We were thinking when we arrived yesterday that we would have rain for 3 days while in Piran, well that is what the forecast said!

Well there has been rain - quite a bit including thunder and lightning but it is 6:35pm and it has been great for about 8 hours today.

I even went for a swim in the Adriatic!

The water was cold but after a couple of mins and a full imersion you got use to it. Pam not so keen.

Even though it is just Spring here there are lots of vege gardens around and sunrise is around 5:30am and sunset around 9pm. When the sun is out it is warm.

Internet is too expensive in the Hotel Piran, they charge 6 euro per hour - ouch.- so no new photo's yet.

I have been playing around with some photo's so it will be interesting what comments they generate if any?

I have been drinking a few bottles of Merlot here - 3:48 euro per 1 litre bottle and it is quite drinkable. We have been buying some French Brie at only 7;50 euro per kg.

1.5 litre water for 32 cents - Christchurch the home of fresh water is what price? $3 for 700ml is just a ripoff - it is just water.

Well that is all for now - back to sitting in the sun on the small balcony.

PS: I seem to have made a friend - a 1/2 foot missing pigeon - we share something in common.

We left Ljubljana this morning for Piran on the Slovenian coast.

The weather here has been overcast and rainy since we arrived in Ljubljana. We are currently sitting in a bus and it is raining outside and quite foggy.

Aparantly the coast is not much better but most afternoons it brightens up so hopefully it will do that today.

The bus ticket cost 12 euro each but when we got to the bus they wanted another 1.30 euro per large bag.

Ljubljana was nice and the old town where we stayed was quite quiet as there was no traffic allowed there - just pedestrians.

We probably would have been happy with just two nights there but we had three.

We read that it is locally known as the Pink Palace due to the fact that it has a pink exterior . The photo above is taken from the steps of the church looking back across the square or circle and the 3 bridges.

Looking at the church at night and during the day from one of the three bridges.

The view from inside of the church – very impressive

We decided that we needed some wine (well I did anyway) so we stopped into the Mercator (shop) and bought a beer for Pam and a cheap wine for me. I have never heard of this wine – The grape is called Vrhunsko Vino ZGP – 13% and cost 3.99 Euro, Pam’s beer cost 0.68 cents.

The wine is very dry but not terrible, quite nice, but probably needs some food.

We were walking home to the hotel and Pam spotted a cream cake – like we had in Lake Bled.

We ordered one to take away and they got a nice plastic tray and then the cost of her cream cake?

$9 NZD for a cream cake!

The picture above is from our room (Room# 335) in the Hotel Jadran

We ate at the restaurant panorama which is connected to the Grand Hotel Toplis (where I am using their WIFI network for free)

Pam had a Salmon Ravioli and Chris had Squid (again)

The following cream cake is a Bled tradition for about 60 years – it has a firm pastry on bottom, then a custard, and then a layer of cream and topped off with another sheet of pastry and icing sugar.

We found a little restaurant last night called “Ostarija Peglez’n” after trying to get into another restaurant that closed at 8pm – most were closed last night around 8pm, quite strange for a Thursday night.

We both had a nice dish of Squid with potatoes and spinach.

It was a very tasty meal.

The shell contained garlic and parsley

I had to drown it in olive oil and balsamic vinegar since the garlic was some sort of pre-prepared crap like you see at home in jars – a complete waste of time – why to they bother