Thursday, April 27, 2006

Short Post

So this wil be a short post because the internet is MEGA expensive here! Like, 8 dollars an hour. Ridiculous huh? Luckily, Jason and I each found a coupon for 15 free minutes. So that is what we are using right now. We are in Bonaire. It is a little island next to Aruba. Unfortunately, it looks like we won't be able to post while we are here! BUT we will be writing blog posts in a notebook and transfer them to the net when we get back to the states. So, please check back in a few days because there is a lot we want to tell you before signing off of our blog. Thank you for reading!

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Canyoning!

For my birthday, Jason took me canyoning! In the US, they call it canyoneering. I am not sure about the spelling.
This is about the most fun I have had in my life. Canyoning is basically following a creek up or down a canyon. We followed the canyon down river. SO much fun. Jason saw the poster and knew immediately that I would love it. Many times we have passed a creek and I have said, "Man, I wish I could just follow that creek......in the the creek." That is exactly what we did. It was really cold water but we had thick wetsuits and hoods and gloves and wetsuit socks. So we were fine. Jason's hat didn't fit over his gigantic noggin.

There were some parts that we had to repel down.

Other times, we jumped



or slid on our bellies

or bums.


I think I may have a new hobby.

Unfortunately, canyoning used to be popular in the US about 15 years ago but now it isn't as popular. Maybe we can change that yes?

Don't worry about that blood, it is just from the pressure of the water. He wasn't injured.

Today was finally sunny! We got some great pictures around Bled. Here is a nice spring picture:

Here is the island with the church and the castle is on the cliff in the background. Those are the Julian Alps in the background.

Jason decided to go ahead and go kayaking. He went with the same people who took us canyoning. They are a really great outdoor adventure agency. They have good prices and the people are really laid back and nice. Compared to Vietnam and Thailand, they are AMAZING! Here is their website. So if you ever come to Slovenia, look them up! Anyway, Jason said it was an amazing time. The water was crystal clear and he went down the river with a really good guide. Jason said he can do tons of amazing tricks. I only saw him do a cartwheel which I got a picture of Jason doing.

Jason said he messed up in this picture but I can't tell. He got to float passed a couple cool river villages and got to go down come class 3 and 4 rapids.
Thank you for all your happy birthday comments! See you soon!

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

"Wann der Fruhling kommt..."

The title of this blog is "When Spring Comes..." in German. Spring is indeed what we are waiting for here in the Julian Alps. We saw pleny of spring on the train from Kezsthely to Ljubliana. The flowers were blooming, the rivers were overflowing, the trees were beginning to bud, the hills were covered with bright green grass and yes, we even saw some pure white lambs sitting in that grass. We are now in the Julian Alps however where spring is a little bit harder to find. The grass is very green here but we seem to be stuck in that period between winter and spring where it rains a lot but there isn't much to show for it yet. It is still incredibly beautiful.

