At 7am the church bells rang, and rang… and rang. They stopped after a couple of minutes, and I turned over and tried to get back to sleep. At quarter past the bells went off again so I got up. It’s as if the whole town gets woken up at 7, and is allowed a 15 minute snooze. By now the car park was half full with the cars of workers from the next-door office block – they make an early start in Slovenia.
First stop was Škofja Loka, a small town half way to Ljubljana which the lady in the tourist office had recommended. It had a car park where vans can park for the night so we had planned to stay for a night. When we got there though, it was by a busy main road, so we changed our minds. After a walk around the town we moved on to Ljubljana.
The aire at Ljubljana had loads of good reviews on Camper Contact, and we weren’t disappointed. It’s part of a restaurant on the outskirts of the city, which is a 20 minute bus ride away. The facilities are great and the nightly cost is €10 all in. However, if you dine at the restaurant and have the three course meal for €10, then there’s no charge for the aire. The night we arrived, we had already got some food out of the freezer so we ate in, but the next two nights we ate at the restaurant, and the food was great. The restaurant owners keep goats and pigs in a pen opposite where the vans are parked, and they’re all really cute – though it did get a bit whiffy in the van when the windows were open!
Yesterday we were again woken at 7 am by the church bells – 175 ‘dings’ (I counted every one!). Unlike Škofja Loka, there was no snooze facility, but we got up anyway in time to catch the 9:54 bus into town. It was a foggy morning and quite cold at first, but the fog soon lifted and it turned into a beautiful autumn day. Ljubljana is quite a compact city, so we spent the day mooching around and saw most of it at a leisurely pace. There’s a definite café culture, with coffee shops and bars lining both banks of the river. Fish also seems to be very popular on the menus. For lunch we both had grilled fish from a street food van which was delicious.
Today we again got up at 7 am, and went back into the city as I had a dentist appointment in the afternoon. In the morning we went up to the castle to admire the views across the city. Like yesterday, it was quite a foggy morning and there was still a bit of a haze. Wandering around town at lunchtime we came across a food market which wasn’t there yesterday. The stalls were selling food from all parts of the world – rather like Borough Market in London, only smaller.
After lunch we set off for the dentist – another bus ride away. I had a dental implant fitted when we were in the UK back in August, and I need to get the abutment and crown fitted in November. Today’s appointment was a preliminary assessment, and I’m now booked in for treatment in early November. Between now and then, we will be travelling around Croatia.
Mike