Adriatic Treasures: Croatia to Venice
Mike and Judy Henderson
September 13-29, 2019
I'm going to leave the map at the start of each page so you can see where we are.
9/23/2019 (Monday) We're in the InterContinental Ljubljana - a very nice hotel. We had breakfast in the hotel restaurant, which is on the 20th floor.
I took a picture of the city from the restaurant. Note the triangle-shaped building on the left side of the picture. This is the R5 Residential Building by Andrej Černigoj, a Slovenian architect. I wish I had time to see that building.
The three musketeers ready for another day of sightseeing.
Tauck had arranged for a "tourist train" to take us for a city tour. Here's the engine.
And the cars.
The group on the train.
We went to the Ljubljana Castle funicular which will take us up to the castle.
At the top, we met our guide for the castle.
The castle has a feature they call "Time Machine" and we started our tour with the first station, a Roman soldier and a priestess.
Judy at the castle.
The next Time Machine station was St. George and his fight with the dragon in the Middle Ages.
Then we entered the castle proper.
A map of the castle.
Then we found Emperor Frederick III and his wife, Eleanor Helena of Portugal.
A closer look at the Emperor and Eleanor. We learned that someone provided the fortune for the Empire, and it wasn't the Emperor.
The next stop on the Time Machine was the period when Napoleon invaded this area.
Then, for the 19th Century, we heard from this woman prisoner who was held at the castle - which had been converted to a prison.
After hearing the prisoner's story, we went into the chapel.
As we left the chapel, we heard from Mayor Ivan Hribar who purchased the castle for the city from the state in 1903.
Tauck had set up a private snack and liqueur tasting for us. One of the liqueurs was a honey liqueur. I bought a bottle to take home.
From the walls of the castle I was able to get a different angle of view of the R5 Residential building.
We then left the castle, took the funicular back to street level and boarded the bus for Radovljica, primarily for a lunch stop, and then to Bled Castle.
Radovljica is a small town and not crowded.
There are some nice views of the countryside from the town.
We visited the Gingerbread Museum where they showed us how gingerbread hearts are made. I later discovered that there was an apiculture museum (beekeeping) in Radovljica which would have been very interesting to see.
Then we went upstairs to a restaurant for lunch.
Soup was served in an interesting bread bowl, shaped like a mushroom to hold mushroom soup.
Two musicians came in to entertain us.
Then it was on to Bled Castle, just a short distance (about 7km) from Radovljica.
There's a steep walkway up to the castle and some of our group chose to stay in the bus. I wasn't able to get a picture that showed how steep the walk was. This picture makes the walkway look pretty easy, but it, and the walkway beyond what is shown in this picture, was steep. Also, the rain made the walkway a bit slippery.
We went up to the upper courtyard where we were rewarded with a beautiful view of Lake Bled.
The island in Lake Bled is a natural island.
The church on the island is the Assumption of Mary Church
There were some boats on the lake, taking people to and from the island. They're known as plenta boats and are hand rowed, flat-bottomed boats.
Here are Victor and Laura at the lake.
And Susan.
Then we left Lake Bled and headed back to the hotel in Ljubljana. We had snacks in the lounge with other tour friends. It's a very congenial group. Then it was to bed for an early departure to see the Postojna Caves.