We arrived at the Lesce-Bled train station just before dark. We had made arrangements to stay in a tourist farm right outside of Bled in a little village called Gorje. The only directions we had was the address and "the farm is on the road to P------, you can't miss it!" So we walked to the nearest bus stop and and waited for a bus to Bled from which we planned to walk or something..... A few minutes before the bus was to come, a little car pulled up and let out a passenger. Then the driver looked at us and said something in Slovene. When he realized we didn't speak Slovene, he asked in English, "Are you going to Bled?" He offered us a ride so we stuffed our huge bags into his tiny car and off we went. I (Larissa) showed him the paper where I written the down the address. "OH!" He sucked in his breath, "This is a long way from Bled, I am supposed to meet a friend for coffee but I guess he can wait. We call the people who live in this village 'rednecks' because they live so far out of town." I asked just how far out of Bled they the village was and he said, "Oh, about 5 kilometers!" Slovenia is a small country so their wense of distance is quite a bit different than ours in America. He dropped us off right at at the front door and turned down our offers to pay for his gas.
We rang the doorbell and an elderly gentleman opened the door. He seemed to understand us when we said we had reservations and all that but when he replied, it was in a mixture of English and German. He invited us in to the house and we were very ecited to finally see the inside of a Slovene house. This of course is a very traditional farm house but we liked it. We sat down to wait for his son who was going to show us our room. We sat in awkward silence sometimes interrupted by with his occasionally speaking to me in german. I asked if he was from Austria and he said no that he learned german for the tourists that come there to stay. He also speaks Italian. So we started speaking in Italian. English seemed to be the language he knew the least of. His son Tony finally arrived and he seemed releived to let him take over obviously thinking Tony spoke much better English than he did. Tony, who's every third word was "Ayoh" (I am not sure what that means yet), is not very good at English actually. He speaks it very fast so we think that he probably knows it really well, it is just his pronounciation that needs help. On the way to our room, Jason told Tony that we are on our honeymoon. That may be why he gave us such a great room. It isn't really a room. It is an apartment. It has a kitchen, a table, a TV and it can sleep 5 people. For 17 euro a person per night, it is quite a deal around here. We slept fitfully, because the next day was Easter Sunday and the church bell seemed to ring all night. The next morning we sat down to a Slovenian Easter breakfast (which is included in the price) of cheese, bread, plum marmalade, butter, peppers, and tomatoes. Keep in mind that most of these were either homemade or homegrown. We were intent on eating all that we could, as we wanted to get our money's worth. I don't think I have ever eaten that much havaarti, swiss, and mozzarella cheese in my life. Tony's mom is the master of all the homemade things. She is a very excited person who speaks English/German just like her husband. After our breakfast that morning, I was talking to her cows when I turned around to see her coming towards me. "Missus!" She looked like she was about to jump up and down with joy, "I haf da donkey too!" She showed me where her donkey was and just like her, he had quite the personality. AS I walked up, he was vigourously scratching his body against the side of his wooden manger which liked it wasn't going to stand up to such abuse much longer. When it saw Jason and I though, he came trotting over and was especially interested in Jason's camera

.We often heard him hee-hawing and once I looked out the window to see him running and trying to buck something invisible off his back.

Anyway, we had a pleasant walk to to the town of Bled which is home to a beautiful lake with a picturesque island in the middle. The island has a church and it is probably one of the main reasons Bled is visited by millions of people every year.

As you can wee, the weather wasn't very clear that day. You can't even see the mountains in the background. Here is a picture that I grabbed from the internet of Bled Lake.

Also one of Bled's claims to fame is it's castle which stands at the very top of a cliff over looking the lake. There is a foot path that goes aroung the lake and we headed for that. Jason pointed out plenty of fish in the lake. There were beautiful char and lake trout in the water and Jason was very dissapointed not to have a fishing rod and equipment. It was a great walk but we were hungry and the walk was longer than we thought it would be . When we completed the loop, we rewarded ourselves with Bled's specialty, Cream Cake. It is our new obsession and I WILL learn how to make it. Coming soon to a potluck near you. We ate the best way, as in dessert first. For lunch I talked Jason into going to a traditional Slovenian restaurant by telling him they made pizza too. Turns out the pizzeria was a separate restaurant upstairs. Jason was very upset so I told him that I would order enough for one person, we would share that then share a pizza. I ordered mushroom soup, roast potatoes, and bread dumplings. Everything was superb! Except the bread dumplings which were questionable. After we ate that, we were so full we skipped the pizza.

After lunch we started walking towards Vintgar Gorge. Vintgar Gorge is another famous sight in Slovenia and it is only a couple kilometers away from our tourist farm. When we got to the entrance, we saw these signs in the path. It wasn't in our language so we weren't exactly sure what they were trying to tell us.

