Ljubljana old town

Ljubljana old town
Originally uploaded by laugelina.

I know this look just like any corner in any old town... but I cannot help to like this, the combination of cracked, colour-fading walls and the window's frames painted in bright colours, and there... in that uniformity, in that handmade restoration, in the trace of intellectuality I see in the untidy bookshelves and old posters in the interiors when I spy through the windows, and the smell and the stagnant air in the hallways where a cat lingers, or the other cat that sleeps in a worn out wooden doorstep, there I sense that bohemian picture or life (to me so often equivalent) I imagined thinking in Europe when I was young, or when reading Rayuela, or looking for the remnant of old times in modern southamerican cities.

In Ljubljana everything is so relax that is hard to believe it is the capital of a country. (I said that before...) Everybody seems to have plenty of time, there are people chatting in every corner and they seem to be happy, always smiling.

Ljubljana

Ljubljana
Originally uploaded by laugelina.

I was excited about getting to know my first eastern europe city, but I soon realized that Ljubljana, as the rest of Slovenia, looked more similar to the type of western old towns I have seen.

Everything in the city goes around the river, and I was lucky enough to find a hostel right upstairs the oldest cafe in town, just by the river.
It turned out to be a very noisy place to spend a night, but I wouldn't complaint about watching the lights in the river from my windows, or being so close to everything.

The city was quite small, I thought to small to be the capital of a country. And it was so extremely peaceful. I was there monday to wednesday morning, walking around the centre, the market place, the hall, and it all seemed like a perpetual sunday... the busiest place I saw were the many cafes around the river. from very early in the morning up to very late in the night.

There were so many bicycles in the city, but the problem with them is that people would ride everywhere including sidewalks so you couldn't just ramble around but walk paying extreme atention.

The ice-creams were so good, just like in Italy, only that I had to spend som time working out the names of the flavours.

the lake

Bled
Originally uploaded by laugelina.

Monday morning I was leaving to Ljubljana, but the rain had stopped sunday evening, and now Monday was sunny. Sun changes everything, at least in this place. I thought I couldn't leave early and miss to swim in the lake.
It was a bit chilly though, so I went to do the walk around the lake.
There were so many boats around to rent and I regretted that I was alone in my hike and I wouldn't hire a boat on my own (too tiring!)
I paid to be taken to the Island to see the church. The church is said to have a 1000 years, and the little Island was beautiful.

I kept walking when I came back to the island, looking for a spot to get to swim. I got there. And the water was bit cool but extremely clear, and I enjoyed so much to immerse my self in those quiet and transparent waters, at last.
There were children around, and ducks, and swams! I swimmed with swams!

Just before I left Bled i went back to the patiserrie shop, which was wonderful besides the Krema Rezina, and I got another Slovenian classic, POPILCA (I think) which is a cake made of yeast dough filled with a paste of walnuts and cinammon and raisins, and rolled like a swiss roll and baked in a tin.
That was very good and I will try to reproduce it.

So early in the afternoon, me and the australian farmer took the bus to LjubLjana.

Vintgar

Vintgar
Originally uploaded by laugelina.

As it kept raining on saturday's afternoon and evening, I mainly stayed in the hostel, though I ran under the rain to a nearby patisserie shop to get the well recommended Krema Rezina, a classic slovenian cake, that apparently originated in this shop at Bled.

However the cake was a quite simple cake (as with most classics) too simple I'd say, and rather boring, or not sweet enough. It consisted in a thick layer of cream patissiere (or a similar vanilla cream) and another thicker layer of a soft whipped cream, all topped with a thin layer of puff pastry.

Sunday was still rainy, but I decided that I wouldn't stay all the time in the hostel just because it was raining. Plus, a spanish couple I had met the night before had given me a plastic poncho for rain.
So after a morning walk around the town with them (when I took pictures of all the houses I liked) I decided to make my way to the gorge Vintgar. I got a lift up there and then walked on my own.

That was so beatiful. I remembered when I was a child and my parents used to take us to the mountains and we will always go to places like this. I wished, as I used to wish before, the water was warmer because it will be just perfect to swin in such place.

On my way back I thought I could cross cut to the other side of the lake and then walk along the bank. I think I was actually close but however I lost my way, so I had to come back using the main road.
I thought that was a very long walking, and even with the rain, when I got to the hostel I was so tired.

However when I got there I met new people in the room, and one canadian girl invited me to go up the hill to the castle... I can believe I said yes, and not only went up the hill but joined her for a walk around the lake in which we did about a third of it (it takes about 2 hours to complete the round)

I felt great about being able to do more that I would have thought, and even more that I was willing to do, but also I felt a bit ashamed about having such a wasted body with almost useless muscles.

