Transit to Kranjska Gora (August 20, 2012)

Lynnae here. We ate breakfast, packed up, said good-bye to the Adriatic Sea and walked down the steep hill to the bus station. [Much easier going back to the bus station than trudging up it with our luggage.]

Last view of the ocean

We took the bus back to Ljubljana had a lengthy layover at the train/bus station where we ate lunch.  Then we took another bus toward Kranjska Gora on the edge of the Triglav National Park.  We drove through some beautiful countryside.

Views on the way to Kranjska Gora

We arrived in Kranjska Gora early evening.  We walked to our Bed & Breakfast, Brezov Gaj.  The reviews had stated that the proprietors spoke English.  This was not quite true.  However, eventually we were checked in.

[Here is how it happened.  After I accidentally got us off at one bus stop too early, we walked about a mile to the bed and breakfast and I rang the doorbell.  A gruff-looking man in his forties wearing Crocs answered, and after a series of unhelpful phrases uttered in our respective native languages, he said “RECEPTION?!?!”   “Yes, Yes!” I replied, and we entered the home.  Without a word, he took a key from a wall display and opened our room for us.  He then said “Documents!” Huh?  “Passport!”  Now I knew.  Foreigners in Slovenia are required to register with the local police, and hotels do this for you.  I gave him our passports and he went to the back office momentarily.  Upon his return I confirmed via holding up five fingers and saying “Five dan?‘” that we had a five night reservation, and the deal was done.]

We walked the short distance to main street and picked up a number of maps and other information from the tourist center.  We also stocked up at the Mercator.  After taking our goods back to our room and consulting TripAdvisor, we headed off to Kranjska Gora’s number one restaurant. [Out of five rated restaurants]

As was everything in the small town, Gostilna Pri Martinu was easy to find.  The food was good, the service okay and the portions were gargantuan.

After dinner, we enjoyed what was left of the sunshine by walking down to the river and walking around a while.  It was nice to stretch our legs a while.  We met a runaway dog and waved at the owner in pursuit. 

We walked back to the B & B and discussed plans for tomorrow before turning in.

Portoroz Day 2 (August 19, 2012)

Ralph here.  This day was overall pretty low-key.  I got in a short run down the hill, along the shore, and back up the hill to our hotel (OK, the ‘up’ part was more of a climb than a run).  Lynnae and I then lounged around awhile, enjoying the lifestyle (and views) of the European idle class:

Around noon we walked down to the water to go swimming.  Slovenia only has about fifteen miles of coastline, and none of it is beach; instead, there are walkways along the Adriatic Sea with piers and steps into the water.  We found a shaded spot along the cement boardwalk where some other tourists had encamped, laid down our belongings, and took the cement steps into the water.  [We don’t have any photos because we left our camera behind.  We didn’t want to leave it unattended on the shore.]

The seawater was about eighty degrees (Fahrenheit) and extremely salty.  I have never been a good swimmer, but it was easy when the water salinity keeps you so close to the surface.  We were in and out of the water for a couple hours and, when we started to collect our belongings and decamp, we discovered that my sunglasses had been stolen.  While this act of Slavic larceny put me into a foul mood for a while, was really not that big of a deal and ended up being the worst thing that happened to us while on a month’s vacation.  [I was just so happy that the cash and credit card we had hidden in our shoes was untouched.]

We headed toward Portoroz’s only mini-golf course, and en route bought ice cream at one of the hundreds of such shops along the few miles of coastline in the town.  [The ice cream was delicious and pretty reasonably priced.]  The mini-golf course was itself pretty shabby and low-rent: instead of artificial turf, there was uneven cement that ensured every stroke ended with the golf ball wandering in a Markov Chain-inspired tour of the cup’s vicinity.  I don’t remember who won, but I’m sure Lynnae does.

We ate dinner [at a nice seaside restaurant] and headed back to our hotel, packed up, and prepared for the next day’s travels back to the mountains of northwest Slovenia.

Portoroz Day 1 (August 18, 2012)

Lynnae here.  We slept in late.  Our hotel didn’t have breakfast so we didn’t need to be up.  We ate our breakfast foods out on the balcony.  It was already hot by 10am so we decided this would be a great day for a long hike.

We walked along the Sea to the town of Piran which is on a peninsula.

Town of Piran

The square used to be a marina.  It was buried and remade into a town square.  The building and tower you see in the background is the church of St. George.

Tartini square – deserted.  Why hang out in the broiling sun when you can hang out in the sea?

People camped out on the rocks – St. George up top

Piran is a walled city.  Below is a photo of the walls on the hill.

We wanted to see the Navigation Museum but it was closed for a three hour lunch.  So instead, we walked through the city streets and up to the church of St. George.  We were only allowed into the vestibule.

Church of St. George – Italy in the distance behind

Interior of the church

Sculpture of St. George slaying the dragon.  Curiously enough, the dragon is on a leash being held by that woman.