Going by the signs posted, it became clear that to us theat they were trying to prevent us from throwing rocks at hammers, wearing hats, or wearing all black. We didn't have any problems with these rules so we jumped over the barracade and went on our merry way. We passed a few people coming the other direction and one guy had a hat on so we knew he was a law breaker. This gorge is beautiful. The water is clear and in deep spots, incredibly blue. The boardwalk was built in 1893 and follows the river for almost 2 km in a rock gorge. Behind us, a little family of four was walking. A mom, dad, a baby and a 3 years old. We finally got to a place that felt a little too unsafe to travel over and we turned around. This picture is actually a place that we walked across.
We were a little dismayed to see the 3 year old make it over the section where we turned back. But no matter. It was a good day with lots of walking and my legs were quite sore. This all took place on Easter so not much was open. Here they celebrate Easter Friday through Monday. I did not take this picture.Here is a picture of a traditional painted egg we saw a lot of.

The next morning we woke up and after breakfast, headed to the train station. We wanted to go to lake Bohinj. When we got to the train station, it was shut up tight and nobody was around. We looked at the timetable and there was a train going at 11:30. Which was in about an hour. We sat outside and looked out over the lake. We vould see people rowing crew boast on the lake and it was just a beautiful day and beautiful sight. Jason innocently asked, "So do you think you could beat me in a crew race if we went right now?" After I stopped laughing, I informed him that I didn't think anything, I knew that if I raced him in a crew boat, I would win. He was quite surprised at the strength of my assuredness and said "Yeah, but I am stronger than you!" After I stopped laughing again, I told him that it didn't matter how strong you were if you didn't know hor to balance the boat or work the oars. Even after that, He still said he was pretty confident that he could beat me in a race then and there. That's when it turned into a full blown argument. For those of you who don't know, I raced crew boats for a year so I took it as an insult to my skill as a rower. I probably shouldn't have felt insulted by Jason's naivete because he obviously didn't mean to insinuate anything. BUt anyway, is there anyone out there who has ever been in a crew boat that can back me up on this one? I realize I am speaking to a very small percentile here. Maybe I am just speaking to my brother, but can someone please tell Jason that rowing a crew boat is quite different than rowing a drift boat and it is harder than it looks?

Anyway, we finally got on a train. The whole way, we followed the beautiful Sava River. We passed Kayakers, canoeists and fly fishermen in abundance. Jason started to feel very sorry for himself. I promised we could come back some time and he could bring his fly fishing gear and we could rent a kayak for him. Fishing liscences are quite expensive here but there are lost os beautiful trout in the rivers and lakes here.

We arrived at Bohinj Bistrica after about a 20 minute ride. IT is a town about 6 km from the lake. Our goal, Lake Bohinj. The bike rental place was closed (according to the toursit center guy) so we decided to walk along the river until we reached the lake. There was a hiking trail on our map that we decided to follow. It was warm and sunny so I took my fleece off and it was still hot. We walked and walk and then it started to rain. We put on our useless ponchos. The rain seemed to get harder. It seemed like we had been walking for ages. My legs, still sore from the day before werenow achin. Jason was limping because his knee was hurting and we were both basically pathetic. We got to a meadow that had many little huts. One hut had a little sheltered eating area that we decided to stop at and wait for the rain to stop. It just seemed to rain harder so we ended up just eating our lunch. The rain still hadn't let up so we decided to just walk on. Our previously beautiful gravel trail turned into a big clay mud bogg. After hours of walking, we finally emerged on to the green grass park surrounding part of the lake. We made it!! It was beautiful but we were wet and cold. Bohinj is bigger and less developed than Bled. It doesn't have a cool island but it is truly majestic.

There isn't much stuff to do that doesn't involve outdoor activites so we decided to head back to the train station. The bus ride back was so quick!! We thought of our hours of walking...but it was definitely worth it.

