Ljubjana, Rainy Ljubljana

Posted on September 6, 2014 by Elizabeth

(This is the 12th post of our Croatia-Budapest trip, June-July 2014)
Wednesday, June 25

Happy Slovenian Independence Day!

What this translates out to mean for tourists is: limited openings, noon closings, no market, no easy food, and especially for us: the rain we’ve been trying to dodge for two days has finally arrived. On top of all that, we are supposed to meet Dave’s sister and brother-in-law at 1 p.m., so whatever we choose to do has be done quickly, as we need to be back to the hotel a bit early to meet them.

No, this was not one of our stops on the sightseeing musts, but it was interesting to see the set-up they had for recycling– a full block full of these little huts where you could drop your goods.

A quixotic sculpture in a garden. Those brilliant red-orange bits are letters of the alphabet.

Our first destination was the Serbian Orthodox Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius, about two blocks from our hotel. An elegant, cream-colored edifice with wide welcoming steps held a wealth of surface decoration inside.

But there were signs that no photographs were allowed. So this is a clandestine shot with my iPhone, trying to get a photo of that circle up there on the arch. I had just started making circle quilt blocks and was hunting for ideas and designs, and I had hit pay dirt on this ornately covered church. But I resisted photographing it, determined to do it legitimately somehow.

The Opera House was on the way to our next sight.

As was the Hood Burger car.Just kidding. It was me that Dave was trying to photograph, for scale, in front of this building.

We walked by the Fountain of the Three Carniolian Rivers (Ljubljana, Sva and Krka Rivers), inspired by one of Rome’s many fountains. Here are the three facades, showing the three different rivers. Unfortunately, the obelisk was under renovation:

We also found out that the original of this was in a museum. We head to the castle that looms over Ljubljana, taking a funicular up to the top (like these other tourists did).

We enjoy the soggy views as we glide upwards.

To this. A re-developed plaza with several buildings, a few exhibits, a clock tower, a cafe which is not serving anything because it’s Happy Slovenian Independence Day.

Another dragon, this one perched up on the side of the portal that leads to the walking path down the hill, in case you don’t want to take the funicular.

What do tourists do on rainy days? Take pictures of one another under umbrellas and head into marginal tableaus, displays and the one interesting room in the castle that doesn’t charge you extra to visit.

The chapel.

I loved the decorative art on the surface. Above is the organ loft, complete with small wooden organ.

I also loved the decorative surface of this slightly-pineapple-quilt-block-looking floor, but with a twist, outside in one of the gun turret towers.

Now that we’ve seen an ersatz fountain and an ersatz castle, it’s time for real lunch.

Because we did not realize what Happy Independence Day in Slovenia meant, we headed to the market. That was a bust. It was getting towards the meeting time with the in-laws, so we stopped by a convenience market and picked up some cold cuts, a cucumber and two rolls studded with pumpkin seeds. We got extra to feed Anna Clare and Earl, for as we were standing in line, some guy flipped a switch, locking the door and barring entrance to the few tourists outside. To say that we felt lucky is an understatement, for we didn’t see much else open.

When we arrived back home, there was a note on our door telling us that Anna Clare and Earl had decided to detour to Lake Bled and see the sights and now wouldn’t be here until 3 p.m. Fine, we could deal.

We had a delicious lunch on our bed (yes, we ate theirs), then cleared everything off and took a rainy day nap, surfed the rainy day internet and rainy day waited. And waited. We had told them to knock on our hotel room door when they arrived, and finally at 4:30 p.m. I told Dave I wasn’t waiting around anymore. The rain had stopped and somehow they would find us.

When we went downstairs, we found out that apparently the clerk had told them we weren’t here, so they left without knocking. We wrote and slipped a note under their door, telling them we’d meet them at 6 p.m., hoping that the third time is a charm in Tourist Land.

With nearly everything closed, we peeked into any open doorway, finding this exquisite courtyard with friezes over every archway.

There was a an art exhibit about shopping bags, and I took a few photos of this student exhibit.

We found out later that this was either a) the Town Hall, or b) the city art gallery (Cafe Galerija). More street sights:

Every girl should have an iron purse.

Or a tomato purse. When I came home and looked them up on the web, they were running about 1500 bucks.

This looked to be another standard church statue (but in polychrome, not marble) until I looked at the little scene underneath.

The close-up of the statue was quite revealing. I guess it was “throw the priest out.” I like the lace on his robes.

