Haven’t been away enough this year so booked us a Ryanair flight to Trieste. Hired a car and did 1192km around central Europe in 7 days, getting back this Friday just gone. We did it like this:
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Hotel in Stansted for an easier Friday 7th Dec morning start. A short cattlemongous flight to north-east Italy, Trieste. Drove through the town, sorry Triestians but from what we saw, didn’t think much to the place, industrial, nothing special. Decided to keep on trucking up and over to the nearby boarder with Slovenia and on to it’s fairly central capital Ljubljana. Found a central hotel fairly easily, checked in and walked into a compact, picturesque and Christmassy town. Drank: mulled white wine, ate: game. Good start. Moved hotel the next day, went up to the castle, walked about, ate, drank, made merry. Drove down to Zagreb the next day, casually cruising through the open toll stations, laughing at how they don’t make too many a euro by leaving them open for all and sundry to drive on through. Came to a stop at the border for not having a ‘vignette’. A vignette, you say? “Well Austria and Switzerland have them”. Oh, right. €150 later we found out that a vignette is their version of road tax which all toll road users must purchase. Either for €35 for 6 months, or for us a total of €185 for 1 week. So, a tip from the top for anyone driving in Slovenia; buy yourself the cheaper version at any petrol station as soon as you hit the motorways. Arseholes. But anyway, hit Zagreb, found a hotel, ate, drank, walked about, made merry. Unless we missed something, we didn’t miss anything. Nothing particularly attractive about the city and maybe a hint of people not paying Frankie quite enough attention, which was quite extraordinary. Speaking of which, all along, she was pretty much as good as you can expect a littl’n to be whilst sat in the back of the Punto. The odd whinge here and there but then who doesn’t get a little testy after prolonged journeys? Headed back into Slovenia, up to Ptuj, over to the snowy pass up on Logarska Dolina, devided it was too snowy for the car and us to continue, back down to Kamnik, nice little town, stayed in a very nice little Penzion there. On to Skofja Loka, up to the castle, museum, on to Lake Bled where Kate had holidayed as a little girl, down to Cerkno to check out a WWII hospital but the roads became unpassable due to snow. That took us up to day 6/7 so back to Trieste for the night before the flight home. So we drove around a lot, pleasantly impressed by Slovenia, ate a lot of pizza, drank quite a bit of Union lager, spent a little more than someone who had planned their journey properly would have but had a decent little trip.
And now, on to Xmas.
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