We bought train tickets to vintgar thinking how smart we were "yesterday we walked fromVintgar gorge to our house and it only took 10 minutes. Vintgar station can't be too far from there right?" We began to grow concerned when right after we left the stop before ours, we started going through a long tunnel. After about a minutetunnel ride, we came to our stop. It was dark and nobody got off the train with us. We didn't recognize anything and there was no map and it was dark. We walked acrodd the street to the bar to ask directions so we could start walking. When I asked, the lady's eyes got big and she said "you have a car?" when she heard we were planning to walk, she told that it would take an hour and a half at least. We had missed that last train and there wasn't a busin sight. We asked her if she could call us a taxi and from the incredulous look on people's faces, we realized it wasn't really an option. "Here, I will just drive you" We asked if we could pay her and she just waved us away. I looked back at the bar as we were leaving and was realieved to see that there was just a coffee cup at her spot.

We started driving and WOW! an hour and a half walk would have been more of a run. We zigzagged our way up a mountain and down the other side. When she dropped us off, she refused our money so Jason told her "Next time you are in America, we will give you a ride when you are lost" As you can see, people are very nice here.

Well, today is my birthday and we are in an outdoor store buying a trip to take tomorrow. We just hung out today and rested our poor legs. Jason bought me a Vienetta. I love those things. We are taking a canyoneering trip. I am so excited because I have always wanted to try it. We will take our underwater camera and tell you all about it. Jason might break down and take a kayaking trip in a couple days too. Thank you for your comments. Hope you enjoy our extra long blog!

Friday, April 14, 2006

Take That!

So Jason has gotten the chance to tell you all some embarrassing things about me lately so I thought I would return the favor. Everytime one of us does something stupid, the other will say ....I am going to put that in the blog! ....
We like this internet place but we thought we might be able to find another place that was cheaper. So as we were walking around town, we were keeping our eyes open for other internet places. Everyonce in awhile, Jason would say (I can't make the quotation marks work on this keyboard) ....That place says geo-net or something, do you think that means a type of internet?.... I didn't see what he was talking about and we kept walking. After he had seen it a few times he thought maybe we should go into one of the stores. I asked him where he was seeing this sign for geo-net. He pointed at a store and there in the window was a sign that said geƶffnet. The german word for OPEN.

This morning, I made him a grilled cheese sandwhich. He was reading so he ignored the sandwhich for awhile. Finally, I started to grab it and pretend to start eating it. He said ....Hey! Gimmee my grilled cheese!.... It struck me as funny, so I said.....Leggo my eggo.... He was silent for a second and then said.....I just got that. I always wondered what they were talking about on those commercials when they said Leggo my eggo.... HA!

Anyway, I thought it was a little funny. If you don't, then you know that we have had a lack of things to write about because we haven't got out much in the last couple days.

Good luck on taxes everyone. I am doing mine today. Jason got his done months ago. But I get a refund and he doesn't. :] Thank you for commenting, we like hearing from you all. It really does make our day.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Heviz, Criminal Children, and Budapest

On Monday we took a short bus ride to Heviz. The bus terminated within feet of the thermal lake, which is really the only reason that the town is on the map. We hiked around most of the lake, and stopped in the ticket center (an admission fee is required to actually swim in the lake) where we learned that this particular lake is the second largest thermal lake in the world. We will probably return to the charming little town in the near future, and perhaps even pay to enter the healing (and reportedly radioactive) waters.

That same day, as we were strolling up the main walking street in Keszthely, we were assaulted by two girls and a boy, none of which could have been any older than eight. They first approached us, speaking Hungarian, then German, apparently trying to sell us some yellow tree branches that they had surely ripped off some nearby tree. We politely indicated that we were not interested. Then, two of the kids dropped their branches as the three continued to follow us closely. As they started to grab at us, we said no more firmly. At this point the oldest girl started trying to steel things out of Larissas backpack. We both turned around in defense, demanded that they stop, and then turned around and continued walking. At this point, the oldest girl used her branches to hit Larissa's back, and the little boy drove his fist into my back. None of this was painful, but we were startled. As they ran off, the little boy smiling and laughing, we were extremely tempted to round them up and give them individual spankings. At the same moment; however, we realized how it might look for foreigners to be off in some alley beating on some poor innocent kids. The language barrier would undoubtedly make things even worse. We were glad to see some locals scold them a bit, but were saddened by the kids' attitude towards tourists, and what they would resort to for some cash.

