Slovenia Part 2...Postojna, Piran.

(Mon. Dec. 14th- Tue. Dec. 15th)

So we had a low-key day followed by an epic day. The low-key day was more walking around Ljubljana. It had snowed a lot the night before, which was nice. Though the snow was kinda wet.

Here's the entrance to our hostel (the sign for it) and our red Renault Megane rental car. Not a bad car, had a six-cylinder which was nice (it was a free upgrade). It was stick also, which was also nice, and not an Opel Astra, which is basically a Saturn, which is basically a Chevy. So I didn't want that :)

Now THIS is funny. I had NEVER seen people use umbrellas for snow. At first I thought it was just one or two weird older people, but then realized it was everyone...and actually felt kinda out of place for NOT having an umbrella. But I don't usually feel terribly hurt, soaked, or inconvenienced by snow, so wouldn't really think to need an umbrella...

More walking. A bridge with a dragon on it. Apparently the symbol of the city. Reminds me of the basilisk in Basel.

Some church door that had a very shiny knob.

Guess where we are again. That's right, Cajna Hisa.

Here's me having a delicious Mexican coffee (tequila, Kahlua, and some nutmeg or something on top) to warm up a bit.

Tiffany got some kinda apple tea thing, it was loose apple chunks in a tea thing sitting in the top of the mug. Odd. She was happy about it though.

And then she decided we should get some cheesecake, and she got some chocolatey mousse thing. As you might have noticed, there was a lot more food breaks/small splurges ;)

Later in the evening (I really don't know what we did the whole day, but what the heck) we drove out to where Tiffany's grade school was. We also saw the house her family lived in for a couple years there.

Then we went back to the city center. Love the lights. In the foreground, part of the reproduction theme, is a giant "egg" with tiny sperms swimming around it. Wow. Thankfully the theme didn't get any more explicit than that...

The next day, Tuesday, it was time for some adventures. We left town, in our rental car that Tiffany was driving, and headed to the small towns.

On down the empty road through the snowy tree covered hills.

The dashboard. Yeah I like car interior design. Even if its boring, its different than what we have in the US. And it had one of those keyless ignitions, it had this wide card that hadta be inserted into the dash. Confused Tiffany :)

The first place we got to, not too far away, was Postojna caves. Tiffany had been before. Said it was worth it- sure what the heck, it'd also be 55 degrees down there :) We crossed this river on a little bridge over to the cave entrance- it was windy and FREEZING.

We just missed one of the tour times, so hadta go wait in the hotel/restaurant/lobby for the next one. Sat and had a coffee. I got pissed at my hat. Side story is that I dropped my Keenan Hall winter hat that I've had for like 6 years, in St. Peter's in Rome. And was busy enough that I forgot to go back and check their lost and found. So I bought a new hat in the market in Ljubljana. But it was long and folded weird.

So I got annoyed trying to figure it out. Tiffany thought it was funny.

Inside was a big thing where you could drop money in for donations. Thought it was cool because there was a lot of different currency. Tiffany recognized Slovene money in there.

Finally got into the cave. Here's a map of the whole place- we were only exploring a small portion of the whole thing. Pretty huge place really. And we saw a lot. You'll see.

A cool start- we got on this roller-coaster ride thing that zipped us down down down into the cave, snaking through tunnels to get us to a good starting point. The ride was cool too! Went through small tunnels where I thought I could reach up and touch the rocks...

And here are lots of pictures of big rooms with giant hanging stalactites.

Also lots of cool columns/stalagmites too growing up from the ground.

This was the soda straw room, or something like that.

That's a pretty big column of deposited stone.

This one is transparent!

Amazing thing is, this cave is so huge, with so many tunnels, they showed us places where troops were hiding out during WW(II I think...) and they said people from both sides were in different parts of the cave and never found each other :)

This is a naturally occurring pacifier in the wild.

This rod connected top to bottom. Not bad.

Also some "cave sheep". They were setting up for a Christmastime reenactment of the Birth of Christ, IN the cave. I didn't remember that he was born in a cave, with flocks of sheep, but I guess they'd know better than I...

