Our tour director is a wonderful young woman named Tina. She is 39 years young, and cute as a button. She runs a 'tight' ship to keep us on schedule. If we are late for a meeting time, we have to sing a song; if 5 minutes late, we have to buy everyone a drink, 10 minutes late, you buy lunch, and if fifteen minutes late, the bus will leave without you!
So we met Tina at the hotel lobby on time, and she introduced us to Helena, who was a local guide who was taking us on a walking tour of the old city area in Ljubliana. She showed us different buildings and their history, and beautiful farmers market with fresh fruits and vegetables, along with a beautiful flower market. There was a vending machine there that provides fresh, non processed, non pasteurized milk. It will cleanse the customers container, or they can purchase a container from the machine. They said that many people come every day to get the fresh milk.
We went by a Ljubljana Cathedral of St. Nicholas which had the most interesting tarnished bronze doors. In front of this church, she told a story of how she was hired to help a person from Pueblo Colorado find his grandparents village in Slovenia. The grandfather had been hired by a US mining company to work in the Colorado mines. As he worked in the US, he would send a portion of his earnings to his relatives in the US. He eventually returned to Slovenia, to marry and bring his wife to the US with him. He continued to send care packages to the Slovenia family, and even once sent a radio. It made the Slovenia relatives the envy of the village. As she shared each segment of the story, Nora and Matt smiled in amazement and looked at each other. This story could of been told about their grandfather. It was fun to see their faces light up with each sentence !
Next stop was the Predjama Castle. This stop brought us to Slovenian rolling hills. This castle was build into a cave opening. Very interesting and pretty area. The story goes that a Slovenian 'Robin Hood" lived in the castle with his family for some time. He could hide in various tunnels and exits when his enemies tried to capture him. One of his servants betrayed him, and informed the enemy that the best time to get him is in the evening when he had his daily constitution in the outside potty. He lost his life while sitting on that potty.
Next stop was the Postojna Caves. What was nice about these caves was the train ride that would take us down into the cave, and back up. The cave formations were spectacular, like they are in most caves. They did do a great job of lighting the features, and making the pathways very walk-able. At the end, there was a gift shop, so I decided to get some family postcards. Nora and Pam waited for us. We decided to run to the bathroom before we got on the bus. Unfortunately, it caused us to be a few minutes late, and we ended up signing Old McDonald had a farm!
We arrived in the beautiful town of Piran Slovenia and the Hotel Piran where we were staying the night. Piran, and our hotel, are on the Adriatic Sea. Just a beautiful little town. I walked around the concrete boardwalk as Matt napped in the room. Nora and Pam went to the hotel roof for a glass of wine. We met Tina about 7 pm, and she took us on a walking tour of the city, as she had lived in the city for a number of years. Our destination was the church of St George, that sat on the top of the hill overlooking the town and the sea. It was a wonderful view from there. The only problem was that it was dark earlier that she remembered, and we needed to go down about 60 stone steps to get back to the water level where we were all having dinner. Thank goodness for the flashlight on our phones. It helped a few of the older people, like me, see where we were placing our feet.
The dinner at the restaurant was very good, but not for Matt. He was a great sport, but just could not eat all the 'fishy' things they served, as it was a fixed dinner. He ate the sliced tuna appetizer, and the pasta with salmon, but the fish fillet and calamari was not to his liking.
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