We woke up yesterday morning to the sound of raindrops outside. Since we already had our train tickets to Budapest, we didn't have the option of staying in our room. We felt sorry for ourselves as we hiked in the cold rainy weather to the train station, even before it was light outside.

For the first couple of hours we travelled along the shores of Lake Balaton. I counted pheasants between naps, and Larissa read most of the way. After just over three hours, we arrived at the Budapest Deli station. We had a map that showed many of the main tourist sights in town. They looked like they were just close enough to the train station, and close enough together, that we wouldn't have to rely on public transportation to see them. It was still cold and rainy as we made our way through a beautiful park en route to the Buda Castle district. Budapest used to be two cities, separated by the Danube river. We started our exploration on the Buda side. The Buda Castle is a large walled-in compound atop a hill. It includes three churches, several museums, hotels, many historical buildings, and even some private residences. The first main sight we came to was the Matthias Church. I guess Matthias was a former king. The church was beautiful, but apparently undergoing repairs as it was covered in scaffolding. On the river side of the church stands the Fisherman's Bastion, seven towers built atop medieval walls.

The view from the towers was amazing, even though visibility was not good.

The most impressive building sitting on the Pest side of the river is the Parliament, built in a neo-gothic style.


The high vantage point helped us get some perspective on distances, and also confirmed some of the places that we wanted to visit. We hiked down the castle hill to the Danube river, and the historic Chain Bridge.

Its' construction was originally completed in 1849, but it had to be rebuilt in 1949 after being destroyed in WWII.

We decided to walk along the Danube up to the next bridge, and then use the Chain bridge to return in the afternoon. It was obvious that the river was far higher than usual, and there were indications that it had, within the past few days, been much higher. We noticed several docks that had been damaged by debri, and riverside shrubs and trees that had been destroyed by the high water. Since we had never seen the place before; however, it was hard to guage exactly how much damage had been done. Later that day we read in the paper that water levels in Hungary, just a couple of days prior, had been higher than ever had been recorded. There was flooding in Budapest in 2002, and as a result the containment walls were made taller. This flood breeched even the new walls, and is reported to have caused millions of dollars in damage. The river levels must be expected to go down rather than up, as riverside streets are open to traffic, and riverside parking spaces are occupied by cars; all of this while the water level is only inches below the containment walls.

This is the river-level view of Parliament, one side of which was covered in yellow scaffolding. I tried to cover it up with Larissa's head as much as possible.

By the time we made it to the other bridge, I was really needing to find a bathrooms somewhere. It was probably due to watching all of that gushing water. The vast majority of bathrooms around here require a small payment before entering. I am not sure what this money goes towards, as they bathrooms certainly don't show signs of being well maintained or cleaned. For some reason I really don't like going to the pay-per-pee bathrooms, which may have been another reason why I was needing one rather urgently. Across the bridge was a huge McDonalds sign. I have come to associate McDonalds not only with reliably good french fries and cheap ice cream cones, but also with free and relatively clean bathrooms. This McDonalds even offered internet access.

After our stop at McDonalds, we made our way up the Pest side of the river for a closer look at the Parliament. It is a very unique structure. We wanted to take a tour of the inside, but we were feeling too strapped on time and cash. Instead we started walking up the historic (a UNESCO world heritage sight, as well as the Parliament and the Castle District) Andrassy avenue. We could tell that this street was were the money was, both now and in the past. It is lined with beautiful stone buildings with elaborate facades. On our way to finding a pizza place we enjoyed visiting St. Stephens Basillica and the Opera house.

After pizza we continued up Andrassy avenue all the way to a park at its' end.

