 ft. luxury yacht.
We followed the promenade around the harbor which was a mixture of fishing, tour, and private boats. Ton was in heaven as the sky and sea were both beautiful and with no wind to speak of the sea was reflecting the clouds.
The promenade in Vrsar had a lot of nice statues. It always impresses us how much art is displayed in small towns in Europe.
We finished with Vrsar and headed for Umag which was close to the Slovenian border. We followed a winding seaside highway for the 40km’s to Umag. About 7% of the population of Istria is Italian so the town names were listed in both Croatian and Italian. Near the town of Novigrad (Cittanova in Italian) Ton spotted a sign for a winery so we turned in. The wide road turned into a one lane track and just as I was about to turn around we found the winery.
Ghira winery produces wines in terra cotta amphora as well as traditionally. The last time we saw wine produced like this was in Portugal.
I wasn’t sure if they were open so I was turning François around when Ton hopped out and told me she was going to take some pictures. Just as I got François pointing in the right direction I heard a shout from her to grab my wallet as the winery was open for tasting.
I’m petting the winery dog who I had decided to call Lady because it reminded me of a dog I had when I was a kid. It turns out when I checked the anatomy, Lady was very much a boy, good thing he didn’t speak English.
We tasted 3 whites and a red and they were all delicious. The conversation was limited as the person poring only spoke Croatian and German, but we settled on a white that is an Istrian grape, but were not sure the name of the grape. All we know is that the wine is delicious.
A street scene from the old town in Umag, which is about 3 alleys near the water. The rest of the town was communist era concrete blocks.
Ton picked Umag because the guide book she was looking at said it was off the tourist route. She wanted to see what a working port town looked like. Umag was not very touristy though they were trying. Most of the boats in the harbor were fishing boats. There was a small waterfront promenade with a couple of restaurants, and an old town of three roads about 100 yards long.
The harbor in Umag, a little more working class than the other harbors in this area.
Near the end of one of the alleys we saw a sign for a sea food restaurant and followed it to a waterfront restaurant tucked away out of site. As we walked up we decided that it was going to be our lunch. As we approached one of the staff gave us a wave and asked if we were hungry. When we said yes, he paused and asked if we were Americans. When we replied affirmatively he surprised us by asking what in the world we were doing in Umag! He said that they hardly ever see Americans here. He was an interesting fellow and asked us a lot of questions about home, and also our impression of Croatia. He told us he was hoping to immigrate and if he had a choice it would be the US. He was not happy about the conversion from the Kuna to the Euro coming up in January as he was convinced costs were going to go up, and his real wages were going to go down. It was an interesting perspective we had not thought of because having everyone on one currency makes our life much easier.
The interior of the restaurant we had lunch in.
Once we got off of politics, our server took Ton inside the restaurant to survey the fish on offer. When she returned we ordered the Umag platter which consisted of two fish, octopus, shrimp, and mussels. It was wonderful and served for two meals as neither of us was hungry for dinner when we returned to the campground.
The Umag platter.
We accomplished all of our targets for the day and even found the wine tasting that Ton had added as a bonus challenge. The last thing we accomplished was getting a load of washing done when we returned for the evening. All in all a very productive day for us.
Today we made it to the Adriatic Sea for the first time. The next couple of weeks at least, we will be slowly driving down the coast towards Greece. Everyone we have met has told us that the Croatian coast is one of the most beautiful places they have been and we are looking forward to finding out for ourselves.
The view from our campsite. Actually about 100 yards away.
Our drive over today was on a brand new and lightly used series of toll ways. Croatia is joining the Schengen Zone, and is also converting to the Euro on January 1st, which makes them full on members of the EU. It looks like they have spent quite a bit of money on infrastructure development in preparation, and you can certainly see it in the toll ways. While they are not cheap they are very well built.
Driving over thru the mountains the leaves were turning, but the predominant color was a kind of rust. Not as beautiful as New England.
Our planned stop for the day was Porec where we plan to spend some time exploring tomorrow. As we were coming into town Ton saw a new Lidl so we swung in there for some shopping. The refrigerator is now fully stocked again.
Part of the campground we are staying at today.
We had picked out a campground last night, and even though we arrived pretty early they were full. I had picked out an alternative which was described as a gigantic campground with over 500 spots. So tonight we are in a campground with over 500 RV sites and a couple of hundred sites of trailers, glamping tents, and cabins. It is incredibly immense.
Some of the Glamping Tents? at our Premium Resort.
This site occupies a whole peninsula sticking into the Adriatic and includes a fun island which is a real island, a waterpark, and a concert venue as well as a village square with a grocery, pizza restaurant and a couple of bars. It is unlike anything we have ever stayed at. They do have 500 spots, but about 350 have been closed down for the offseason.
The bridge from the fun island back to the campground.
After a convoluted check in process that was not very Premium Resort like. We settled into the most expensive campsite we have stayed in in Europe. While it is expensive the bathrooms and showers are indeed premium so we decided we would enjoy the luxury for two nights.
The sunset was beautiful over the Adriatic.
We spent about an hour walking along a pathway along the ocean. It was our first sunset on the Adriatic and it did not disappoint.
