Eurostar hotel – weird communist dorm?
Buffet…just not the same.
Today we hopped out of bed with focus. See as much of Ljubljana as we can in an hour and fifteen minutes. We saw 10 square blocks and a lot of old buildings, parks, rivers and very, very quiet streets. Aside from being REALLY glad about the auto suggestion whenever I type the letters “Ljub” which gives me the correct spelling for this town, I was pretty excited to get a taste of Slovenia’s biggest city. I think it holds 250k in the city limits. Charlotte circa 1995? It was lovely – especially all of the bars, cafes and coffee houses along the River which was very, very, very far down from the street level walkway. Someone explain this to me please. The highlight of the walkabout? Probably listening to all of the bells from all of the churches (there are a lot) summoning people to mass (mostly Catholic region) at 7:45am – 15 minutes before it starts. The irony? Fewer Slovenians than ever are going to church. But it’s still really charming for the visitors and kind of bold of the church to do – as if to say, “I promise you, and our history backs us on this, that we’ll outlast your stubborn Sunday morning ways.” Apparently they try again at 9:45am too…in case you are a heavy sleeper.
Upon arriving back to the Eurostar Hotel, we took in the breakfast buffet. I’m not sure why, but it made Cindy and me sad. Like the hotel, it was perfectly serviceable but maybe the packed dining hall feel, the insistence on my room number even after Cindy gave it to them literally one person ahead of me, or the meh food (plenty of options just so-so in presentation) or maybe the lack of Prosecco, it just didn’t have the same pop that the Dubrovnik Hilton had the last few days. I’m telling you – Hilton, you’re doing something really right in Dubrovnik. Perhaps bring some of that mojo stateside? We me our first Backroads guild, Paige from out west (California?) in the lobby where she got us all excited about the trip. Nothing too crazy, just some spoon feeding on where she’ taking us over the next 2 hours. On the bus that we took to Kranj where the bikes and such were located, we met Ryan the other primary trip leader and Janna the local guide from Slovenia (there’s typically someone from the region on these trips. All three, as we have totally come to expect, are top of their game trip leaders. In the hotel lobby and on the bus we met the other 10 people on the trip with us. 2 folks from Charlotte (Tim/Becky(?)). 2 folks from Mt. Pleasant . 2 folks from Hendersonville (formerly Jacksonville – Paul/Besty)), 2 folks from Park City Utah (Wendy/Ella) mother daughter) and 2 folks from the west coast of Florida (Scott/Julie). The bus ride to Kranj was quick, maybe 10-12 kilometers with a short walk from the bus to where the bikes were all staged. We got some fittings, a little information and a small overview on Kranj, the oldest Slovenian town. Plagues, wars, dictators…this place outlasts them all.
Lunch at a restaurant started by the 2 famous polka artists (brothers)
Bee tour after lunch. So. Many. Bee. Facts! It was an amazing 30 minutes. This guy has been raising bees and pollinating plants across Slovenia and the EU since he was a small kid. He is the fourth generation to work this bee farm. He’s one of 200 bee farms in Slovenia and they believe they have the best bees in the world. The dude knew bees. He started with the basics:
– There are 3 kinds of bees: workers, drones, queen.
– Bee workers are useful. They care for the queen, keep the hive in order, gather food, mate with other queens if asked, Never get bored and never waste time. They are meaningful to the bee community or hive.
-Bee Drones – not so much. These are the “stoners” of the bee hive. The queen doesn’t like them. Doesn’t need them. They are hanger-on-ers. They can’t mate. They can’t sting. They don’t do much work. They just fly around and take up space and eat stuff. Truly useless.
-Bee Queen – this is the show. She is one of the lucky. She gets chosen by the community as one of the 30 larvae dropped by the last queen. She makes her case for being the boss and if people like her fermones and what she’s selling, then she’s the boss. Bee queens can also be dropped into Queen less hives by bee keepers and they will eventually be accepted as the queen – it takes from a few hours to a few days for this acceptance to occur. Bee Queens are the biggest. They mate exactly once in their lives but mate with up to 30 work bees from a hive outside of her hive. Never within the hive. That would be weird. She travels a long way to mate and when she does, she bring eggs back from all of that mating and deposits them in the honeycomb that the workers have diligently built.
-When bees sting – venom continues to flow for up to five minutes after – take the stinger out fast and the venom stops flowing.
-The beekeeper mails queens all over Europe. Takes a few hours to acclimate them into a new hive – “eventually the other bees realize they die if they don’t have a queen.”
– Bee workers carry pollen on their legs back to the hive – helps feed the colony.
-Bee Keepers have devices to scrape the pollen carried by bees off of their legs and can make that into bee products. We tasted this stuff – it tasted waxy and like weak tea.
-Bees have special bee “juices” that help protect the hive like disinfectant.
-He moves the bees at night in pollination season. He marks the queen bee with a color from the year she was born (yellow for this year) – he also numbers her after Luca Doncic (#77). He makes honey from fir, chestnut (bitter) and many other flowering plants.
After bees, we took a short brisk ride to Bled where we climbed some punchy, punchy hills. Several 11-20% grades (no exaggeration) and then flew down into Lake Bled and the town of Bled a huge clear lake with a castle way up on a hill and a 1000m rowing course. The view from our window was next level.
Interesting fact – the rowers of the tourist boats on Lake Bled are all from the same family. They are literally a mafia – you can only row if you have ties to the family. They row standing up and facing forward pushing the paddles/oars towards the back of the boat with their legs and upper body by leaning heavily forward. Some of these boats can carry 12-15 passengers. We had a cocktail hour and dinner with the group after introducing ourselves to each other. Dinner was a scallop soup, fish on risotto and this awesome vanilla cream cake that was invented at the Hotel Park here in lake bled – basically a light pastry with powdered sugar on the top layer, a ton of thick heavy cream and another light pastry layer on the bottom. So, so so good!
It’s pretty incredible to be a part of something like this were friends from many cities across the US come together and hand out with some bike riding in unreal parts of the world. And Slovenia. Just skip it. This place is the worst. They actually want us to say that to keep it from turning into Dubrovnik, Croatia. It’s pretty special here. And the cycling is next level.
suttonscoop 