There stands the Vajdahayad Castle. I had mixed feelings about the place. It was a charming structure, though it had sections rebuilt in different styles, but I was annoyed that much of the former moat and castle-side pond had been drained. As far as we could tell, the drained portion was being transformed into tennis courts. We couldn't understand who would prefer tennis courts to a castl moat. We chose the side of the castle still protected by some water for our photos. On the other side of the street from the castle are the Syechenyi Spa Baths.

We had been excited about visiting them because of the beautiful building that housed them, and their unique setting. There is no photography allowed inside the courtyard, which houses the outdoor pools, so we cannot show you the place. For the same reason, there are few photos of the place on the internet. I did find a couple, but trying to figure out how to get them into the blog proved to be challenging as the menus are in Hungarian. We thoroughly enjoyed the bath experience, which somewhat surprised me. There were several pools, one of which featured several chess boards. What could be better than playing chess in the hot tub? There was also a whirlpool. There was a center hot tub surrounded by a ring shaped pool. The jets were on the outer wall, and all pointed to one side. Larissa was convinced that she was an expert at catching the jets of water. She actually informed me that she had become too good at letting the jets accelerate here, as she was starting to swallow too much water. She wanted to race me to prove that she was a faster whirlpooler. I agreed, but just as we started our race the jets turned off.

When we were finished at the baths, it was getting to be late afternoon, and we needed to start heading back to the train station. We thought it might be nice to take the subway to the train station, but after the ticket machine would not accept our bills, we decided to walk.

We arrived back in Keszthely at around 11:00pm, and once again felt sorry for ourselves as we had to run home in some really cold wind and rain.

The whether is not much better today, so we will split our time between our room, the grocery store, the hot tub, sauna, and the internet cafe.

Monday, April 10, 2006

Keszthely

As we mentioned before, our train ride from Ljubljana to Keszthely was very enjoyable. For the Slovenia segment we enjoyed mountain views while travelling along a river in a deep valley. Larissa fell in love with many of the small mountain towns we passed. Then we passed through the Croatian town of Zagreb, which looked larger than we had expected. It had many unique looking buildings, and we decided that we'll need to pay it a visit someday. As we entered Hungary the landscape became less mountainous. The fields and forrests here remind me of Michigan. Spring has arrived arrived here, as things look to be ready to bloom and blossom any day now.

It was almost dark when our train pulled into the Keszthely station. We didn't have any money in the right currency, and there wasn't an exchange or ATM at the train station. We did not know how to get to where we were to stay either, but we knew it was supposed to be close to the center of town. Since we didn't really have a choice, we just started walking towards town in hopes of finding something useful. Fortunately we came across a large sign showing a labeled map of the city. Eventually, just after dark, we found what we were looking for.

Keszthely is a resort town, situated on southwestern shores of Lake Balaton, which is Central Europe's largest lake. The lake is a popular summer vacation spot for all sorts of water activities, and Keszthely sees much of the action as it is the lake's biggest town. We are not here in summer, so the place is rather devoid of tourists. It is nonetheless a nice place to be.

There are hot springs all over Hungary. Many people believe the waters to possess healing characteristics. This among other factors have made thermal baths popular all over the country. Some of the most popular baths are located in the town of Heviz, which is a close neighbor of Keszthely. Thermal bath tourism is year-round, so many of the few tourists who are in Keszthely right now are likely here for the baths. Larissa and I have yet to explore Heviz, but we may get over there today.

We are staying in another timeshare, very generously provided by my Grandma. We are very happy with the place. The two windows on the middle-right belong to us.

We have a nice courtyard view.

We have a kitchen and a tv, which we really appreciate. We are indeed centrally located, within 100meters of the town's center walking streets. On the other side of us is a nice park which has some beautiful trails leading down to the lake.

We also have grocery stores and many restaurants within short walking distance. I got a large pizza yesterday for less than three dollars. From what we have read Hungary is around 30% cheaper for travellers than Slovenia. Our experience so far has led us to believe that this is the case.

