Croatia - Slovenia - Montenegro: Charming

Around noon our good friends and new traveling companions, Beebs and Miguel, arrived after an all-nighter on the plane. They apparently got even less sleep than we did, but looked pretty good. Especially Beebs, who looked like she just got up and showered.

Beebs and Sally make plans, May 2014

The basic plan for the day was to let them settle into their room, spend the afternoon in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. And that is what we did. It's a charming little city, very European, and if you told me we were in Germany or Italy I would have believed you. Except for the language, which uses consonants in ways that seem unnatural to me, and is fundamentally unpronounceable.

We stumbled onto an underground parking garage and emerged into beautiful weather on a pedestrian mall near the river which cuts through the city. The river is cleverly named the Ljubljanica, which I just looked up because I am pretty clueless about this place. Looking across the river, we could see the Ljubljanski grad, or castle. It towers above the city on a hill which is high enough that they build a funicular to ferry the tourists up. Which we took, and found some terrific views stretching north to the mountains.

Ljubljana and mountains, May 2014

But we didn't come here to see the mountains, we came to see a quaint city, and have some drinks by the river. Which we did.

Oh so quaint, May 2014

We also found a (small) crowd protesting capitalism. I guess they preferred the good old days when the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was around. Again, other than assuming "CAPITALIZEM" means what I think, I have no idea what they were really protesting. Note that they are marching past the Galleria Emporium, which means pretty much the same thing here as in Westchester: bring me your money.