The campground we are staying at is in a suburb of Zagreb about 11km’s from the city center. They run a free shuttle bus to the local train station, and from there it is about 15 minutes to the center. We were the only couple on the first shuttle of the day, and when we got to the station we were waiting in line to buy our tickets when a train pulled into the station. The Croatian ticket seller then yelled something in Croatian at a young lady in line and us. The young lady understood and bolted after the train, Ton and I looked confused so she said something else and pointed at the train, so we retreated to the platform, just to make sure we understood she came out of her office and gave us the hand signal to hurry up and pointed at the train. So we ran after the train and got on. At that point I went up to the young Croatian lady who was in line with us and asked if she spoke English, she did, fluently. She explained that the ticket seller was telling us to get on the train and pay there. I asked who we should pay, and she said that someone might come along to collect, and if they don’t the ride is free this morning. The ride turned out to be free.
The Museum of Broken Relationships is one of the most popular museums in Zagreb for the local people. I’m not sure what that says about Croatians.
Ton had mapped out a good agenda for us to take in Zagreb. One of the highlights she had on her list was the Museum of Broken Relationships. It started as kind of a joke, but now is one of the most popular museums in Zagreb. We visited the gift shop but I decided visiting the museum proper would be bad luck so we moved on to one of the churches on her list.
The scaffolding was up and more restoration work was being done on St. Marks church. One coat of arms is for Croatia, and the other is Zagreb.
Usually October is shoulder season in Europe and then things start to shut down in November. In Croatia it looks like shoulder season ends on October 1st and we are officially now in off season for tourism. Both the cathedral and St. Marks Church had recently erected scaffolding and were closed to visitors as of today until next May. It also looks like a lot of the campgrounds are closed today until April, fortunately not all, but we will have a little less choice as we move around.
Many of the trams were quite modern and aerodynamic, but they are still using a number of these blocky communist era ones, though this particular one did have a very modern add for McDonalds on the side. .
Today we spent a lot of the day enjoying the restaurant and cafe scene in Zagreb. In the morning we visited an excellent coffee shop with a great terrace overlooking a couple of the major tourist highlights of the city.
We enjoyed our morning coffee under the lace umbrellas on the left. The gate in the center is the stone gate to the upper town, and has a small catholic chapel inside it.
Our next stop was the bustling Dolac farmers market located in the middle of the city. The fruit and vegetable stands were located on the roof of the market, while the meat and fish stands were in the interior. The fruit and vegetable stands are all covered by red umbrellas which have become a symbol of the market. The story is that in the past all of the stands were covered by boring black umbrellas, but one day a young man confessed his love to his girl and gave her a kiss and all of the umbrellas turned from black to the red ones because of their love.
The red umbrellas of the Dolac market with the cathedral in the background.
Our next stop was the cathedral, but as I said earlier it was closed. The highlight was watching two workmen hanging from a basket a couple of hundred feet in the air at the end of a crane.
Zagreb has several streets full of sidewalk cafes. We probably spent more time in them today than in any other city we have visited in Europe.
Our first choice for lunch today was not open, but our second choice turned out to be a treat. The restaurant specialized in a Croatian dish called Strukli. It is baked cheese with dough and a filler. Ton had red peppers for her filler, and I had nuts and honey. It is a simple dish, but delicious and very interesting. We had never had anything quite like it. The closest dish we could come up with to it was Lasagna.
Tons red pepper Strukli. Food that was probably eaten primarily by peasants is now a national delicacy.
We then spent the next couple of hours wandering around looking at old buildings. Zagreb and Ljubljana both were interesting as the majority of the classic buildings were only from the 1800’s so the cities did not feel as old to us as other cities. It seems like when the Croatians and Slovenes have to rebuild buildings do to a war or natural disaster they are more comfortable rebuilding in the current style, then trying to recreate the older style that was there before the building came down. The French and Germans seem to try to recreate the buildings that were there.
A modern building towering over the old town.
We ended up putting about 9 miles on our old legs today, so when we returned to François for the night we decided to try the pizza restaurant attached to the campground. Even though we are in a small town, and it is Monday night the restaurant was doing pretty well when we turned up. When we received our pizza we knew why, it was excellent.
The anchovy pizza was excellent, a good meal to end a day of good food.
In all of our travels during our previous five trips to Europe we had never had to deal with a border crossing while driving. Most of the countries in the EU are part of the Schengen Zone and travel between these countries is unrestricted meaning there are no border controls or customs checks. In effect crossing from Austria to Slovenia is like crossing from Oregon to Washington. The license plates change, the flags change, the only difference in Europe is that the languages usually change.
We took a quick walk thru the small town our campground is in and Ton saw these grapes in someones yard.
Today for the first time we crossed from a country in the Schengen Zone to a country not in the zone so we had a real border with immigration and customs officials to deal with. While we have documentation for François showing how we legally own him in France, I admit to being worried about the first time I was going to have to explain it at a real border. As we were leaving Slovenia I didn’t expect any trouble as we were already there. I thought the guard would have to stamp us out of Schengen since we were visitors, but did not expect much else. When I pulled up to the booth I reached out to hand our passports to him, without taking them from me, he looked at the cover saw they were from the US and waved us on to Croatia.
