A JAUNT INTO SLOVENIA

LIZ SAYS:Adrian was hot to visit Lubijana. We’d never been. I’d never even thought of going so, what better to do! The drive was very Brothers Grimm. Lots of deep, dark forest. Adrian and Dick kept talking about bear paw stew. This is not sounding like Liz’s cup of tea. When we arrived at Lubijana, which had changed on the highway signs to ‘Lj.’, it was a bright spot in the forest. It had a sweet center. 3 pedestrian bridges, brightly painted houses, ‘Liberty’ style buildings, a wide wagon wheel shaped center with cobbled streets radiating out with a church, cafes, restaurants, and benches all around. Unfortunately, one of the first things I saw was a man reading the paper and puking 3 times in a row without moving, wiping or changing his position. Okay, then... . It was al at once beautiful and harsh. It seemed like the brief but lovely part was almost like a movie set. Sort of like the village in the original Prisoner TV series. Lovely, but. Adrian and Frederic wanted to see the castle which was straight up to the sky. Fortunately there was a great funicular, always fun. We did have a hilarious boat tour of the river. Adrian had visited the Tourist Info Center and found there was a boat tour, it was just beginning to rain, the boat was covered, geez, what to do. Once on the boat, the rain started, light but we were happy to be covered nonetheless. The tour guide decided out loud to speak English because most onboard could understand the language. He pointed out some buildings we could barely see “because of the leaves on the trees, it is better to see in winter.” Then, his cell rung. He answered and chatted for about 5 minutes. The boat floated slowly. The rain softly pattered on the windows. Oh, yes, now we were back on track, except that the ‘tour guide’ was getting wet because the rain was getting on him, causing him to yell at the poor boat driver who was all of 17, at the most. After finding out that Frederic was French, he went on and on about not being invited to some Bastille Day affair. Oh, phone rings. By now, we were just enjoying being out of the rain and on a very slow moving boat, after all, the tour guide had lost the thread. The most beautiful bit of the tour was the Dragon Bridge, an Art Deco/ Liberty structure, which we were all prepared to photograph when the boat made a u turn right under it, so you could not see it at all. So, if you ever visit Lj. Do take the boat tour! Another must is the local food, if you like sausages, period. I could not begin to eat my lunch, which was supposed to be veal. The mustard is lighter than yellow American mustard and there were several sausages. Dick liked the spicy blood sausage, I am not that brave. Adrian had some gray beige slice on his plate called buckwheat mash dumpling, once again, not that brave. You must like beer. The boys said the beer was great. The wine was sweet and not to my taste at all. We walked to see the Dragon Bridge, the very interesting Liberty structures and that was Lj..