To London

On Monday, September 5th, we had breakfast with Ivana, who wasn’t leaving until 11:00, then went out for a last look at Ljubljana. We went to the market, where we bought some cheese and some sandwiches, for the flight. Then we had an early lunch (good) right at the fish market, at Ribca, known as Ljubljana’s best seafood restaurant.

We had ordered the airport shuttle for 1:30, but ended up with a taxi all to ourselves. EasyJet check-in was uneventful, and eventually, we were off to England.

We arrived at Stansted around 5:30, collected our luggage, and did not get pounds from an ATM. We had around thirty pounds left over from the last time we were in the U.K., and all the ATMs were Moneycorp, the exchange bureau that has the contract for Stansted. We already had tickets for the Stansted Express, so we got on the train and rode it to the end of the line, Liverpool Street Station. We found the Underground station and there bought two Oyster cards, paying five pounds apiece as a deposit and putting fifteen pounds apiece on for use. Two days later, we added another fifteen, but we ended up getting more than nine of it back, along with the deposit, when we turned the cards in at the Heathrow Underground station. What is an Oyster card? It’s a stored-value transit card that allowed us to use the Underground or buses at a substantial discount, without having to buy tickets. You just slapped the card on the reader at the turnstiles when entering and leaving the “Tube.”

We took the Central Line to Tottenham Court Road, and there changed for the Northern Line. Most tube line transfers involve going up and down stairs, and this was no exception to the rule. As I was carrying my suitcase down a flight of stairs, Mary Joy was apparently having difficulty getting hers down, behind me. A British woman, tall and strongly built, just picked up her suitcase for her and carried it down! “I saw you were have trouble,” she said, and continued on her way. How very considerate!

We caught the train and got off at Goodge Street. We walked the four or five blocks from there to the Arosfa Hotel, one of a line of hotels in townhouses along the west side of the street. We had stayed there before, in 2011, and liked it. It is very pleasant, quiet (with two sets of windows working very well to shut out the street noise), has a very good breakfast and is well located, in Bloomsbury, a few blocks from the British Museum. The only negative was that Room 12 was one of the smallest hotel rooms we’ve ever had, even smaller than the room at the Legend in Paris. But it worked.

We decided to go out to a well-reviewed pizza place on Tottenham Court Road. Franco Manca did indeed make very good pizza, and the atmosphere, even out at a table on the street, was pleasant. And the bill ended up being less than my thirty pounds!

Sunday in Ljubljana

On Sunday morning, September 4th, after breakfast, Mary Joy and I went first to the Franciscan Church of the Annunciation, the big pink church on Preseren Square, but it was jammed to the gills and mass had already started, so we went to the Cathedral, which was practically empty until just before mass, and then it suddenly had many more people. There was a male choir singing what sounded like a 19th-century German Romantic mass setting, in Latin. At the end, the priest thanked them with “Danke schoen!” so presumably it was a visiting choir from somewhere in Germany or Austria. We’ve found that in Europe in the summer at Sunday mass, you’re more likely to hear a foreign choir on tour than the choir of that parish.

We had to scramble to meet other people from our group for a boat ride on the river, narrated in both Slovenian and English. It was pleasant, but while I’ve been on more boring boat tours, this was definitely not anywhere near being exciting.

We had lunch at the same restaurant (named Sokol—which means “falcon”) where we had eaten the previous evening.

We went up the funicular (not nearly as short as the one in Zagreb!) to the Castle. The most interesting thing there is the Puppet Museum, which is very hands-on. If we’d had time we could have put on a puppet show! Marionettes are apparently a very big thing in Slovenia. This museum is less extensive but more fun than the one in Lyon.

After we went back down, and Mary Joy washed her hands at a fun kangaroo water fountain at the foot of the hill, we went back to our hotel.  On the way, Mary Joy thought that there was a concert going on in Annunciation Church, but it was only the end of the late-afternoon mass. After freshening up, went to have a Farewell Drink with the group and, talk about the tour, giving Ivana feedback.

Then we walked into the Old Town, where we were surprised to find ourselves met by costumed dancers, dancing outside a pizzeria! This was the restaurant for our Farewell Dinner, serving a Slovenian Dinner (okay) with dancers who got us all dancing. There was a funny game, where a group stood in a circle, all wearing hats, and to the rhythmic music and clapping each would take the hat of his right-hand neighbor and put it on his own head, going faster and faster, until someone goofed it up and was expelled from the circle. Neither Mary Joy nor I won. It was a fun evening.

When we got back to the hotel we said goodbye to most of the others, who would have to catch a taxi to the airport at 5:00 a.m. Mary Joy and I, on the other hand, wouldn’t have to leave until 1:30, and Ivana had been kind enough, without prompting, to get the hotel to let us keep our room until 1:00.