Finally after hours in these huge caverns, spending most of my time with my mouth open taking pictures, we made it back up and out to the exit. Also decorated with Christmas lights. I love blue. It looked awesome.

This was back outside, and you can tell by Tiffany's expression, how cold and windy it was out there :)

I liked this photo cause it was the opposite of what you'd expect- usually it'd be footprints IN the snow, and the snow would melt there first or be stomped down, but I guess since it was compacted, the fluffy snow around it blew away or melted. Looks cool, and unexpected.

On the way to our second adventure, also in Postojna, the Postojna Castle.

Kinda out in the middle of nowhere...

And there's the glorious castle. Tiffany had been there too. Not actually THAT big, as castles go, but hey, its built into a cave. C'mon. That's awesome.

Funny how small it looks from far back. But you can see all the windows...

Inside, there weren't any amazing large rooms, just lots of little ones and quite a few floors. A couple bigger rooms, but nothing amazing or castle-y really. A tiny door though...

I liked this stairway a lot. Many stairs go up like this through a wall, but because of the way the white wall was stuccoed, it felt a lot different- like the stairs were just a hole cut into the wall. Felt more like a secret passage or something for some reason. I'll remember that detail for future architecture...

This was the biggest room. I liked the inset window seats a lot.

Here was a peak out the cave, from in the castle- an open spot, up a staircase to a lookout spot.

Which finally took us to an open little balcony area overlooking the little valley. Nice.

And I found a big icicle.

And started roleplaying with it.

Tiffany was enjoying it.

Deeper within the recesses of the castle, we found another nativity thingy- this whole scene built in a room, with rolling hills, a stream, light up houses, pretty cool. Especially when I started flipping switches and turning things on...we were literally the only ones touring the castle. It was quiet around there.

Here's some little sheeps.

Another composited photo from like 9 of them, which you can tell because of the chopped corners. Good job, Photoshop.

Our car, once again. My turn to drive. (We hadta get international driver's licenses to make sure we were legal to do this).

And off we drove to Piran, a coastal town on the Adriatic, pretty close to Trieste, Italy, which we could see down the coastline, lit up. Piran was a small town, with a winding road down the hill to get into it (which took us a little while to figure out, because the map wasn't clear, signs weren't clear, and we were ending up in dead-end neighborhoods on narrow one-way roads trying to turn around with cars behind us!)

Here was Piran from up above, as we were making our way down there. Apparently quite a touristy little place, because they had expensive parking that you had to pay for before you could even get through the gate on the one road that went down into the old town center itself.

Pretty little town. See the church up on the hill? We went up there eventually...

The city center, down in the center of all those lights in the previous picture. Nice lights. Nice little town square. Quaint looking church. WINDY AS HELL in this town. Right on the water. In December.

We made it up through a little neighborhood to the church. WOW the wind was INCREDIBLE!! Like I thought I was gonna be blown over. I couldn't hear anything. I could barely walk. Tiffany was standing in front of the lights with her coat billowing. It was like I'd imagine being at sea in a storm. Wind-wise, anyway...

A view of the town square from up at the church.

When we got down from the church, wandering through the little neighborhood (cobblestone "streets" as wide as sidewalks, lots of little steps and archways leading under buildings to people's front doors, we could even see into their little houses, pretty cool!). We walked back from the end of the water's edge, below the church, back towards the town center, and passed a couple restaurants. It was time for dinner. They had a fireplace. It was empty but the place looked awesome.

We got hot wine and delicious pasta. Not *too* expensive. My food, a salmon alfredo gnocchi, was one of the most wonderful dishes I've ever had. I still remember exactly what it tasted like (a *little* too salty) and we took our leftovers with us. Left them outside the window of our hostel so they'd stay cold :)

Look at that fireplace. Oh yes and Tiffany was happy also ;) You can see that we also ordered Bitter Lemon again, behind the bread. Sweet.

That basically ended our night- we walked back to the car, drove back to the hostel, went to beddy-bye time. Had another big day ahead of us :)