Confidence in driving had been established yesterday so today was going to be a more serious journey. The plan was Ljubljana and Bled via Skofje Loka. To use the motorways in Slovenia motorists need a vignetta to put on the windscreen. These are to be bought at petrol stations once you enter Slovenia. This was our greatest concern as we left Gloria's apartment. Little did we realise that it would take us almost an hour to exit the car park! Into the car, maps accessible, water accessible, seat belts on, Nuvi given directions and off - or so we thought. I put the ticket in the machine, it spat it out, I retrieved it, barrier remained closed. I repeated the same movements, barrier closed. Once again, and this time I noticed that the machine said "non entrata". As far as the machine was concerned a car, that wasn't in the car park, was trying to exit the car park and it was having none of it. Jim reversed and I made my way to the paying machine where there was a button that allowed me to explain my problem, in English, to a voice who said he had "a leetle English". I told him that the barrier would not allow us out of the car park. He asked "Where is car?". Where did he think the car was? I said "In (f......) car park". He said "Insert ticket". I said "I did insert ticket". He said "Insert ticket and exit". I assumed that somehow he had overridden the system and now we would be able to exit. Back to the car and off to the exit. I insert ticket, machine says "Non entrata" and barrier remains closed. Jim has a brainwave - obviously we should not have taken a ticket on our return yesterday but instead inserted the ticket. So off we went, on foot, to the entry and attempted to insert the ticket so that the machine would know that our car was in the car park. Didn't work because no car was entering! What would we do? Fortunately there were a few people coming in so I asked if they spoke English. Not even a leetle! With gestures and much showing of the 7 day ticket the information was conveyed but they were as helpless as us. They saw a man arriving on a motorbike and they asked him if he had English. He had a "leetle" but not so much as we could understand. However, he happened to work there and was able to overrided the system and ... we got out! Everything else, even getting the vignetta was simple!
Once we got into Slovenia we were able to enjoy the beautiful countryside and made our way to Ljubljana where there was a food and wine festival and where we bought Slovenian smoked sausages and admired the variety of mushrooms on stalls.
We stopped for coffee and afterwards, during a visit to the loo, I discovered the most beautiful pastries - just as well it was after not before the coffee! We wandered about and enjoyed the city and then headed on to Skofje Loka where we had lunch after doing a tour of the town.
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| Not sure what's going on here! |
En route the scenery was lovely. However, we ran out of route! Scenic it was as was the idea but we ended up with at earth moving machines and were forced to retrace our steps in order to get to Bled. Bled is stunningly beautiful as Jim remembered from his European tour in 1971.
It was time to go home so back in the car and a quick run (2 hours) on the motorway. We were thrilled with our day!
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