Ljubljana. Slovenia
We took a mid-day train from Salzburg to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, to join the package tour part of our vacation. The train ride was nice with mountain village/river scenery. The train stopped at the border, and the custom from each country came on board and inspected our passports. The Slovenia custom gave us an entry stamp, but the Austrian did not. As with many similar train/road border crossing we encountered in rest of our trip, exit stamps are rarely given (except at the airport). Sometime even entry stamps are not given unless you beg for it!
There were 3-4 high school/college year girls next to our compartment. They must be bored or something because they started to danced, crawled, hopped across our compartment. Our free entertainment of the ride.
We arrived in Ljubljana with very threatening sky of lightening and thunder. After collecting a map from the tourist info booth and withdrew some Slovenian Tolars from the ATM at the train
station, we started walking toward our hotel. My guide book (Best of Eastern Europe from Rick Steve of PBS) says to avoid taxi from stations and streets in most of the Eastern Europe as they usually over charge. Luckily through out our trip, our hotels are always within walking distance of train/metro/tram stations/stops.
After few miss-steps, we were able to get to our hotel just before the sky opened up! It just kept on raining for rest of the night.
I end-up roomed with my mom and Wendy with a female member (Terry) of our group (see Character entry for the people on our trip).
The room is very basic and beds are too soft to sleep, so most of the people did not get a good night sleep. I would give it 1 star at best; there were even worst accommodation to come. This is coming from 3-star hotel from Salzburg, mom and Wendy complained often for the next couple days.
We met everyone in our group (there were 13 of us) with exception of Paula for dinner this night. Our tour “leader” is a local guy named Jona, where few of the people in our group nicknamed Yoda. He has shaved head. He took us to a restaurant in the old part of the town where he said it was 10 minutes away from hotel. But it ended up some 20 minutes away. This was first of endless misinformation he would provide us. So everyone was pretty wet by the time we got to the restaurant with exception of me; I had umbrella, quick dry shorts, and sandals. Rain jacket without rain pants just does not cut it in a downpour.
Jona obvious knew the restaurant owner and most likely gets free meal for bring in a group. I am ok with tour leader eat free as long as we’re not over charged. But the waiter was impatient and unfriendly, and we’re charged 10 euro per person cover charge for bread, oil, and 4 sample dishes. The food was ok, and definitely not worth the price we paid for or the service we got. I guess in every country/city one needs to be ripped off once to get initiated. I blame Jona for taking us to his friend and not inform us of the local custom of cover charges for food.
One funny thing Jona told us at the dinner was that local people don’t like to work, but still like to get paid. This was to explain to us why the waiter was so unfriendly, the waiter gets paid regardless if there are customers or not, so he rather have none. This is foreshadowing of the majority of the service people we met on our trip and that of our tour leader in particular!
Next morning, we met for a short orientation and paid a local payment of 200 euro per person to Jona. He then showed us around the city for couple hours, and after that we’re all off to explore the city on our own.
Ljubljana is relatively new to the tourist circuit, most people visiting this city are independent or in small group like ours. So you still get to interact naturally with local people in shops and markets without the pollution of massive tourism. The old city center is also small, with a river running through it. So it is a pretty cool city for aimlessly stroll.
The only problem for us was the foggy and overcast weather. We visited most of the major tourist attractions, and basically just walk around the town with no real purpose or urgency.
We stopped for coffee, dessert breaks, as well as toilet breaks. Most of toilets in the European countries are not free, by end of the trip, we got smart. Instead just paying for the toilet and get nothing in return, we would stop at a café and order a drink/snack even if we’re not hungry, and all of us get to use the toilet for free.
At a lunch place, Ray spotted a waitress that looked like a young Michelle Pfeiffer. She commented that other people had made the same observation before as well. Her eyes definitely look like hers, anyway Ray posted with her for a picture.
The group went out to dinner again the 2nd night, but without Jona, which was busy with family matter. Collin and Kate took us to a friendly and decent place and no cover charge.
More Photos from Ljubljana....
There were 3-4 high school/college year girls next to our compartment. They must be bored or something because they started to danced, crawled, hopped across our compartment. Our free entertainment of the ride.
We arrived in Ljubljana with very threatening sky of lightening and thunder. After collecting a map from the tourist info booth and withdrew some Slovenian Tolars from the ATM at the train
station, we started walking toward our hotel. My guide book (Best of Eastern Europe from Rick Steve of PBS) says to avoid taxi from stations and streets in most of the Eastern Europe as they usually over charge. Luckily through out our trip, our hotels are always within walking distance of train/metro/tram stations/stops.After few miss-steps, we were able to get to our hotel just before the sky opened up! It just kept on raining for rest of the night.
I end-up roomed with my mom and Wendy with a female member (Terry) of our group (see Character entry for the people on our trip).
The room is very basic and beds are too soft to sleep, so most of the people did not get a good night sleep. I would give it 1 star at best; there were even worst accommodation to come. This is coming from 3-star hotel from Salzburg, mom and Wendy complained often for the next couple days.
We met everyone in our group (there were 13 of us) with exception of Paula for dinner this night. Our tour “leader” is a local guy named Jona, where few of the people in our group nicknamed Yoda. He has shaved head. He took us to a restaurant in the old part of the town where he said it was 10 minutes away from hotel. But it ended up some 20 minutes away. This was first of endless misinformation he would provide us. So everyone was pretty wet by the time we got to the restaurant with exception of me; I had umbrella, quick dry shorts, and sandals. Rain jacket without rain pants just does not cut it in a downpour.
Jona obvious knew the restaurant owner and most likely gets free meal for bring in a group. I am ok with tour leader eat free as long as we’re not over charged. But the waiter was impatient and unfriendly, and we’re charged 10 euro per person cover charge for bread, oil, and 4 sample dishes. The food was ok, and definitely not worth the price we paid for or the service we got. I guess in every country/city one needs to be ripped off once to get initiated. I blame Jona for taking us to his friend and not inform us of the local custom of cover charges for food.
One funny thing Jona told us at the dinner was that local people don’t like to work, but still like to get paid. This was to explain to us why the waiter was so unfriendly, the waiter gets paid regardless if there are customers or not, so he rather have none. This is foreshadowing of the majority of the service people we met on our trip and that of our tour leader in particular!
Next morning, we met for a short orientation and paid a local payment of 200 euro per person to Jona. He then showed us around the city for couple hours, and after that we’re all off to explore the city on our own.
Ljubljana is relatively new to the tourist circuit, most people visiting this city are independent or in small group like ours. So you still get to interact naturally with local people in shops and markets without the pollution of massive tourism. The old city center is also small, with a river running through it. So it is a pretty cool city for aimlessly stroll.
The only problem for us was the foggy and overcast weather. We visited most of the major tourist attractions, and basically just walk around the town with no real purpose or urgency. We stopped for coffee, dessert breaks, as well as toilet breaks. Most of toilets in the European countries are not free, by end of the trip, we got smart. Instead just paying for the toilet and get nothing in return, we would stop at a café and order a drink/snack even if we’re not hungry, and all of us get to use the toilet for free.
At a lunch place, Ray spotted a waitress that looked like a young Michelle Pfeiffer. She commented that other people had made the same observation before as well. Her eyes definitely look like hers, anyway Ray posted with her for a picture.
The group went out to dinner again the 2nd night, but without Jona, which was busy with family matter. Collin and Kate took us to a friendly and decent place and no cover charge.
More Photos from Ljubljana....
posted by Jonathan @ 4:07 PM
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