Slovenia

May 4, 2005-Happy Landings
(photo:Hotel & waterfront)

We’re in a picture postcard. Our petite colorfully decorated Adria Airlines plane crossed the snow-capped Julian Alps & descended through a shroud of clouds to Ljubljana. It looked like we were approaching a toy airport in a toy town in a toy country. Slovenia only has two million people but has one of the best economies in the EU. It’s tucked between Italy, Austria, Croatia, & the Adriatic Sea. Their currency is the tolar, which is 180 to the U.S. dollar.

The Grand Circle Tour program director, Viki, met us & loaded everyone onto a spacious bus. It will be our home for two weeks. We followed well-maintained roads marked with familiar green directional signs to the 1,000-year-old town of Bled (pronounce blade) at the foot of the mountains. The country is heavily forested & agricultural. There’s an unlimited variety of green to be enjoyed: black greens in shadows of hills, new spring green leaves on trees, rich emerald hues of old growth pines. Old-fashioned dirt irrigation canals wound through newly plowed fields & dandelions flourished in pastures. Old & new buildings sported red tile or green metal roofs. Even church steeples were topped with tile or metalwork, tracery designs pieced into the asphalt shingle roofs as well as what resembled mini-onion domes. The town of 11,000 is reminiscent of Aspen and our hotel, The Park, overlooks the signature lake. I think our entire group has lakefront views. Birds and their songs are colorful and plentiful.

Viki took the group on a short walking tour to familiarize us with the town, banks, & restaurants. That’s one advantage of an escorted tour. We’re not used to traveling with forty people, but it was nice to have our bags delivered to our room.

There was a group get-together at 6:30pm for wine then we were off to find our own restaurants. We went to Gostilna pri Planindu for typical Slovenian fare. Don’t try to pronounce it. Fresh whole trout is a favorite here but we ordered it boned, be-headed, & skinned. The goulash soup, garlic soup, fried turkey, & prawn risotto was enjoyed by those who tried them. We were too full to taste their infamous cream cake. When it was time to tally the bill our effusive server agreed to give us separate checks. I invited him to sit down at our table to do the paperwork. For some reason I remembered the prices of a few items that he didn’t know off hand. To save him the time looking them up on the menu I rattled them off. He liked the partnership & I ended up organizing the process by wrapping the bills around the credit cards.
We had a brief nap this afternoon & awoke to a magnificent thunderstorm over the lake. We have an early wake-up tomorrow. Pleasant dreams.

Toby