A cup of coffee (cappuccino): €2.50 ($A3.75)

Slovenia deserves its own fair treatment; it’s an interesting place. But I’ve gone on too long.

We were in Ljubljana, its capital, for two nights because of the complicated way you need to go to get from Zagreb to Venice (via Villach in Austria: three train trips and four hours on a bus). We hadn’t been to Slovenia and wanted a look.

The story would be: exhausted the tourist resources on the first afternoon. They had their own interest. A national historical collection of Slovenian art is not just the same as such a thing elsewhere.

Next day we had a walk through the suburbs, ate brilliant burek at a fast food joint where the owner was very surprised to have customers who could only point and smile, found all sorts of things we hadn’t planned on including a bit of the old city which we wouldn’t have known about otherwise, a functioning rather than a decorative bit.

The coffee was good, the sun shone. Myrna ate the best ice cream she has ever had. The hotel had windows that opened, lots of TV channels, and free internet, a garden out the back with a goat in it and lovely helpful young men. We could do washing. Travellers will understand.
It was all capped off by a visit to a restaurant called ‘Manna’ where the meal was performance art.

Two middle-aged guys who just loved everything they did took us in hand and led us through the delights of Slovenian cuisine. The buckwheat dumplings in a mushroom sauce were the best eating. But the best moment came when one of them ‘aired’ the wine glasses by swirling imaginary substances around in them until they had reached the correct state, a condition which could be discerned only by an expert.

The photo of Slovenia will be of a ‘wedding’ couple surrounded by photographers near the castle. Old Ljubljana is built around a dramatic limestone pile which of course has a castle/fort on top of it, Ljubljana’s primary tourist attraction.

This ‘wedding’ is a fake. This is a prac lesson in a VET course for aspirant wedding photographers.

Ljubljana is below in the background. If you want a rest in a benign location … this goes straight onto the short list.

And eat at Manna, Eipprova Ulica 1A.

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