From the church, we wandered back down through town.  Piran is charming to walk around because it’s right on the water, and it’s retained some of its medieval character due to the narrow streets, city walls and random archways like below.

City Streets

We ate a late lunch at a seaside restaurant.  Ralph was unimpressed with the tiny Italian coffee but the food was good.

[The cup was much smaller, and much less full, than this photo suggests.  I would know.]

So after lunch, we headed back to the Navigation Museum [a museum of Italian, Slovene, and Croatian seafaring in the regions of Istria and Dalmatia].  It was just opening.  We paid our entry fee and the worker walked ahead of us into the rooms to turn on the lights.  It was a great little museum.  There were laminated English guides by each door.  The information was great but I was far more interested in the gorgeous house the museum was in.

Ralph with a figurehead

The interior

We briefly flirted with the idea of taking a long inland trail back to Portoroz but decided against it as we were feeling the heat.  So we walked back the way we came along the sea.  Once we reached Portoroz we stopped at a Mercator to stock up on groceries.  We trekked up to our hotel and relaxed briefly before realizing we needed to address our laundry situation.  Laundromats hadn’t been particularly easy to find elsewhere but were nonexistent in Portoroz.  We were unwilling to pay a small fortune for laundry service so we purchased laundry soap and washed our clothes in the tub.  Our room came with an expandable drying rack so we were able to hang everything at once.  Portoroz was so hot that our clothes were all dry by morning.

Transit to Portoroz (August 17 2012)

Ralph again.  After breakfast, we caught the 11:50am train from Lesce back to Ljubljana.  Nearly all rail transit from one region of Slovenia to another requires a stop in the centrally-located capital; this is at worst a minor inconvenience due to the country’s small size.  We had purchased second-class tickets in the Lesce train station, and thought we were sitting in a second-class compartment on the train.  Indeed, the conductor stamped our ticket and continued on with no issue.  Later in the same 45-minute train ride, a second conductor came by, looked at our ticket, and angrily began shouting at us in Slovenian.  Clearly he thought we were not supposed to be sitting there, even though we were alone in the compartment.  Turns out, we were in first class, and this was unforgivable; we needed to move to the identical, yet second-class, end of the same railway car.  The original conductor (who spoke a little English) chanced upon us and spoke to the second conductor.  When the second conductor moved on, the original conductor gave a “sorry it didn’t work out” shrug.  We picked up our bags and moved about fifty feet down the railcar to the equally-deserted plebian [yet identical] second-class compartments.

When I researched our transportation options I found that Portoroz, our destination on the Slovenian coast, does not have direct rail service; the closest rail station is about 9 miles away and would necessitate a local bus to our final destination.  As such, I decided we would take a tour bus from Ljubljana straight to Portoroz to avoid another transit changeover.  The bus station in Ljubljana is conveniently located across the street from the train station, and thirty minutes after arriving in Ljubljana we were on a tour bus to the coast.

Slovenia’s Adriatic coast is minimal, only about fifteen miles long, and is heavily influenced by Italian culture both because of its proximity (Trieste, Italy is only a half-hour drive away) and also because it was once part of the kingdom of Venice.  No legends of mountain goats here; just a lot of pizza and casinos designed to lure Italians across the border (apparently, casinos are illegal in Italy.  There sure were a lot of Italian-plated cars all over Portoroz, maybe more than Slovenian-plated cars.)

When researching hotels on the Slovenian coast, there was only hotel that was reasonably priced and did not appear to be located within a shipyard.  The hotel website promised ocean views which, we soon discovered, is only possible one of two ways: 1) being located on the ocean or 2) being located well above the ocean level.  Our hotel was about a half-mile inland, so case #2 applied.  The land rises sharply from the coast, and we walked UP UP UP some impossibly steep hills, luggage in tow, attempting to interpret the Google Maps on the iPad. [The hills were so steep that the road we later primarily used to get back to the hotel had steps alongside it.  They were regulation height and maybe 3-4 inches deeper than typical home stairs.]

After a half hour, we came to the location where Google Maps placed our hotel – but nothing.  With both Lynnae and I drenched in sweat from the broiling Adriatic sun, we set down our luggage and I went on a personal expedition to find our hotel.  Indeed, Google Maps was wrong; but only by a little.  We walked a few minutes down a (mostly flat) road and checked into our hotel.

And it didn’t lie about the ocean views!  The room had a wraparound balcony, with grapevines growing along the railing.  While the hotel did not offer breakfast, its grapevines did supplement our daily fruit requirements.

View from our balcony

Upon arriving at the hotel we decided to spend a little time recovering from the haul uphill.  After researching our dinner options we ate at what Tripadvisor called “the best Mexican restaurant in Portoroz, Slovenia,” which, we must say, was better than a whole lot of Mexican restaurants in the US.  After buying a few breakfast food staples at a convenience store (sadly, it was late and the Mercator was closed) we took an unencumbered walk back uphill and called it a night.