We cross the river to get a good look at the University in this town, famous for its archicture by Joze Plecnik: a homegrown and prolific genius whose relationship to Ljublana has been compared to that of Gaudi’s to Barcelona. Above is Cobblers Bridge, which encapsulates his style: “simple, clean lines adorned with classical columns.” We checked at the Tourist Office for tours of his house, but it was under renovation (closed).

Our first look at the National and University Library (the multi-colored brick edifice, just behind the fountain) and regarded as Plecnik’s masterpiece.

“On the surface, the red-and-gray colors scheme evokes the red soil and the chunks of granite of the karst region, south of Ljubljana. But on a deeper level, the library’s design conveys the message of overcoming obstacles to attain knowledge. The odd-sized and -shaped blocks in the facade represent a complex numerological pattern that suggests barriers on the path to enlightenment.” ~ Rick Steves, Croatia

These doorknobs represent the winged horse Pegasus. We tried to open them, but the place is locked up for Independence Day (we assume).

Moses, facing the river.

We find an open courtyard and explore. We loved seeing the remnants of communism here, the hammer and sicle in the decorations above doorways and statues.

This was an interesting crossing sign. We look at the explanation below, thinking it might be a bus schedule:

Wrong. We’ve stumbled on a Faux Art Tour, and we realize there is masking tape, marking the way.

None catch our fancy like the two runaways, and it only leads to this wall, and what we suppose to be the art studios of the university. But we like the fact that it’s not raining anymore, and that we are feeling a bit of freedom the schedule, until Dave realizes it is after 6:00 and we have to hurry to meet the relatives.

Walking along the main drag, next to the Post Office we spot them ahead of us, but instead of turning left to our hotel, they are turning right. We start hollering and hollering, finally get their attention. Dave runs to catch up to them, and finally we have met up! It’s great seeing them, seeing them with their badges and as missionary smiles. We refresh at the hotel, and then head out to find dinner. We are wary, as we know not much is open.

But on our usual path to town, there is a place called Cafe Sarajevo ’84, and Anna Clare and Earl really want to eat here, so we did. Above is the chopped salad, covered with cheese.

A salad, without the cheese.

We all fell in love with the warm doughy rolls, the balls of honey-butter, and the flatbreads (below).

We shared two “three-part meals” and Earl wrapped up the rest of the bread and put it in his pocket for breakfast. Except, we mentioned, your breakfast is free, and comes the hotel. His face lit up in delight. We love that, too, Earl.

Next post: Ljubljana’s Orthodox Church, and quilt Circles

We’re Learning How to Say Ljubljana

Posted on September 5, 2014 by Elizabeth

(This is the 11th post of our Croatia-Budapest trip, June-July 2014)
Tuesday, June 24

For those of you who are keeping track, it’s Tuesday and this is Slovenia. . . Ljubljana, to be exact, and we have learned how to say it (mostly). But before we do anything else, it’s breakfast.

Juices, hot milk, cereals (both of the Looks-Like-Horse-Oats and the Other variety), fruits (prunes, for the tourists, of course).

The hot cocoa/coffee station. I had hot cocoa every day, a lovely treat.

Rolls, meats, cheeses, yogurts station. Americans don’t have many cold cuts for breakfast, but it’s pretty common over here.

Soft cheese and butter. I liked the random way the soft cheese ended up, after several travelers had taken what they wanted.

And my favorite station of this hotel: a place where you could hard, or soft-boil your egg. I used my timer on my iPhone to keep track, and had one every morning. Before we left for the day, we stopped and talked to the young man at the desk about doing our laundry. At first we were just going to load it all up and bring it down to the desk, as he assured us that was the best way. But we wanted to do our own, and asked him for a laundromat. He had no idea. Dave went upstairs and got his computer, and we did a search and on some traveller’s blog they had listed where the laundromat was. The front desk guy was surprised. We were happy. But first we decided to take advantage of the clear skies (when we had woken up it was raining, but had cleared away) and head into town.

On the wall across from our hotel’s main entrance.

The side of the slightly damp, but pink church. I saw a sign in the hotel’s front office which promoted free walking tours, so we hustled down here, but there didn’t seem to be any group coalescing anywhere. We we pulled out our guidebook and followed Rick Steves’ walking tour. Another time we checked in at the Tourist Office for another walking tour, but it was majorly pricey and we’d missed it by 45 minutes.

After realizing we didn’t have a tour, we did go in, but it was nearly time for mass, so quietly let ourselves out. The interior was unremarkable, but I loved the doorknobs.

