Ending up in Ljubljana, Slovenia

We arrived in Ljubljana (the "j" is pronounced as a "y"), on Sept 18th, after our final day hiking around the top of  The Great Highlands in the Kamnisko-Savinjske Alps, as mentioned in our prior blog and repeated here only to provide senses of context and continuity.

Down from the Alps to Ljubljana with big city traffic, Mario checked us into a nice hotel in the historic area, then we walked through the old parts of the city around the river.  We were charmed by the clean old buildings

and some new ones

We were happy we had planned to stay here 3 additional nights to get familiar with the capital city of Slovenia.  However, we quickly discovered that our Wells Fargo (WFB) ATM card, without the Visa logo, did not work in Slovenia.  (The Plus symbol guarantees it works “All Over The World”, but it did not work here.) Lots of international phone calls were placed after learning how to get an international calling card. Chatting with customer service reps was a two person job; one of us calming the other down: WFB: Please give me the amount of your last transaction. Me: It was a 300 Euro withdrawal on Sept 8.  WFB: I need the transaction amount in US Dollars. Me: If you tell me the exchange rate you used on that date, I will convert it to dollars. WFB: I‘m sorry that information is not available….etc. We gave up for that day and had to rush through our showers,etc. to show up just in time for the farewell Mario dinner.  Our gang walked down along the river to a special  restaurant Mario had selected for the last dinner, and had very good food  with all our great friends for our last night.  We all swore we would eat much more lightly after this fantastic trip.  Soon we were bidding safe travels to Laura and Jim off to Zagreb, and to Mario and Vittorio off to Venice to repeat this same trip with new clients early the next morning.  It must get tiring for them,  driving that van, loading and unloading all that luggage, worrying about the dinner reservations, shopping for and fixing those unforgettable picnics, making quick changes when Plan A doesn't work out; but if all the groups appreciate them as we do, it’s got to be a kind of fun hiking around Italy all the time.

Sept 19th we walked further afield in Ljubljana and hung out  with Tom and Millie through lunch by  the river, then they were off to catch their train to Vienna and we went back to telephoning customer service in the US - neither a fun nor a productive activity as learned earlier yet repeated nonetheless. (Isn't that the definition of insanity?)   Finally we gave up and went to a good bookstore Ana had pointed us to and bought a couple of English language books; we made it back to our hotel as a downpour began.  Fortunately the bar of our hotel offered a fairly full snack menu, so we planted ourselves in swivel bar chairs in the front window to observe the locals getting home in the downpour and ordered a very good salad, pasta and mushroom soup to share.  Our bar waitress was young, nice looking and aloof toward us, a couple of older folks hanging out in a hotel bar on a rainy night.  As we charged the bill to our room, Paul told her we loved the Cepes (porcini) Soup,  and she suddenly came alive and asked if we wanted to know a secret.  Always open for a good waitress secret, we nodded ascent.  She excitedly confessed that it was she, her very own self, who had found those mushrooms in the woods that morning.  She works until 10PM, then gets up at 6AM to look for mushrooms in the woods, and it will be so good tomorrow after these rains!  We walked up the stairs to our room fairly certain that her shared secret  had been the best part of our day.  Paul saw her the next morning and asked how the foraging had gone.  She was thrilled to report that she had brought in 10kg of porcini.  Quite a hefty harvest at the market rate for porcini.

We enjoyed walking around Ljubljana, looking at Slovenian architecture and visiting the local art museums.  We walked into a room at the Museum of Modern Art and were amazed to see so many impressionists. Haystacks, snow scenes, small village houses near a stream... all somewhat but not exactly familiar.  It turned out they were many fine works by Slovenian artist we’d never heard of who had been inspired by the French impressionists. There were some very  nice portraits and still lifes (could it be "lives"?) as well

And as it was a modern museum there were some very nice contemporary installations

And this very curious bust of a leading cultural and political figure in Solvenia.

The National Museum

 with a survey of Solvenian painting from the 13th-16th century was quite fine (you must be pleased that they didn't allow photos) as was the building. The big disappointment was that the International Graphics museum inside lovely Tivoli Park was closed due to installation of a new exhibit.  But it was a beautiful day so we enjoyed the park then made our way to the Slovenian Orthodox Church.

Almost every surface of the interior was covered with paintings in this style.

Besides all the churches and museums there was plenty of art and small sites to be seen on the streets.

This was the signature of a prolific graffiti artist 

The next day we exercised the option of last resort and took a cash advance against our Visa credit card, promising to pay the bank interest like forever.  After so many rejections of our ATM card, we were amazed when the teller finally handed over the cash we needed  to check into our VRBO apartment in Salzburg the next day.

Then we hiked up to the Ljubljana castle,

There was not much to see on the outside, but some of the inside renovations were striking

We walked all around and then back down in time for lunch in the public market.

 Always big food truck groupies in SF, we spotted a food truck offering fresh fried fish with potatoes, beans and tomatoes.  Paul had fried sardines and Danice had some white, fresh and tasty fish whose Slovenian name neither of us could pronounce.  (Fortunately, we could point at what we want, as babies do.)

We really liked the town. It seemed to us a lot of the life of the city centered around the central square

 and another large square by the music school.

Around 6 o'clock the parents with their young kids stroll by the river much like in Italian towns.

In this case little girl seems to be walking her  parents on the way to the river.

 At night the city by the river shows up quite nicely.

there is live music at various spots and much eating of ice cream.
On our final day we picked up some fresh fruit and good local cheese at the market, and Paul ran back early the following morning for fresh bread to bring along on our 4 hour train ride to Salzburg.