Ljubljana, Capital
of Slovenia
We stayed at Kastel atop Motovun, which meant a cool room and great views of the valley. Even better, we were in truffle region, so I had a dinner of truffle cheese, cream of mushroom (truffle) soup, and white truffle risotto. I was happy after dinner (and I finally got some much needed sleep).
We started the trip with
two days in Ljubljana. We stayed at the city center and walked everywhere (cars
aren't allowed in the city center). On the first day, we landed mid-morning and
got situated at the hotel. Things went a bit slower than normal due to our
exhaustion from the flight (no sleep for me). We visited the castle at the top
of the hill, walked around, signed up for a 5k the following evening and
watched an ITU (draft-legal) duathlon and triathlon. It was another sleepless
night for me, so I ended up getting breakfast at 6AM and fell asleep on a full
stomach.
On the second day, we took
a "free" tour of the town (paid for by voluntary tips of the tour guide). We learned a lot about the
different buildings and the multiple bridges that crossed the town. The older
part of the town by the castle was protected by the river, and the bridges
linked the old town to the new. We then had a heavy lunch at a traditional Slovenian
place which included duck pate wrapped in prosciutto along with different cuts of game.
After putting my bike
together, we had a brief tour meeting, and headed over to the race. The
nighttime 5k (started at 9PM) does 2 laps of the city center and crosses two
different bridges. The course was a bit confusing as I didn’t understand any
Slovenian. However, I liked running
through the lit up old buildings and right next to folks having dinner and
going to the bars. Even better, when we were done, they fed us a massive plate
of pasta with meat sauce. I had another nearly sleepless night.
Day 1 Cycling: Divaca, Slovenia to Motovun, Slovenia
We started the morning off
with a train ride from Ljubljana to Divaca. It was a nice train ride, with a
pretty and varied country side. On the way to lunch, the roads were smooth with
a nice shoulder. The climbs were reasonable with sweeping descents. After
lunch, we biked across the border between Slovenia and Croatia. Strangely
enough, there was at least a mile or two of road that was no-man’s land between
the Slovenia exit and the Croatia entrance.
We decided to take the “high road” "with some climbing" (according to Bob, the tour leader) to Oprtalj where we would meet up with the group taking the less
hilly “low road.” The high road started (and continued) with some steep climbs that skyrocketed my heart rate. I had to stop a few times
to let my heart settle down before continuing. Looking at Strava data, it was a Category 3 climb that went on for 1.8 miles and averaged 10.2%.
As a reward for the
climbs, we saw gorgeous sweeping views (common theme for the entire trip). Some of my favorite memories were watching
two women pushing an older farming truck down a hill to get it started,
climbing through a quaint town and hanging a right to continue past it, and looking
left during the undulation section of the hills and seeing a castle on a hill
in the middle of the valley. When we
stopped at Oprtalj, we could see Motovun, our destination, across the
valley. This meant was had a great
descent from Oprtalj, and more hills up to Motovun. For some reason, I thought we were done by
the time we hit the parking lot for Motovun, but we had over a mile of climbing
before reaching the pave. At the pave, I had to walk up the steep and uneven
road. I was tired and hungry.
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| View on the first day's ride |
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| View of the pave headed into Motovun |
We stayed at Kastel atop Motovun, which meant a cool room and great views of the valley. Even better, we were in truffle region, so I had a dinner of truffle cheese, cream of mushroom (truffle) soup, and white truffle risotto. I was happy after dinner (and I finally got some much needed sleep).