In Preseren Square they have a car-sized model of the city; we saw this model-thing again in other cities.

The terra cotta bas relief just above the green doorway in the yellow building is of Julija, the unrequited love of the poet Preseren’s life, or so the tour guides say.

We were interested in the Centromerkur building, or Galleria Emporium as it’s called now, a beautiful building with a graceful glass fan over the front entrance.

Inside a graceful stacked column and the grand staircase gives an idea of what it used to be like.

I thought the plastic purses were interesting, but they were all out of our price range, so we headed back outside to enjoy the sun.

The Hauptmann House was the only building on the square to survive that 1895 earthquake. A few years later, the owners repainted it in the Art Nouveau style using bright colors, as his family sold dyes.

The Cooperative Bank, just up the street from the Galleria and the Hauptmann House is beautifully painted and decorated.

We liked this fountain of chubby horses. They look like a bunch of toddler-aged horses, playing in the water.

We crossed over the Triple Bridge to the Castle-side of town, and turned left and headed toward the Riverside Market. This is looking down the river to the Butcher’s Bridge (and beyond that is the Dragon Bridge).

Fascinating sculptures on the Butcher’s Bridge, all nearly ruined by those hideous Locks of Love (when will these ever stop?) attachments.

The weight of the bridge can’t handle too many, the city cuts off a bunch every week, which are unfortunately replaced by more.

We thought this looked like a bubble-gum-blowing sheep. Apparently the sculptures were meant to be temporary, but people liked them so much, they stayed.

The market has a decent display of vegetables, plants, and wonderful baskets, which quite frankly, I wanted to bring home with me. Apparently Saturday is the bustling day here, as the market tables only covered half the square.

This was a vending machine, which sold fresh unpasteurized milk, among other things.

And next to it was a small scale, where market-goers could check the weight of anything they’d purchased, so they could verify what the merchant had charged them.

Clever broom stand.

I loved the woman’s orange hair.

But we were hungry now after walking around downtown and thought we’d try to find some burek, a filled pastry. Well, actually, I thought we should have bought some on our way in, and when we went to look and just see what our options were, most of them were gone. So we snapped up a couple from what was left, got a salad from another vendor, and a “Ljubljana Cake” from another stall. We made our way to an area with tables and chairs and started eating.

It looked like a public space, but apparently not. The owner of the bar/coffee shop came and chased us out of HIS tables and chairs. We figured out that you could only eat where you’d purchased your food, so we settled into the tables in front of where we’d purchased our salads (and were not chased out). The cake was a “meh” but we liked our cheese-filled bureks. I wondered what the meat-filled ones were like.

The two twin yellow towers bordering the market square were those belonging to the Cathedral of St. Nicholas.

The doors were created for Pope John Paul II’s visit to Slovenia in 1996, and contain elements of the city’s history, as well as notable events from Slovenia’s history. This is the main door (and the side door is below).

The interior was beautiful–Italian Baroque, so the guide book says, and we enjoyed seeing it.

A smaller organ loft?

In the chapel for St. Joseph was this beautifully embroidered cloth on the altar. We’d not seen chapels dedicated to Christ’s father, so thought it interesting.

A pieta on the outside of the church, in a small niche. We walked along the Castle-side of the church, and headed toward the Dragon Bridge.

I think you can figure out why it is named this. The dragon has been the symbol of Ljubljana for centuries, and this bridge was one of those earthquake projects mentioned before.

We cross the Ljublanica River and head back towards our hotel.

More interesting urban art.

Looking ahead towards the Triple Bridge.

The riverside colannade, and the area where we tried to have lunch the first time (but were unsuccessful).

Looking back toward the center, going a different way home this afternoon.

We meandered, checking out the buildings.

At one point, the city’s reconstruction committee declared that all the corner buildings should have a domed spire. We saw this on many buildings downtown.

Dome, but no spire.

We were making plans for this day because we were supposed to meet Dave’s sister and brother-in-law the next morning and tour the sights together. So we thought it was important to get the laundry done today so it wouldn’t interfere with our touristing. Of course, hindsight is 20-20 and with what we know now, we should have gone up to the castle on this sunny day and enjoyed the sights, saving the laundry for the time when it was raining (and for when expected meetings didn’t materialize). But this is travel, isn’t it? Trying to judge the best use of limited time. So we grabbed our suitcases, got into the car, and armed with TWO maps, and screenshots of the city, headed off.

