6/2 Koper, Slovenia, Part I

Ah, today is not so lovely.  Skies are overcast and threatening, and it’s a tad chillier than Italy. Oh well, we have a car today and plan to explore as much as we can within it’s comfy, warm environ. 

We’re off the ship at first call and head off toward the address we have for the car rental place. After a couple of false starts, we find the address only to find that another rental car agency is located there.  We ask if they know where Avis is located, and of course, are not helpful.  We then asked if they had any cars, and of course, they tried to tell us they only had a BMW convertible.  Bye bye!

Out on the street, we called Avis and they said, stay right there, we will pick you up.  3 minutes later, here they come and off we go to get our car.  We had made the reservations so long ago that the office had moved in the meantime and we didn’t know!  Thank heavens for cell phones (even at $2.49 a minute!). 

All signed up and organized we hop in our little car, complete with GPS (yay), and head out onto the highway and up into the Alps. The roads are fabulous – better then in the states!  The only slightly confusing thing are the tolls.  Tolls?  No tolls?  You come up to the tolls and the signs seem to indicate that only buses and trucks pay (it’s all a pictograph, so…who knows?) and on the lanes themselves, there are pictures of cars in the left lanes and trucks/buses in the right lanes.  we follow the cars and whip through the unmanned toll booths.  this will either be a bonus, or a very expensive driving tour!

Up into the mountains we go, through the mist and the fog.  We reach Bled, the little alpine village, after about an hour and a half.  This is the most adorable little place.  Situated around a beautiful lake, with a castle up on a high bluff overlooking the town, Bled felt like a beautiful little place to spend a day or two.  Unfortunately, we don’t have that luxury on this trip, so we tried to soak up as much of the ambience as we could in the time we had. We walked around the lake, taking pictures of the little boats that would row you out to the island in the middle, the wedding party getting ready to get onto the boats, then sat at a cool place called “the devil” and warmed up with cappuccinos.  Fun!

		Bled VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

We had to drag ourselves away from this cute little place – we were actually only a few kilometers from Austria, and we really wanted to go cross the border, but knowing we had to get back down to sea level, we headed south toward the capital city of Ljubljana, our next stop.  And, our next blog entry….dividing this entry into sections so we can get it posted!

Stay tuned….