Hapsburg - Renaissance Trip - Day 31 & 32 - Transitioning

We're done with the touring part of our trip. On Friday we packed up and drove from Ljubljana back to Vienna and then on Saturday we flew from Vienna to Amsterdam where we are going to be spending 9 days with our youngest daughter #3 and her family. We have visited them so often that it even though it is international travel, it really is just a family visit. But at the same time we love not only seeing them but we love getting to share their lifestyle in Amsterdam.

I'm convinced their is a special travel demi-god for the retired. I suspect it is a former Magical Unicorn Pony God of Travel that retired and became the Magical Unicorn Horse God of Retired Travel. We've had a lot of travel incidents while we've been on this trip but they never seem to be quite as intense as when I was in my professional road warrior days. On the latest, we found before leaving Ljubljana that one of bags was a bit overweight and our reading was that the airlines are really cracking down and charging for overweight baggage fees.

So when we got to Vienna we did a major readjustment of the bags and dumped a bunch of stuff. Then we get to the airport and they don't even bat an eyelash and on top of that say we can check our carry on bag for free!

Here in Amsterdam we are having fun with the kids and grandkids.  Grandchild 3.2 who is around 18 months is totally enamored of her Grandmother. It is really pretty funny to watch.  I'm going to try and not go crazy with the family pictures this trip.

Grandma in Action

Pop-Up Restaurant Chez Michel Shows Up In Amsterdam

Hapsburg - Renaissance Trip - Day 30 - Day Two In Ljubljana - In Even Heavier Rain

I'm going back now to our second day in Ljubljana. If anything it was raining even harder. Our day was defined by two factors.

First our daughter and son-in-law #2 and 2B were swinging through her for another day having to do with a major Magical Unicorn Pony God of Travel  F-up which is her story not mine. But the result was that she and a couple they know from there posting in Manila who are posted here now were having dinner and we were going to meet up with them. The dinner was scheduled for 7:30 PM. So we needed to be out on the town until the dinner reservation. Second, as has happened so often in the past we had to get our full value from the City Passes! So we needed to keep doing things until we had broken even on them.

Thus we had scheduled a walking tour of the city at 11:00 AM. There was only one other couple with us (from Australia). The guide was convinced that the tour would be canceled for now shows because of the weather. The guide was a unique character but gave us two and half hours when we were only scheduled. After a quick lunch on local fare (mega culinary post to come), we then got from the Tourist Office a 'digital tour' which is a iPhone like device along with a map that gives you a bunch of places to go and information on them. This tour covered many of the same things as the morning tour but also a number of things further out. We were going for another couple of hours. Then we went up to the city castle which as in Graz was up a funicular. In the castle were museums. With a couple of stops for coffee and tea we killed the necessary time and saw just about everything major in the town.

I did mention that Wife and I are slowing down didn't I? See, a perfect example.

We finished our day dining with our daughter, son-in-law and their friends at a great restaurant (to be covered in the culinary post). We finished up around 10:30 and were very lucky to get to our bus stop with a minute to spare to catch the night bus and avoid a 30 minute wait. We were very tired puppies when we finally got back to the apartment.

Photos

Around the City Hall

Inside the City Hall was an open courtyard with a map of the city showing the Medieval city and the old Roman City

Other scenes from around the city

Scenes going to and from the Castle

The ascent

Views of the City

And the Castle grounds

Hapsburg - Renaissance Trip - Temporary Interruption Of Services

Our normal blogging schedule is interrupted as Wife is currently in the custody of two small abductors - one blond and one red headed - who are holding her ransom. We are currently in negotiations to gain her freedom...at least in time for breakfast.  In the meantime we have posts in the queue continuing the 'Exploring Ljubljana in Scuba Gear' series and the 'Euro Gastronomy Series.' that we will get to as soon as we have Wife freed up. 

Hapsburg - Renaissance Trip - Day 29 - Ljubljana In The Rain

This is going to be a quicker post because it's late, I'm tired, we have a busy day tomorrow.

It was still raining like crazy but we didn't let that stop us. We did our usual figuring out of the local transit system (thanks AirBnB hosts for having transit cards in the apartment!) and got down town likidty split. We went to the main square and the tourist office where we confirmed our Food Tour at Noon and bought our City Passes which get us into all kinds of museums and sights, give us a free walking tour and a free boat ride and all the transit use we want.  The food tour was a lot of fun. There were a lot of things about the cuisine that are similar to the region of Austria we were in (which if you know your history, these areas were linked during the Hapsburg Empire days). We were the only ones on the tour...except for a group of ten women from Norway! These ladies all grew up in the same small town and now have been traveling together for years.

On to pictures and videos!

It Really Be Raining

Miscellaneous Scenes from Ljubljana

From the Food Tour

If you think this looks like the wurst we got in Austria PLEASE don't say so as there is a lot of 'we're not them, we're us' here.

Really great smoked tongue

Showing we're getting the 'Deer' sausage and not the 'Horse' sausage

Did I mention that we got 4 glasses of wine, 1 beer and 1 after dinner drink on this tour all for $40 a person?

Why wouldn't I be smiling with all these wonderful women on the tour with me :)

Hapsburg - Renaissance Trip - Day 27 - And The Heavens Burst Forth

Today we were in transit going from our rental in the Veneto to another apartment rental in Ljubljana Slovenia. We had plenty of time to do this so we decided to take in a town on the coast of Slovenia called Piran. However, after having had remarkable luck with weather, our number was finally called. Today was rain all day and it is supposed to be heavy rain in Slovenia for the next three days. They're even expecting flooding. So that made the driving a bit more strenuous. But we got to the town anyway and did a few hours of wandering around. We lucked out with a fabulous meal which I'll describe below in the gastronomic section. We ended the day driving to our rental in Ljubljana which was tricky to find. It's in a nondescript 6 story apartment building but is very nice inside and has good bus connections to the center city area. Parking is a bitch so I don't thing we'll be using the car much while were here.

Feeling the Rain

Sad Wife bemoaning the rainy conditions

But No! She will go forth and photograph!

For she has her trusty Camera Sherpa, honed in the rains of New Zealand to hold multiple umbrellas over her as she shoots.

Scenes from the town of Piran

The kinds of pictures you get when holding numerous umbrellas

Piran Gastronomy

We were cold, wet and hungry. This is a real tourist a town and we were not expecting much in the way of food. Using the TripAdvisor App again, we found the 8th ranked restaurant (out of about 90) right by us. We had a wonderful waitress who was very patient with us. She guided Wife into purchasing the right local fish. I saw eggs with truffles on the menu for $15 and had to give them a try. If you are not into truffles, you should just turn in your gastronome card right now! These were awesome. We had two salads as starters, a half a liter of very serviceable red wine, a bottle of mineral water, the fish, the eggs and truffles, a side of roasted vegetables and it cost us $46. This with white table cloth service and a free local blueberry liquor afterwards. 

Two salads - cucumber and beet - I liked them combined

My eggs and truffles

I get hungry just looking at the picture

Wife's fish and roasted vegetables

The fish was flavored very similarly to the ones we had in Vienna at the Croatian restaurant.

Maybe it is an Adriatic coast thing?