It was in a strip shopping mall, just across from the most humungous shopping mall I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot. It’s open Pon-pet and it’s one of those days, so we’re in good shape. I also liked the named for Saturday (Sob) and Sunday (Ned).

Washers, with the blue circles on the wall.

Dryers, with the orange-red circles on the wall.

And we think this means “broken,” or “don’t use,” or “forget this machine.” Soap is always tricky, but we figured out that soap was automatically added to the wash. If we got it wrong, we had very well-rinsed clothes.

Dave babysits the wash while I check out the shops. Nothing much, but I did pick up some clown candy, Ki-Ki, for our granddaughter, for she has that as her nickname. Although one washer stops and we have to restart it, we finish with the laundry and happy that we’ll have clean clothes again.

We head across the street to BTC, or BTCity, mainly because these are our daughter’s initials and we want to try and bring her back something. BTCity is a series of free-standing malls (I think there were seven), with other giant box-type stores around the perimeter. The website tells me that there are:

more than 450 stores
more than 8,500 parking spaces
Market BTC
Atlantis Water Park
Sports Centre Millenium
Casino Rio
Multiplex Colosseum and XpanD
type of pubs, cafes, pub, restaurants, pizzerias, pastry shops

Truthfully, I wished I’d visited the Market, but we drove around, unable to figure out this place. I think most of the parking spaces were filled, or so it felt from the amount of cars everywhere. We were looking for something with the BTC logo on it, and finally stopped in at the mall office, but couldn’t find much more than a shopping bag. They did give me a Frequent Shopper Card with the logo on it, but I was supposed to sign up for an account, which I wasn’t going to do. So the nice young woman behind the counter filled in some phony name and handed me the card.

I did see a sewing shop, but knew I wasn’t going to carry a sewing machine home on the airplane, so we kept going. We hoped to have dinner earlier this night than the previous nights of 9 p.m., so decided to head back to town, dropping out laundry (and car) off at the hotel and heading back toward the pedestrian center.

We pass another shop, but I didn’t go in either, given my experience of buying foreign fabric: paying double the cost for American-made goods. I now wish I’d gone in there, as we never had another chance. This, too, is travel.

We walk along the main drag, checking first one restaurant then another, but by seven p.m. we were seated at Julija’s, at an outdoor table.

We share a salad, then I have the goulash over polenta (below).

Dave has the stack of vegetables with fish. Our table was next to a table with a young woman and a middle-aged man. I never could totally figure out their conversation, but she was from Slovenia (as she talked about where she was on Independence Day, which was the next day, Wednesday, and when we found out that nearly the whole place shut down) and he had a British accent. It seems that he knew her parents somehow. At one point they were discussing the new Google self-driving cars, and he noted that it was a remarkable invention. She agreed but said that it would only work in America, because “Americans are basically lazy.”

(for dessert, some strudel and some ice cream, drizzled with honey)

Ouch. As Dave and I walked after dinner, I asked him if our export of our youth culture had so permeated what others thought of us that they couldn’t get past the stereotypes. But is it a stereotype? I don’t think I’m particularly lazy, nor my husband, nor my family. But why has this image percolated into her brain? I liked it better when I couldn’t understand the people next to me, I think.

When we returned from dinner a jazz band was going full steam downstairs, the sound echoing up into our hallway with our room’s window directly over the place where it was playing. We walked up the stairs with a tall young man, and I said “No sleep tonight.”
He said “Oh, it’s Ljubljana. This won’t last long.”
I asked him why not and he replied that “Slovenians like to go to work in the morning, so they don’t stay up late. Not like my country,” he said. “I’m Serbian, and we go twenty-four hours a day, never stop.”

And so this is travel, too. Learning not only about yourself, but about others’ as well. (As long as they speak English.) Back in the room, we can hear the jazz and with our windows shut, it’s not too big of a problem. We settle into our nightly routine of checking emails, touching base with our lives back across the world. I realize I am more than happy to be in one hotel for three straight nights, the string of one-night stays we’ve just done having worn me out. We relax, the music fades, and these tired tourists fall to sleep.

Next post: A rainy visit to the Castle and where are they?

Arriving in Ljubljana

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Elizabeth

(This is the tenth post of our Croatia-Budapest Trip, June-July 2014.)
Monday June 23

We found our way to our hotel (check the front Croatia page for hotel info) and since it was nearing dinner time, we dropped our luggage and walked toward the main part of the pedestrian downtown, walking over this poem (?) of brass script, embedded in the pavement.

