June 23 - Ljubjana

A typical scene along the river in the old town of Ljubjana.

Ann finally made it. At United Airlines expense, she spent an entertaining night in Frankfurt at an airport hotel. This morning she caught the bus to the airport, got on her plane and arrived in Ljubjana only an hour late. Much to her surprise, her luggage was waiting for her. She shared a taxi to our hotel and arrived around noon.

In the meantime, I had breakfast at the hotel. It had two surprises - scrambled eggs and Turkish coffee. Both are a rarity in European hotels. The eggs were good but the coffee was not. I switched to regular coffee.

I took a walk into the old part of town and wandered through the huge outdoor market. It puts to shame the farmers' markets in our area. There were flowers, fresh produce, clothes, artwork, meats, cheese and a whole lot of other things. I bought a shirt. One of the shirts that I brought was getting too stained to wear so I replaced it.

After that I meandered back to the hotel. The weather had cooled considerably from the last few days. It was overcast with a threat of sprinkles. It really felt good.

When Ann arrived, she got her things settled in our room. Partly to keep her awake, we decided to go exploring. We got as far as the market area and decided to have lunch. We ate in an outdoor area at Ribca, a fish restaurant under the colonnades near the Triple Bridge. It is next to the fish market, so we knew that the fish would be fresh. We split a huge plate of mixed fish - French fried minnows, sardines, white fish, larger white fish, squid, octopus, polenta and mixed chard and potatoes. It was very tasty, but we couldn't eat all of it.

To work off some of the calories, we decided to take a short hike up to the local castle. I wanted to get up high to take some photos of Ljubjana landmarks. It didn't work, though. There were too many trees in the way. Where was Pacific Lumber Company when we needed it? The castle was too "new" to really interest us, so we looked around the grounds and the inside terrace (which contained at least three restaurants). Then we got on the trail and walked back to town.

Our next mission was to find some good ice cream. Although the castle hike burned only a few calories, we needEd some sweets. So we walked a ways to go to a recommended ice cream shop and found that it was closed. We settled on another one on the walkway next to the river. It was good.

The we walked back to our hotel and rested.

Dinner was at one of the riverside restaurants. Ann had a salad while I had pasta. We did a short walk after eating. Ann was getting ditzy from lack of sleep so we went back to the hotel by 9:00.