I meet some nice people in this hostel, there where lots of english around, but I meet two australian women, one of them a farmer who was very sociable and gentle, and somehow inspired me to start moving my body a bit.
I hope I will be able to keep inspired as I go back to london, or a least feel inspired when I moved to St andrews.

Bled lake

Bled lake
Originally uploaded by laugelina.

On saturday early I took the train to Ljubljana, to go from there to Bled.
The trains are great, very clean and unexpensive, but curiously slower than the buses. How ever I had to take the train because there where no morning buses to Ljubljana from Koper on Saturdays.

In Ljubljana I took the bus to Bled as soon as I got to the station, it was hot, and I thought in trying to make it to Bled early enough as to plunge into the lake...
So I got there about 2:30 pm and I was delight to find the town so alike the place I use to spend my holidays as a child and teen. (Pucon, para los que saben)
It even smelled just the same.

It was a great thing to me for few reasons to go back to that summer's holidays when I was a child, or a girl, and the things I dreamed about, the things I thought, wondered and desired.
Especially the things I desired. I believe the things one desires speak a lot about who one is...

The hostel was so nice and cosy, lots of wood, and even handmande embroidered curtains (Again, it reminded me the time when I use to do embroidery)
I got first to the room so I could choose bed which is great.
I couldn't wait to see the lake so I put on my swin suit and hurried down town. But as I reached the park by the lake it started raining very heavily, so that was it. I had to come back to the hostel, but at least I treated myself with slovenian national honey liqueur.

Piran

Piran
Originally uploaded by laugelina.

On friday I was off to Piran just for the day. It is an old mediaeval town and it´s literaly the tip of Slovenia cost. This part of the cost belonged to Italy before the WWII, so that means that old people still speak italian, there is excellent pasta, pizzas, coffe and ice cream all over the places, and even information is written in slovenin and italia, as the street names.

From the bus I could see more houses with vegetable gardens and vineyards... I love them so much. I wonder if I could grow something in St andrews.
This is a very green country.

Piran doesnt have beach, as any other town in Slovenia cost, not even Croatia cost have sand beaches, Im told.
But it was hot and sunny and lovely, and I only wanted to swin at last.
So I did and it was wonderful.

After that I walked the town, and up the hill to the church. I thought a lot in the people´s lifesyles, in towns like that, how do they organize their lifes. (Me acorde tanto de ti Karen)
I also thought in my friends that were not there with me, and I thought in all I wanted to share.. and felt lonely for the first time in this journey.

To compensate, I guess, I went for a two course dinner, and I had delicious gnocci with scampi, and then more of grilled squid, they are just the best squid I´ve ever had.
As I was living Piran, and the sun was setting on the sea, I felt a kind of happiness, for all the summer feelings, the sun, the water, the sea breeze, and also the oportunity to see new things.

Koper

Koper
Originally uploaded by laugelina.

In Koper I only stayed in the old town. It is quite small and still have one of its many mediaeval gates. A very peculiar thing is that there is many, but seriously many little curches so little that probably only three people can be inside at the same time. They dont even have sittings. It is just an altar really. I never seen something like that before. I wonder if the people of old had this little churches as a place of daily worship and the big church in the centre of the town for sundays only.

It is quite odd that while the coffee, the wine and the ice creams cost really just pennys, the internet is so expensive. It's about 3 to 4 pound an hour. Also very strange is that to do the laundry in a hostel can cost you about 6 pounds for a wash.

In Koper I had Herbal tea for breakfast, Lemonbalm to be presise (Cedron o Toronjil) and abundant bread and honey. It's been at least 4 years since I last had Lemon balm herbal tea.

EVEYBODY in Slovenia smoke, and smoke is allowed everywhere. Being the coffee so cheap this place would have been my paradise some 5 weeks ago.
Im still not totally sure if is really better going from a coffee and cigarrettes diet to a coffee and Slovenian patisserie plus ice creams, pizzas and seafood diet.

Slovenia!!

Wow, I actually felt little nervous just before taking my train to Trieste (Italy) before taking my bus to Koper, my first Slovenian city.
As soon as I crossed things changed in a way that I can't yet describe. I Only know that every house I passed had a vegetable garden and a small vineyard (una huerta y una parra)
Every house. I could see the cabages, the lettuces, or the runner beans, the courgettes... The land was so green, but was different from England, it was not just grass and trees nicely organized. This was a disorganized mixture of vegetables, grass, flowers, and trees. Disorganiyed but not untidy, no ugly, but beatiful.I know I can't describe it very well. It looked more like Southamerica though.