Carrying our Rick Steves guidebook, we know that this statue caused quite a stir when it was unveiled, because of the nearly nude woman at the top. Preseren was Slovenia’s greatest poet, and the reclining figure was thought to be his muse, yet for the first few years they covered her up with a tarp each night. Now it appears that most folks don’t pay her (or him) much notice.

Ljubljana (loo-blee-ana) has quite a few buildings decorated in the Viennese Art Nouveau style, and judging from our pile of photographs when we got home, we seemed to take a picture of most of them. When Ljubljana was hit by an earthquake in 1895, the citizens took advantage of the rebuilding funds from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to remake the city, and we loved seeing all the decorative works. I only wish we’d had a bit more sun, as a lot of the photographs are rather flat-looking in the gray (and often rainy) skies.

This church is kitty-corner from the statue, and anchors the square. It was closed, so we kept walking along, looking for a place to eat.

Survey-takers in bright green caps and green socks/shorts.

We made our way to Julija, or Julia Restaurant, a popular place. Across the street is restaurant named Romeo (as in Romeo and Juliet), but we didn’t go there. I liked their wall of cracked tiles and beautiful blue plates.

Salad! It looks like a typical delicious salad, except for. . .

. . . the pumpkin seed oil they brought to dress it, and for us to use in dunking our bread. A regional specialty, we really enjoyed it. It’s kind of a deep greenish-red color, if that’s possible and while the pumpkin flavor briefly checks in, it’s not ever-present. And you can get it on Amazon!

Dave ordered Štruklji, a kind of dumpling filled with cottage cheese, and topped with bacon and a sprig of thyme.

But I had the winner of the night: pasta, asparagus and mushrooms.

We knew it was supposed to start pouring at some time this evening (having checked and rechecked our weather apps at the hotel), so we walked around that evening, enjoying the sights. this fountain is at the edge of a large, rectangular plaza in the University District. One of the realities of a new place though, is that you don’t have your bearings and we simply thought “nice fountain,” without recognizing how it fit into the landscape or the orientation of the map. We simply knew that we were walking along the river, which was in the pedestrian section of town and that we’d eventually find our way home.

Ljubljana has several bridges that span the Ljublanica River; this is the Cobbler’s Bridge, and is distinguished by its pillars.

This view is toward Preseren Square, and the Triple Bridge, which is yes, three bridges all together. One day we saw a young female tourist doing an interpretive dance to the accordian player and his singing group, complete with belly dancing moves, backward bending-over-moves and basic I’m-having-a-great-time moves. It’s where a lot of people gather.

I was interestested to see the lights of the zodiac on the ground, embedded in the pavement in front of the church. A crackle of lightning marked the witching hour and the first drops of rain started falling just as we made it back to our hotel.

Next up: Ljubljana’s Marketplace, and the Tourists Do Their Laundry and Find a Giant Shopping Mall

Lake Bled

Posted on September 3, 2014 by Elizabeth

(This is the ninth post of our Croatia-Budapest Trip, June-July 2014.)
Monday, June 23

We woke up in Buzet and saw this. . . . . . so thought we ought to again advance our plans by a day and head to Lake Bled that day, instead of exploring the southern part of Slovenia, like we’d wanted to.

After passing through passport control, we stopped at the very first gas station we saw to buy our Slovenian Freeway Pass, having been warned by several to do so. (scene is out the backside of the gas station.) In fact our innkeeper in Plitvice said that there would be two fines if we didn’t have it and got caught: one from the Slovenian authorities, of roughly 150 euros (like $225) and then the rental car company would charge us because of the hassle of finding us and get their money from someone in the States. I had also read about it in two guide books, so there was no question about whether or not we would have a pass on our window. Dave came out from the teensy place, affixed the sticker (15 euro, about 22 bucks) and we kept driving.

I loved the freestanding small buildings that were roadside shrines to Mary, to Jesus, and various saints.

About two exits after we got on the freeway with our spiffy new freeway pass, we left to go “wandering” our way through the countryside, on the way to Predjama Castle, andfound we were driving on the Mast Road, a farm-to-market road through the countryside with some historical significance. We know this because half the sign was in English!

We found the town “13” on the above map, V. Brda, with its interesting, but closed church.

And in Landol, this little chapel is dedicated to someone named “St. Jost,” but again, was closed.

But next door was this building, which apparently served as a toll house on the road.