This father and son were fishing together on the reservoir next to where we are staying.
I told Ton that was simple, but the real test was going to be Croatia as they are not part of Schengen and we would be in effect entering Croatia for the first time. The line was short at the entry point to Croatia and as we pulled up to the Croatian border guard I reached out to hand him our passports, without taking them from me, he looked at the cover saw they were from the US and waved us into Croatia. Ton and I looked at each other in surprise, but then we noted another gate a couple of hundred yards ahead and I thought that must be customs. When we pulled up to that booth it turned out to be the toll booth for the Croatian highway and all they wanted from us was 9 Croatian Kuna ($1.20) to use the road. I was a little disappointed as I had rehearsed my explanations of why Americans were driving a French licensed camper, and had an envelope full of documents to prove we legally owned François, to leave one country and enter another country without anyone touching our passports turned out to be a big anticlimax.
This picture was taken just as the sun was setting.
We are parked up in a cute little campground on the outskirts of Zagreb next to a reservoir. The reservoir was really busy with families out for Sunday strolls and the banks were lined with fishermen. It was a nice evening stroll and as you can see Ton got some great pictures. We will be trying the pizza restaurant on site tomorrow as it was packed with locals all day, which is always a good sign.
10 minutes later the sun was below the horizon and the sky had turned a beautiful red.
The weather channel got it right. After one more absolute downpour last night from about 9pm to midnight, the storm we have been in for the last 8 days broke and today while it was not bright and sunny was dry.
After two days of being cooped up in François we were ready to get out. The bus ride into town was simple and cheap, and the instructions on how to get off from the campground were easy to follow. Ride the bus until there are no more cars on the road and get off. The old town in Ljubljana is pedestrian only.
We think it was a political rally as there were speakers and a little bit of light chanting. But it seemed pretty good spirited.
We arrived to find a pretty sizable political rally going on in the main square of the town. There were 30 or so Slovene cops standing around watching and looking a bit bored. We decided to check out another part of town and come back to the square when the rally broke up.
The Ljubljanica River near the center of the city. It is a great place for an afternoon stroll.
We strolled down the Ljubljanica River for about half a mile on both sides. It is lined with cafes and nice buildings that were part of a riverfront renovation in the 1800’s. The work was done mostly by one guy and he did a great job. There are frequent bridges to cross back and forth from one bank to the other. So if you see something interesting on the other side you never have to go more than a couple of hundred yards to find a bridge to cross over. In a continent of great cafe scenes, Ljubjana more than holds its own.
One of the many bridges across the river. You can see that all of the rain over the last week has the river running fast and turbulent.
After our initial stroll we decided it was time to try a coffee in one of the cafes. Ton had picked out a small cafe called Čokl. We found it next to the funicular up to the castle. We each asked for an Americano and received a thick aromatic espresso with a tiny thimble of hot water that we could add ourselves. It was delicious. As we were leaving there was a Slovenian couple waiting to grab our table and they confirmed that this was the best coffee in town and a real bargain at €1.60.
The funicular up to the castle. Our coffee shop was on the street to the funicular. We really recommend it.
Across the street from the coffee shop was the Saturday Market. We enjoyed poking around in the different sections of the market for awhile, though in the end we did not buy anything.
European open air markets are always a treat. This was a large one.
By now the political rally had broken up so we headed back to the main square via the Dragon Bridge which was completed in 1901 despite there being a prominent engraving on the bridge saying 1888. I overheard a guide saying it was the first steel reinforced concrete bridge in the old Austro-Hungarian empire and was built here as an experiment as no one would care if it collapsed in Ljublajana, but it would be a scandal if it collapsed in Vienna.
One of the dragons on the Dragons bridge.
When we returned to the main square the rally had indeed broken up and the police and crowd had moved on. But we decided the square was kind of a bore without the rally so we moved on also.
We found this street containing the old synagogue for the town. It was one of Tons favorite photos for the day.
By now we had been up and down the river a couple of times so we headed to the restaurant Ton had picked out last night. It is called Druga Violina which translates to Second Violin. They had a simple set price menu where you picked from one of three very reasonably priced multi-course meals. When you sit down there is a sign on your table telling you to please be patient as they employ developmentally disabled people as servers. We really enjoyed our meal and decided it may have been the best value meal we have had in Europe.
Everything you see on the table plus a desert cost less than €20.
After lunch we walked down the main shopping street and out to a park. By then we had a few miles under our belt so we headed back to the campground for the night.
A local brewery chasing the non-Slovenian beer crowd finally helped us to crack the pronunciation of Ljubljana.
We really enjoyed our day here and I think Ljubljana would be a good place to relax and take a break for a few days as it is easy to get around and has a nice laid back vibe that we both enjoyed.
One of Ton’s favorite photos of the day. Ljubljana has a nice laid back vibe that we really enjoyed.We’re not sure where this tradition started but we now see these locks on a bridge in every city we visit in Europe.
