In cycling terms, today would be called a transfer day. This is the day where you start in one city and end up in another. We hit the breakfast at the DH one more time and then it was off to the lobby to sign for our rental Skoda via Avant Car (like the Hertz of Croatia?) where a man on a moped arrived to sign us into the car. That process was going to take the time it was going to take. The guy was super nice and super thorough. He even through in the ability for me to drive for free. We spent a fair amount of time on the particulars and then with a little tour of the Skoda (basically a Croatian built car with everything in it from VW except for the engine and chassis). A fine and very roomy car. After a full inspection, we loaded up the bags, got in the car, Alex maybe spent some time adjusting lots of things and then we looked up to pull out and realized we’d been completely blocked into the hotel circle drive by a large bus. I went out to ask how we could get by and the man politely (because so far, everyone in Croatia are the politest people ever) said, “yes, yes. In just 3-8 minutes when I can move.” Welp…not much I could do with that so we waited.
Then we pulled out of the good ole Dubrovnik Hilton one last time (if you get to DBrov-this Hilton is not to be missed). I’d add the word for goodbye here in Croatian but I’m telling you, I’ve got a mental block with this language. I believe they find Ciao as acceptable. So…”Ciao” Dubrovnik. You were pretty great. Maybe a two day town instead of three but pretty darn great.
This is where we need a dream sequence or squiggles or a time-lapse video or something but you’ll have to just imagine some laughter, some reading, some pointing out of the obvious, some eating of Swedish candy from Felix and Paula, only twice did we miss turns (both my fault as navigator), lots of time to research whatever we wanted (more on this later), a border crossing and seven and a half short hours later we pulled into Ljubljana, Slovenia at the EuroStar hotel. Eurostar seems to be short for two-star hotel. Yes – we are hotel snobs. Ljubljana had a vibe. Lots of communist leftovers architecturally, lots of bikes (that’s what you do when you have 3 top 10 pro cyclists from your nation) and maybe a few parking issues as Alex can attest from a 45 minute bout with the Avant Car parking lot. The trip put us at the hotel with 20 minutes to spare before what we found out was going to be our second Michelin rated restaurant in as many days. Or what we reference as Saturday. Ha.
A few thoughts – driving in Europe has a lot of local flavor. Generally speeds are much lower and there are far more traffic and speed cameras. The roads are super-well maintained. They really, really, really value the tunnel. I think we went through like 20 tunnels from Dubrovnik to Ljubljana. Maybe more. And they mark the distance of every tunnel (some were 2-3 miles long!) and how much distance you have left in the tunnel. Rest areas on their roads aren’t as nice as the Florida or New Jersey turnpike but nicer than most other rest areas in the US. The EU folk really like their McDonalds. Like a lot. Cars in the EU can get 1100 km per 18 liter (15 gallon?) tank. That seems like a really long ways.
One of the things we learned about is there is something called the Dirty Dust Rally (see https://dirtydustrallye.de ). This year the Balkans version of this rally was from September 6 – 12 where people show up to not race, but drive a same set course each day in old or creative cars and do so to seek community with other drivers. They hold a car part swap meet each morning and have many stops where they enjoy food and time together on this tour through aggressive courses. The cars we saw were easily 20-30 years old, dirt covered, huge roof racks on small cars with metal boxes, and spare tires and car parts. They get the course sent to them each day at a gathering over coffee and tea at the start of each morning. It seems fascinating. We saw one guy in an old skoda in a gas station yesterday bugging his rear tire to see if it was going to stay on the car – while it moved more than rear tires should, he shrugged and seemed convinced it was good. Nonetheless, we drove off a bit ahead of him just in case. This idea should be brought to the US. Seems fun.
We crossed the border from Croatia to Slovenia on a small two lane road – a five minute affair. If you are Jason Bourne and running from the law and don’t want to get registered for a border crossing, the small two lane road is where you want to be. Yes, they looked over our passports. But they never looked in the car. They didn’t even stop chatting with each other. They didn’t really even look at Alex who did a great job speaking Slovenian to them. Running from the law (and to be clear, while we may have a few speed cameras who look to fine us, we are not running from the law), this is the kind of border crossing you want to do it at. Alex also informed us that a treaty passed in the late 1990s or early 2000s allows US Passports to pass freely from EU country to EU country – new fact noted. Name of the treaty he referenced forgotten.
While Alex spent 45-60 minutes making 38 point turns trying to park the Skoda, Cindy and I quickly changed and headed to dinner at Georgi’s restaurant where we had a Caci e Pepe foam turnip thing, some awesome eggplant Parmesan thing and an Octopus thing. All very tasty with bread and some local Slovenian wine. Pretty awesome prep and food. But also food that felt like we might need a second meal a few hours later (we didn’t). A nice experience.
Last stop of the night was to meet Jason and Julie for a nightcap on the Sava river that runs quietly through LJubljana. It’s like time stands still with those two – they are timeless and picking right back up with them is a simple as it comes. Tara, a new friend on the Backroads trip with us joined us – fun times before those who flew over yesterday (and yes, their arms were tired) were looking peeked – time to call it a night. Tomorrow we ride through the land of Slovenia on our way to Bled.
And yes, a day very, very light on pictures. Use this time to peruse your phone for knowledge of the local customs of Slovenia or Croatia or both. One note – they do a lot of agriculture and make some fine fine roads – especially those that they charge tolls for.
suttonscoop 