Back on the road, we followed the signs to Predjama Castle, noting all the fallen trees from the ice storm as we drove.

Right around this corner was a small accident, a fender-bender, but the people involved had put out the glowing orange triangles signs on the road and they all had donned orange highway safety-type vests. That would explain the package I saw in the trunk of our rental car, of which the car agency said nothing. For the record, I had asked them about the Slovenian freeway sticker too, and again, the two twenty-somethings that ran the place kind of shrugged their shoulders: “eh?”

We parked and walked about ten paces and here it was–just like all the guidebooks said: an old castle tucked into a mountain. The guidebooks also said the inside was “forgettable” so we didn’t pay to go in. The outside is pretty striking, though.

A faded crest painted onto the side of the castle. I love the graphic punch of the black-and-white shutters.

We heard lots of chain saws going, and saw this at the bottom of the little lane.

We turned left at Jesus and headed toward the motorway/freeway.
We’ve got to get our money’s worth out of this pricey car sticker and were ready to get to Lake Bled, hoping to arrive before any storm.

We parked, found (a cheap) lunch, and then Dave decided he wanted to walk AROUND Lake Bled. So we did.

They do have some houses on the shore of Lake Bled. Here’s one, with a beautifully painted upper story.

And another, with sort of a hunting lodge flavor.

The hunting lodge house comes complete with a (cute) stuffed animal.

In the middle of Lake Bled is this small island. It seemed like we stopped to take a picture of this about every five feet. Soon it got to be a joke, trying to frame it with bits of trees and leaves, making a vignette. This is one of about 25 that we shot.

At the far end of the lake the pavement widened and we found the rowing club (with lots of sculling shells laying out on the lawn). There was also a place to go swimming, but you had to pay to get in. We kept walking.

After this boardwalk, we saw a few more casual beaches, and then found a small quiet place to strip off our shoes and put our feet in the water.

The lake is a clear beautiful aqua blue, and I’m told on many days the surface is as smooth as glass. A storm was coming in, so we had had a lot of breezes and a ruffled surface. We visited, relaxed and soon pulled our feet out of the water and put our shoes back on.

It must have been a good spot for wading (there were two other teens right near us) for we saw this sign just after we got back on the trail.

The island from the front. There’s a tale that if you can ring the bell three times, gold coins will fall out of your hair. No, that’s not quite right. If you can ring the bell, all your children will be rich. Hmmm. Maybe if you ring the bell you’ll have True Love? Good Fortune? That you are a gullible tourist? (Pick one.) So it would be quiet on the lake for a while, then a boat of tourists would arrive and we then hear the clanging of the church bell. You have to pay for the pleasure of getting your good fortune, so someone is doing okay, judging from the amount of bell-tolling we heard.

We’d heard that Tito, the leader of Yugoslavia (when there was a Yugoslavia) had a summer house on the lake which had been turned into a hotel and conference center. Our guidebook gave us the particulars and we walked up the grand set of stairs from the path to Villa Bled.

We found our way to this conference room (in panoramic view, here) with a mural from the Communist era, where all the workers looked happy (and like they worked out a lot at the local gym), and the peasants were singing songs along with the soldiers, who were also — in some places — holding hands with each other. Solidarity, indeed.

Okay, there was an occasional Bashing Their Heads In With Rifles scene, but don’t let that deter you from the specter of a victorious Yugoslavia.

View from Tito’s patio.

View across the lake.

You can’t go to Lake Bled without have a piece of their cream cake. Tired after three hours of walking (we were taking the scenic pace), we plopped down on the patio of a hotel, and ordered one piece and two forks.

“Everyone does that,” said the waiter. “And then they order another piece.”

We did too.

Next up: Arriving in Ljubljana

Beautiful (and Quiet) Buzet

Posted on September 2, 2014 by Elizabeth

(This is the eighth post of our Croatia-Budapest Trip, June-July 2014.)
Sunday June 22

We pulled away from House Tina, and took the country road north towards Karlovac, where our proprietor had been living in a camp during the war. Along the way we lots of houses with bullet holes and shrapnel damage, but there were equally as many all spiffed up with new plaster, paint and new roofs. Croatia seems to be putting the war behind them.

First, a stop at an Interspar store where we saw (from right to left) a clear plastic “can” with aluminum pop top full of clear lemon-water. I didn’t buy it and looked for one the rest of the time we were over there and never saw it again. It was very cool. We also saw a Jane Fondom workout video, right next to a Jane Fonda workout video. And then a very cute red-checked Croatian bag of KiKi candies, which I also purchased, along with supplies for our lunch. I wonder if foreigners come over here and go gaga at our packaging. Do we have any cool packaging?

