Moving Day - Side Trip to Slovenia

A relaxed start to the day, as we didn’t need to check out until 11am and our train wasn’t due to leave until 12:50pm. Packing up the bags seems to be getting simpler—or at least I heard fewer complaints from Sarah about how difficult it is to fit everything into hers.

To fill in the time, we stopped downstairs at the Figa Garden Café for a coffee and read our books for an hour.

It was a short walk to the train station, but with our backpacks on and the temperature rising, we stuck to the shade as much as possible. Sarah also found us some lunch to eat on the train.

A train pulled into our platform, but since it was still 20 minutes or more before departure, we assumed it was going elsewhere. After a few minutes, we started wondering if it was actually ours. Yes, it was! Best we get on, then. The train had similar six-person compartments to the one we took into Zagreb, with no other seating options. They were too hot again, and there was no obvious sign of air conditioning. But then we saw someone open a window. What—the windows open?! Far out, that would’ve been good to know earlier.

No noisy Italians this time, so it was a quiet trip down a very pretty valley, following a river. It was hard to get good photos through the trees, though I did manage to take a little bit of video. I’ll see if I can post that here.

We had one long stop at Dobova, on the Slovenian side of the border, which involved two policemen wandering through the carriages. Not sure what—or who—they were looking for. Not us!

The train arrived into Ljubljana close to on time. While we were at the station, we decided to book our return tickets before heading to our accommodation. €58 for the next leg, which was a bit more than I expected. 

Before I forget Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia and I may not have previously mentioned that Zagreb is the capital of Croatia. Therefore this is our 4th country and 4th capital city already on this not yet 3 week trip. 3 of those are places I never would have thought we would ever visit. I'm very happy we took this opportunity to do what we are doing! 

The distance to our accommodation from the station was 1.8 km, according to Google. I thought it was going to be 2.5 km and was therefore prepared to Uber it. But 1.8 km isn’t far, right? Hmmm, I’m not sure Sarah was very happy with me. By the halfway mark, she looked rather hot. 🥵 But there were no cross words, so I might survive the night without being whacked. Let’s see. 🙈

It may have helped that the accommodation is very nice—a bigger apartment with an outdoor area shaded by a lovely tree. This is the most expensive place so far at $174 NZD per night. We're only staying three nights. Still, it's cheaper than a pretty average motel in Cromwell!

Once we had recovered from the walk, we went another 500m to the local supermarket, Lidl. Chicken, bread, and salad for dinner tonight—using up the last of our nice Budapest mystery spice mix. A very tasty meal. Oh, and I had a wheat beer, and Sarah had a cider. The 500ml can of wheat beer was €0.69! That’s crazy. It’s cheaper than Coca-Cola—and that price includes a 22% VAT. I noted that "normal" food such as the chicken, bread, etc only has 9.5% VAT.