We have already explored most of the town. The main place to visit here is the city's castle. We toured the castle grounds yesterday, while opting out of visiting its' several museums, one of which is the caste's wine cellar offering a taste of around 50 wines. Maybe if we could taste 50 kinds of salsa instead.

We are within few hours train ride of Vienna and Budapest. We are hoping to get to Budapest tomorrow, and perhaps Vienna on Thursday if our budget permits.

Larissa picked up a small Slovenian cookbook the other day. Last night she made some mushroom potato soup that turned out very good. I was impressed with her ability to make something so good with so few ingredients. There are many foods around here that we would like to try, but we are frustrated at not being able to read the ingredients first. Some things are in German, so Larissa can help us there, but otherwise we are in the dark. One way or another we will survive though. I am comforted at the fact that there are numerous pizza places around.

Hopefully we will be able to give you a trip report for Budapest and Heviz soon. Until then, thanks for reading and posting your comments.

Saturday, April 08, 2006

Ljubljana

We are now in Hungary. This post is about our time in Ljubljana. So that you can appreciate this post as much as possible, you must realize the difficulty I am having preparing it. It took me close to a minute to type that last sentance. I am typing on a European keyboard, so some of the keys are in the wrong place. If zou see some zs in the place of ys, please don't get too upset. Correct punctuation is also hard to achieve.

We arrived at the Llubljana airport Wednesday afternoon. Our bags did not arrive with our flight, which was quite worrisome for Larissa since her checked bag contained all of her warm clothes. She felt foolish wearing a short-sleeved shirt and flip flops when the temperature outside was just above freezing. While we waited for our bags to come (fortunately they came on the next flight, less than one hour later) a helpful girl at the airport tourist information desk helped us get our orientation and game plan for getting to our apartment. It turns out that there are tourist information centers at various places around the city. We have found them to be quite valuable. The airport was quite small, with only one gate.

The bus ride into the city was very scenic. We passed through some quaint little towns surrounded by farmland bordered by mountains of which we could only see the foothills. Larissa was obviously very glad to be in Europe, as she let out a controlled squeal every few minutes. We met an interesting lady on the bus from Romania. She was a chemist for the EPA in Slovenia on business. I was immediately uncomfortable by her presence as she tried to start up a conversation with Larissa about how there were "Nice men here." She assured us that she knew, because she had been looking carefully. She asked us where we had travelled from. Trying to keep things simple, we told her that we had come from the states. "And you come here?" she questioned, "I just hope that you are not on your honeymoon." When we told her that we were indeed on our honeymoon, she told us that we were for sure too young to be married.
Eventually we arrived at the central bus station, from where we managed to find our way to the tour agency through which we had booked our apartment. We were given a quick lift to our new home.

The lady who owns the place, and who lives next door, came and introduced herself and helped us get settled. It was a nice one bedroom bright place with a clean and well equipped kitchen. It also had satellite TV, but most of the channels were pay-per-view, or in the wrong language. We ended up watching a lot of CNN and the Travel Channel, which were our main English options. We were a little disturbed to be reminded that we still haven't shaken the travel bug. There are so many places we still need to go.

The next morning, despite the fact that it was snowing and raining, we were eager to get out and explore the city. We armed ourselves with our non-waterproof rain ponchos and our only sweaters, which seemed way to thin to get us through the hardships to come.

While we froze riding around town, we found the place to be very friendly to bicyclists. There are bike lanes on all the major roads, complete with little bike stop lights. There are also places to lock the bikes up wherever you might need them. Ljubljana is not a very big city. Its population is around 270,000. We found it easy to familiarize ourselves with the place, while seeing some of the major sights. This is the Ljubljanica river, which goes right through town.