It’s time to get on the road and get going. This section of freeway, which traverses from east to west across Croatia also has lots of tunnels, but their names are beside them on signs, not over them in fun writing. The terrain is hilly, wooded and in many section on the western side of the country we saw many fallen trees. Apparently there had been a big storm and the temperatures suddenly dropped, freezing all the rain/ice onto the trees, cracking them in half, toppling many. The damage was extensive.

Not too many freeway signs–mostly beautiful countryside. It reminded me of driving through Halifax Canada with long straight highways bordered by trees and fields. Croatia has a toll system for their roads. When you enter them, you draw a ticket from the automated machine and then drive. After a while you see the Autocesta gates and you stop to pay for what you just drove. This is more modern: no coins are thrown in a basket, instead you whip out the bankcard and they swipe it and present you with your card and your receipt. Drive on. At one Autocesta, we took in the scenery:

We drove from the blue dot (Plitvice Lakes National Park) up to Karlovac (red circle), then took the A1 West to Rijecka (green circle), where we promptly got sort of lost, but Dave kept driving and I kept flipping back and forth on my printed-out Google maps and frantically searched my map book, but somehow, someway, we made it through that spaghetti-ed freeway system interchange, heading into Istria. And then we paid a monster fee for traveling through a very very long tunnel.

From Rijecka (green circle), we finally made it to Buzet (violet rectangle). Istria was part of Italy until 1947, when it was scooped up into Yugoslavia, and there it stayed when Croatia split off and kept it. Besides being known as a place for truffle hunting, wine drinking and possible early birthplace of the Glagolitic alphabet (kind of like that old claim “George Washington Slept Here”), it resembles in many ways the hilltown areas of Italy. Some more deft driving and map-following and we glimpsed Buzet on top of a hill:

We drove up and looped around through this gate, the “Big” Gate:

On the right is what we saw coming up, and the view on the left is what we saw later, coming down. Yes, it was interesting. We found our hotel right away (after that hard hairpin turn to the left just inside the Big Gate), drove past it looking for parking, drove up and around the town, holding our breath on the narrow streets, then flipped around and came up again, through the gate and parked in front of Vela Vrata, our hotel.

We thought we were in Italy, really, except that everything was written in Croatian and they all spoke that as well. Whenever I’ve been in Italy, I’ve been able to pick up a word or two to add to my pathetically small working vocabulary. This time I didn’t pick up ANY words in Croatian, nor Slovenian, nor Hungarian.

Our room was sweet, the window shut against the day’s heat.

I’ve never been so excited to see shampoo, soap, and drinking glasses. And more than one washcloth and towel. We felt like we were in the Buzetian Waldorf Astoria.

View through the bathroom window.

And we opened up the bedroom window, to see the countryside. We retrieved our luggage from the car, then Dave had to go and repark it “down below,” in a special lot just for the hotel. We turned left onto a street that looked like it would work, except at the bottom there were stairs. Nope. Back up the car. Around that bend there was another street, but I urged Dave just to park the car in the little parking lot below and we would walk up. We did so, and found a little pocket park with a fountain, a family and some benches where we could eat our lunch, purchased in Karlovac.

What is it about European bakeries? The breads are fresh, delicious and available. We’d bought “picnic” supplies and enjoyed our lunch at this little place. Our unstated, but previously assumed goal was to drop our stuff in Buzet and take a driving tour of the Istrian Peninsula. This was rapidly being scaled down to drop our backpack in our room and take a walking tour of the small hilltown.

This is the view to the “front,” just below our little park, of a church and its cemetery.

The route back up to our hotel (really just a couple of long city blocks, but strung out into switchbacks and up a hill) passed by some gardens.

We walked to the right, up behind our hotel to explore. It’s not a large hilltown, and the Sunday afternoon was quiet.

Here’s a map we got AFTER our walk, when the tourist agency with erratic hours finally opened. Lots of things were noted here, but we used our guidebook to sort of guide us around this little town. Our hotel is just across from #6, the South Bulwark, and you can see where we parked our car (the large red P). While I do post this map, try to ignore it. Just go with us on a traipse around a little town where you don’t speak the language, are tired from driving across the country, are happy with having had such a good picnic, and have two cameras to record everything (one for this blog and one for Instagram, later on that night).

