Tuesday, August 27

The road out of Idrija was closed for construction, so we took little mountain roads from our hotel to bypass the closure.  All of Slovenia is quite scenic.  The search for Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice (always the first stop of the day) led to several bistros in the town of Žiri.  The last one had it — the proprietor said “God bless America!” when we said we were from California. Slovenians have a delicate relationship with the US just now.

We drove to Skocjan Cave, a very popular tourist spot.  There were 250 people on the 12:00 tour, and we split into five groups.  The first part of the cave had some nice stalagmites and stalactites, but it was the second part which was special:  it was 140m tall, up to 60m across, and 3.5km long.  We walked along the path about halfway up, with a ceiling way above us, and a floor way below.  The surface of the path, rebuilt recently, was very high-tech; though it was pretty consistently wet throughout, there was no lack of traction anywhere, one always felt stable footing.

We emerged from the cave, walked along the river, went back to the car, and drove on to Trieste. 

We found our hotel in Trieste on a pedestrian mall.  It was brand new; our room was decorated with coffee paraphernalia; and it was all accessed with codes, no keys needed. We moved the car to a place we could get it at 7am, and then walked around town.  We walked directly to Piolo & Max, the amaro shop where our picture is on the wall, and it was closed with a “back soon” sign.  This can mean anything, in Italy.  Around the corner was an outlet of Trapizzino, the fast-food joint we’d gone to in Rome.  They serve little pieces of bread with stew inside; several different flavors were available.

After we finished our two pieces, we returned to the shop, and it was open.  The woman immediately recognized us, and we spent awhile tasting several of her different infusions.  We ended up with one with ginger, one with cardamom, an absinthe, and one with lemon verbena. 

We completed our dinner a block away at Nearby Open Now which was an Osteria, Traditional in Decor.  Watercolors of sailors arm wrestling, from the days when being seen with women made you less a man.

As we walked up the pedestrian mall back toward our hotel, we counted seven gelato places in one long block.