One of the first places we stopped was a candy store. Larissa was a bit too tall for there overhead decorations, and managed to break a beautifully decorated egg. We felt obligated to buy some chocolate. We got some chocolate covered apples, peanuts, and some other kind of nuts. We also got what we thought to be chocolate covered strawberries, which turned out to be figs. We parked our bikes at the central market, which had very nice produce, and then enjoyed walking along the riverfront. The rivers around here, and much of central and eastern Europe are quite swelled right now. Fortunately Ljubljana is not having the flooding problems of many of the other cities around. For those of you who might be interested, there is apparently some good trout fishing in Slovenia. The most sought after species is the Soca Trout of the Soca river. Unfortunately a fishing liscense runs around 70 euro per day. I would be feeling really left out if the rivers were in fishable condition. Eventually we stopped in for Pizza at Pizzeria Ljubljanskia, or something like that. By this point in the day we were feeling quite rude for not being able to even get out a greeting in Slovene. We were determined to learn at least a few words while we were waiting for our family sized pizza to come. Larissa proved more resolute in learning the language than me. That is, she demanded that the book be centered in front of her, which happened to put it upside down for me. She would practice a word a few times, and then put the book at an angle so that I could try to learn the word in about a tenth of the time that she had had. Anyway, Larissa developed a useable vocabulary, while I never got past hello. It turned out that knowing how to say hello in Slovene (doberdan) proved not to be very helpful, as people would invariably rattle off some Slovene reply. The family sized pizza turned out to be truly family sized, the largest we have seen yet on our honeymoon.


We were both glad that both our lunch and our breakfast was taken care of. Unfortunately, we are big eaters, and around fifteen minutes later we were to heavy to move. Even after stuffing ourselves, we thought it necessary to stop by the grocery store on the way home for dessert supplies. That night we enjoyed some strawberries (very inexpensive at the Ljubljana central market) dipped in chocolata densa and custard.

We woke up to the sun breaking through the clouds. Our dreams had come true. We got out of the apartment as fast as possible and started our bikeride to the city castle, which stands atop a prominent hill.

We enjoyed climbing the castle tower for some excellent views of the city.

The snowpeaked mountains, unfortunately, were still covered by clouds. It was nice touring around the city in the sunshine.

We were in such good moods when we were heading home that we decided to stop in and grab some desserts. We got some Tiramisu and an apple strudel. So, we rode home contentedly, whith 2kgs of strawberries and a couple of desserts in tote.

The next day we decided to take a bike tour of some of the city's outskirts. There was a brightly colored hilltop church off in the distance that we were particularly interested in going to. Our ride soon tookus by a beautiful mansions that we both wanted a picture of. We noticed an American flag out-front, and then realized that it was the U.S. embassy. Larissa had the camera, so as always I put in my two cents in regard to what the best shooting angle would be. She was nervous though, asking "are you sure we can take pictures here," I laughed and poked fun at her a bit, just before an armed guard came up and politely told us that no pictures would be allowed.

We were able to ride most of the way to the hill-top church in Tivoli park, large well kept forrested area with nice trails.

There were a lot of people out and about, much different from the colder days before. We eventually made it to the church, which was nice, but prettier from afar.

We spent the rest of the day riding around various neighborhoods and enjoying the nice weather.

We had one more morning in Ljubljana before heading off to Hungary. The market was particularly lively. We enjoyed some traditional music and dance. We also bought a lot more fruit and vegetables. Many slovenes can speak German or Italian, so Larissa was having a great time at the market. I soon got frustrated, so I had to send her on purchasing missions for me. Here I am eating some Slovene fast food, a Burek, which is a cheese filled pastry type thing. It was quite hot, which is why my mouth looks deformed. Larissa ordered it in Slovene, which she is sure to remind me of often.

We also got some more fruits and vegetables. Larissa was particularly happy to get some blood oranges. She likes to rip apart the wedges and pretend that they are pieces of flesh. I guess everyone has carnivorous tendancies.

Early that afternoon we boarded an Italian train enroute to Budapest. We couldn't see any indication of class on our tickets, so we made ourselves comfortable in a first class compartment. About two hours later, after the best of the scenery had passed, we were told to move back to second class.