I arrived about 6 pm to an almost empty bus station with most information written in slovenian (or slovankan?, they call their language "slonvesko") and some in Italian, which I fortunately understand, but none of it seemed to be relevant, and I had no idea where to go to "town centre" ( the station was outside town, and I didnt know that)
So finally I guy that spoke english approched me to offer a taxi lift into town, which I accepted, feeling rather grateful. Later I found out that he ripped me off, though I only paid about 1.60 pounds for that lift.
I got into town and after a short walk I got to the hostel. It looked like a hospital, but they spoke english, and where very kind. The hostel has 380 rooms and only 4 of them are single, and I was given one!! that was so good, it meant that I could live all my stuff in the room and not worry about it.

Koper is rather small, at least the Old Town, which is where I was and stayed. I walk around for a little while and then headed to one of the lonely planet's well recomended restaurants for my first slovenian treat: grilled squid. (callamares grillados) They where the most delicious squid I ever had. When I was at the restaurant, eating in the terrace, it start raining so badly that I feared I wouldn't be able to go back to the hostel. But then stoped and everything was fine.
One very odd thing is that at the restaurant I paid about 1 pound for cover (the service) about 1.90 pounds for the french fries, and only 50p for a glass of wine!!
the same for a expresso all over slovenia, 40 to 60p, and the best is that they charge you the same for a double expresso.

Levico Terme

when I was in London planning this trip I thought I wanted to see how a lake in the mountains looked like in Europe, since it is the kind of holiday I had throughout my childhood, and it's been ages since I've last seen a lake. So we moved from Venice north to Levico Terme, at small town. I found trains in Italy quite cheap... we pay about 6 pounds for a 3 hours trip, though they where also slow. We get there in the afternoon, and after living outr bags in the hotel we went for a walk, and there was such a light, and flowers in the balconies of the alps style houses, and the fresh smell of grass, in general it wasn't to different from the litlle towns I used to go in south america (Pucon, aunque quizas mas parecido a San martin de los andes, la onda italiana quizas) though this was an old place.

Im still waiting for the paypal account to activate, because apparently I bought one year membership in flickr, so I could upload all the photos, but Im still waiting for it to work... I have taken so many photos! (THANKS NATE AND BECCA)

and the acuatic streets...

and the acuatic streets...
Originally uploaded by laugelina.

After sleeping a siesta and recovering from the heat we went to walk again around Venice, this time to the Rialto area, which is full of shops, and clearly... full of turists, so we escaped to the lest popular side where the market is in the mornings. There are such fine bulding in Venice... I so much missed my friend Karen to ilustrate me about it all. (o simplemente para imaginarnos que andabamos buscando casa Karen, de entre esas casas)
There we first used the traghetto, which is a gondola that only crosses to the other side of the canal. Then we took the vaporetto to the Ponte dell' Academia, and walked the area until we found a restaurant in the water (on a wooden platform, I guess) that happended to be part of the hotel where apparently Hemingway stayed to write a book.

That was wonderful, to sit and have dinner just in the water, seeing the light fade away in the late afternoon and Guidecca Island in front, and the ships and vaporettos and gondolas going by... It was so peaceful.

Then Vaporetto again to the piazza San Marco, where we listened to some romantic songs sung at different caffes as we walk through the square.

Venice - Arrival

Venice - arrival
Originally uploaded by laugelina.

I think it will take long before I can say fully describe what I've seen, thought and felt being in this place...

First I didnt even know that Venice was a island, I thought i was part of the continent. There is a looong kind of bridge that comunicates with the continent. We arrived there by bus from Treviso airport. Once in the bus station we walked to the bank and there it was... the acuatic world with all the gondolas and taxis and little ships... we took the Vaporetto, which is the bus there, and make our way to Piazza San Marco. The bus goes in circles around venice and inside venice by the Gran Canal, so it didnt matter at this point what direction to take. Getting to the piazza some 20 min later was an amazing thing, however small, I felt as a traveller from the past coming from long distances... at least I thought in what they (the past travellers) would have seen and felt when they where comming here. I can't describe it very well (and I dont have much time to think about the right words in this cybercafe, im sorry)

We stayed in the hotel I found through the internet, just on the back of the Piazza, so it was great location. As we arrived quite early in the morning, we just droped our bags and went to wander around the city. I love that, just walk without using the map. So we walked and crossed so many little bridges, seeing the canals and peoples and gondolas, the houses of fading colors, with long windows and some with red flowers, we saw the house in which Marco Polo lived apparently, and then we decided to eat a pizza. After that a little more walking after I decide to ask someone where (in the map) were we. And then we made our way back.