Back in the early seventies (that’s 1970’s not 18) Lancia made a two door sports car called a Fulvia, a great rally winning sports car. I always wanted one of these iconic sports cars so I was not disappointed when Hertz swapped our Fiat hire car for a two door Lancia five speed manual in cobalt blue that was being delivered “fresha froma the garaga”, how good was this car going to be after fifty odd years of engineering development, excitement plus, blasting down the autostrada at mach one, roof down, probably a paddle gear change. No better still we’ll hit the back roads and re-live the nineteen seventies Italian Rally Championship, …. this was going to be a drive!

Not disappointed that is until the Lancia emergeda froma the garaga

How the mighty have fallen 1.3 litre diesel, really…….?

Anyway this is our ride to Slovenia and this is Lake Bled.

View from the lookout.

So many stairs.

Safety first.

The Castle.

LJUBLJANA

Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia has a lovely bridge across the Ljubljanica River. Legend has it that Jason and the Argonauts killed a dragon while Jason was establishing the city and that it is one of the four statues on the bridge. So add that Jason’s fight list: Harpies, Seven headed hydra, Medusa, the list goes on and on. All this from a young Todd Armstrong, born on July 25, 1937 in Missouri, USA… in the 1963 version anyway.

Another local legend claims that if a virgin crosses the bridge the dragons wag their tails. We waited and waited and waited and……….

No discernible tail movement.

VINTGAR GORGE

The name Vintgar probably originates from German Weingarten (the vineyards in the nearby Podhom), another interpretation says that the gorge section resembles a wine glass.

Vintgar Gorge was very busy even though it was mid week. It is quite pretty but would have looked better with less visitors. The gorge is accessed via a narrow walkway “attached” to the cliff walls with various bits of “structural” steel and timber. Attached and structural is a bit of poetic license as the walkway quite often re-locates itself to a less desirable and much lower position within the gorge. The walkway has been described as and “engineering wonder” largely I feel because it’s a wonder it doesn’t re-locate itself more often. Anyway we safely traversed the gorge’s one and a half kilometre length and after a quick calculation on the iphone engineering app, that all careful travellers should consider downloading, we returned by the longer more arduous route (sans walkway).

The gorge

The walk back.

Plenty of visitors.

Section of walkway.

By the way the section of walkway above has been replaced.

Bonus pictures

Some sort of shop.

Church bells rang contiuously.

Fish in the sky with clouds.

What Sup! This Sup.

Brian,(Eastern Sparrow?)

Look for Hummingbird Moth

Gorge.

Two oared gondola.

Lookout.

Green stuff

On a sad note we were very disappointed to learn that we had made a grave error in our holiday planning. We arrived at Bled two weeks too early and as a result will now have to forfeit our chance to see the Okarina Championships.

Ho boyj I wasj really lookink forwarj to the playink off betweenj Guillaumme Perret and Natacha Atlas.