These cobblestones were slippery and uneven.

We saw two possible churches, but both were closed.

For some, it was laundry day. And everywhere were potted plants, lush and full.

I need this scissors sign to hang outside my sewing room.

My sister Christine was in China, and her Instagram feed was full of visits to museums. I joked that she goes to museums and we see the sign for one.

And around every lane you could see the edge of the hill drop off into the green valley below.

St. George’s Church (#21 on the map). Nothing was open. Nothing except our hotel and the bar next to it.

We walked up to the top of the town, the church abutting the old crenelated city wall. Buzet has credentials back to the 16th century, but I think the graffiti is newer.

The other side of the church, with a lone bell in the wall.

The view from atop the city wall.

The regular camera records the town’s Big Well (#17) in the center of the city, but the iPhone camera catches the light differently, giving a different look:

The views were expansive, but as Dave noted, “Italy seemed to have better land use management.” Yes, we’d look out over a sweeping valley and see a bunch of high rises, or a quarry, or a car factory. The old Yugoslavia, of which Croatia was a part, had its emphasis on industry and building mostly likely due to its roots in Communism, and the powers-that-be probably thought that a factory was a far better use of land than keeping a view or maintaining its agrarian heritage. It was kind of startling sometimes, as Italy’s hilltowns are surrounded by buccolic landscapes on all sides.

The backside of that gate we just came through. This was the “Little Gate,” (#15 on the left side of the town), whereas the Big Gate (#2) was on the lower right side.

We came back to the hotel. An afternoon nap seemed like a good idea in this equally sleepy hilltown. Forget getting in the car and driving around.

Soon it was dinner time. Really it went like this “It’s 8 o’clock already??!!” We walked back down to our car.

Pizzeria Jezic had about nine hundred options, but luckily a young couple helped us figure out what to get. We opted for a salad (our standard) and a pizza. We told the server we would split the pizza, so it arrived, neatly cut in half on two plates. The World Cup was on the television, but since Croatia wouldn’t be playing until the next night, Monday, June 23rd, the town was not as drawn in to what was being televised. The game was on in the bar as we walked up the hill after dinner, but the dining area in front of the hotel only had two guests. We remarked on how quiet the town was when we checked out the next morning, and the manager said, “Oh wait for tonight when Croatia plays.” We were glad to get a good night’s sleep in the beautiful Vela Vrata hotel in beautiful Buzet, Istria.

I woke up earlier than Dave the next morning, and recorded this from the bathroom window. You might have to turn up the volume to hear the singing birds. We showered, dressed, packed up and headed toward the breakfast room.

First stop: the swiming pool. I’d heard about it on the web and I wanted to see it. I kept thinking how much my sister Susan would like to do her laps in this place.

The breakfast buffet included hot and cold dishes, including some strange things that we passed right by. But it was a nice breakfast room:

The use of air conditioner was not apparent, a change from the guest rooms in the hotel, and finally the server/attendant opened up opposing windows to give us a breeze through the hot and stuffy room. We poked around places on the way back to our rooms, reluctant to leave such a nice place, but happy to go again.

We walked our luggage down to the car, remembering a large plaza we’d seen the day before (below).

Somehow Dave made his way there. We think it was a memorial to those who had died in the war.

At the center was this strange bowl-shaped object, with the signs of the zodiac on the top and bottom and faces all around the equator of the thing. We assumed, by the look of the light fixture on the inside, that it was some sort of beacon to memorialize the place. We never saw it lit the night before (the pizza place was sort of near this).

We felt like Croatia had been scrubbed of Communism and its relics, finding only this place with some obviously heroic logos from that time.

And then again, it could be about nothing, one of the drawbacks of using graphics instead of language to make your way through a town. We were headed for the Slovenia this morning, and to find a place to buy our “sticker.” Apparently it was a necessary item to drive on Slovenian highways, and we were warned in two guidebooks, as well as by our host at House Tina. He said we would get a fine of 150 euro (about $225) if we didn’t have it, and then the rental car company would fine us too, just for the hassle of having to track us down and bill us. We were on the lookout as we made our way north.

Next up: Slovenia and Ljubljana

The Traveled Mind

Category Archives: Croatia-Budapest 2014

Ljubjana, Rainy Ljubljana

We’re Learning How to Say Ljubljana

Arriving in Ljubljana

Lake Bled

Beautiful (and Quiet) Buzet