To get from the entrance to the best part of the cave, you ride a train. Then you follow a one-way route that takes you around and back again to the train station. We were given an audio guide, but I listened very little to mine, because I was too busy taking pictures. Then lens I had normally been using with my new DSLR camera was an 18 mm, to 55 mm. zoom, but for the cave, where neither flash nor tripod was allowed, I used my 50 mm. fixed lens, which could get to a substantially lower f-stop number, allowing me to use a faster shutter speed, minimizing blurring from jiggle. I ended up taking over a hundred pictures there.
We had lunch (not great—including canned fruit cocktail—but what would you expect?) onsite, at one of the eateries along the sales strip leading to the door of the cave. Then we drove to nearby Predjama Castle, the “castle-in-a-cave,” for a photo op.
From there, we went on to Ljubljana, the very pleasant capital and largest city of Slovenia, checking into the Hotel Lev (“Lion” in Slovenian). Slovenian is a Slavic language, like Serbo-Croat, but the two languages are not mutually intelligible. Ivana would remark, when we were on Lake Bled, that when she heard the boatmen there talking with one another, the only thing she could understand was their cursing, which, for some reason, was done in Italian.
After freshening up, we went on a walking tour with an old guy who was the funniest and quirkiest local guide on the trip. You can’t visit Ljubljana without hearing the name Joze Plecnik, the architect who remolded the city in an Art Nouveau style in the 1920s and ‘30s. He is especially known for the Triple Bridge—three bridges, next to one another, crossing the Ljubljana River at different angles at Preseren Square, the main square of the Old Town. And towering over it all, on a steep hill at the very center of the city, is Ljubljana Castle.
Afterwards, we ate at a restaurant with outdoor seating, near the Cathedral. Several people had and liked the octopus salad. Mary Joy and I had soup (she mushroom, I onion, in hollowed out bread loaves.
On the way back to the hotel, Ivana pointed out a “milk-o-mat”—a machine vending unpasteurized milk, fresh from the country, into containers that you either brought or bought from the machine.
We crossed a bridge whose pavement along either railing was made of glass. This was a bridge that, like the Pont des Arts in Paris (until the city government had had enough and cleared it off), had hundreds of locks locked toits railings, put there by lovers to show their commitment to one another. We stopped for ice cream along the way at the street stand outside a dessert restaurant called Cacao.
No comments:
Post a Comment