The Wobblin' Sprocket

We love Ljubljana.   Both the Croatia Tour and the Slovenia tour start and end there.  It’s laid back and is chock full of enchanting street cafes.  It’s also full of history.  There are roman ruins that you can go see in the basement of the museum.  It was a cultural cross roads and, in some ways, still is.  I’ve wandered around town photographing nothing more than front doors.  They are massive and spectacular.  You can see some here.

It seems that, in addition to having a coffee in  one of the many sidewalk cafes, we can now have a glass of raw, unpasteurized milk dispensed from a street side vending machine.  This seems down right un-American.  However, it does seem completely appropriate for Slovenia which is dotted with beautiful dairy farms and picturesque haystacks.

I don’t profess to know the pro’s and con’s of raw milk for general consumption.  I do know that I would be more likely to drink some in Slovenia than in the US.   Most people actually do a lot of thing overseas that they would not do at home….swinging above and plunging 30 feet into the Nam Song river outside Vangvieng and eating cicadas and a lot of other things come to mind.

We’ll have to check it out next time we are off to Ljubljana….

Raw milk on tap — in Ljubljana « The Bovine.

We pretty much cruised the final 90k in to Ljubljana.  David and Barbara were caught in a downpour, but they were the only ones.  It actually cleared up before anyone made it all the way back and it was a nice day overall.

We packed our bikes up and everyone some seemed none the worse for having biked up some steep Croatian hills.  Wendy, however, ironically pulled something in her calf while walking at the hilltop Castle in LJU after having packed her bike away.  She was limping a little.

Not everyone was heading back home after the tour.  David and Barbara were staying on a few days and planned on visiting Trieste, Italy.  Charles, was heading over to Zagreb and then Dubrovnik.  Graeme was going to Paris for a few days and then Munich.  Frank was headed to Dublin.

The next tour is India October 31.  Graeme will be there.  Graeme is also headed to Laos afterwards.  Alexandra is coming to Corsica in the Spring.

I didn’t take many pics the last day so I’ll make do with a self portrait which I took while waiting around for people on Cres:

Best,  Bob

Today is the hardest day of the tour.  We start by riding our bikes from Vrbnik to Silo.  We have to be in Silo at 9am to catch the “Superfast Croatian Speedboat”.  It’s a small hrydrofoil that take us over to the mainland.   It’s not that big so it had to make a couple trips to take 9 of us and all of our bikes.  This year it is sporting a new paint job.  It’s still Superfast though.  The paint job leaves no doubt that it is Croatian.

Before we left Vrbnik, Chantal and I walked down to the beach where the sun was just rising over the mainland:

I almost forgot, we had a memorable meal in Vrbnik at the Hotel Argentum.  I think the Chef must have played with a lot of tinker toys when he was young.  Apparently, he/she is still in the construction business.  We were impressed with the 3 dimensional nature of the presentation.  It reminded me just a little bit of U2’s concert stage.  We were hungry, so it didn’t last long.

We ran into these Austrian guys on the way up to Brod na Kupi.  We gave them a map.  They were doing day-rides from a town South of Crikvenica on the mainland.  We convinced them that our route was better than what they had planned so they followed us.   One wanted to pass me on the way up so I had to lay down the law.  They had a beer, but it wasn’t a get there first celebration.  We told them about the Superfast Croatian Speedboat and I think they planned on taking it over to Krk the next day.  The captain of the Superfast is probably wandering what is going on with all the bikers.

Everyone made it to Brod na Kupi eventually.  Actually, we stayed in a couple towns.  Hotel Mance in Brod na Kupi was full so we had to split up.  Some stayed in Delnice up the road.  We all ate together though.  I had my favorite…stuffed grilled calamari.  If you get anywere near Hotel Mance, stay there.  Great food and a nice place.  Fly fishermen come here from all over the world.