Friday May 6th: On our last day in Ljubljana we put on our least smelly clothes and packed all of our bags yet again before heading down for breakfast. There we saw our buddy again and he thanked us for the travel tip because he had had a really nice time at Lake Bled. We shared our great experience in Piran with him and then said our goodbyes, but then awkwardly ran into him again minutes later as we were all checking-out at the same time.
Our flight to Berlin wasn't until 18:20 that evening so we had lots of time to burn in Ljubljana. We stashed our big packs at the B&B and went for one more walk around town. We just needed to be at the bus station by 15:10 in order to get a ride to the airport which was an hour away.
We started off with walking the markets again. It being Friday and having the nicest weather yet the markets were packed with stands and people. It was the busiest we'd seen them since we'd been there. There we so many food stalls and most of them were very fancy. It seemed every major hotel and high class restaurant in town had a stall set up, plus some fancy bars were serving up cocktails as well. We wanted to eat and drink all the things, but first we needed to earn our calories.
Retracing our steps we found ourselves back in Tivoli Park. We'd barely started exploring it the other day and decided it would be a good place to fritter away the hours until we could justify eating again. Starting at the grand Tivoli Palace we followed some paths off into the woods and started climbing some hills. Soon we had both soaked our clothes with sweat. The city map we had didn't show this part of the park so we weren't exactly sure how far these trails went or where they would take us. Occasionally we'd find trail maps, but it's hard to judge the distance on them. Regardlessly, we got lost a few times and soon our feet were aching and we were ready to eat again, but we still had to find our way back.
Along the way we managed to stumble upon a ski-jump center which was shut down for the off-season. It looked like a professional setup, making me wonder how the Slovenians do in the Winter Olympics (I looked it up, and they've gotten 15 medals in skiing and snowboarding related events). Later we ran into more wild herds of school children swarming over what I figured must be an old fire watch tower. When the kids finally left we got a chance to check it out. It was eerie and cool all at the same time. I couldn't find a way to climb up it though, but that's probably a good thing because it looked like it was about to collapse.
After the tower we found another trail map and got back on track. By the time we got back to old town we were ready to sit down for a beer and a solid meal. We decided on Paninoteka right near Cobblers' Bridge which was one of the places on my list. They served up delicious burgers, fries, and beers and we even managed to avoid smokers for the most part. We were joined by some friendly little birds while we sat outside and ate.
Burgers weren't enough and we needed another gelato fix. We felt like we'd earned them though after all that hiking. There were many gelato stands to pick from back in the old town market. Kat got a scoop of mint chocolate chip and I had nutella flavor. We nibbled on gelato as we wandered old town once more, always finding new things to look at.
Then it was back to the B&B for our bags and then off to the bus station once again. A little over an hour later we were at the airport and going through security. I'd figured since it was just a small flight from Ljubljana to Berlin that security would be a breeze, but I came off as not being very prepared as I kept dropping and forgetting things. I had to go through the scanner twice because I'd forgotten about my money-belt which still had leftover zloty, crown, and forint coins in it. At least the Slovenian security folks were nice. We had about an hour before the plane boarded so we grabbed a soft drink and sat for a bit while I blogged on the slow but free wifi. I was struck by the gorgeous views of the woods and the mountains from the airport. Slovenia really is a remarkably beautiful place.
It was a quick flight to Berlin's Tegel airport where we planned to print our boarding passed for the next day's flight. Although still early it was fairly dead at the terminals and we had trouble finding our check-in counter for KLM airlines. After walking all around the airport we finally asked the info desk and they directed us to terminal D which was in a separate building we hadn't checked yet. It was also empty, but at least there were self-service kiosks where we could print our boarding passes. We could only get our passes to Amsterdam so it looked like we were going to have to go through the same process again when we got there.
Boarding passes in hand, we returned to the info desk, requested a shuttle to our hotel, and I grabbed two day passes for public transportation just in case we wanted to go into town for dinner that evening. On the way to the hotel we chatted with the English bloke who had been waiting in the shuttle for me while I was getting the bus passes. He warmed up a bit and he seemed genuinely interested in hearing about our travels.
At the hotel we got checked-in by a nice lady who told us our room number and then said don't get lost because the room numbers are a little strange. We'd stayed on the ground floor before where the room numbers were in the 100s so we assumed we could figure it out. We went to find our room and immediately got lost by taking the elevator to the wrong floor. In our defense it was weirdly numbered with the 200s on the 1st floor, 300s on the 2nd floor, etc, so her warning was warranted. Once we found our room we showered and decided where to eat. It seemed fitting to go to dinner where we had our first dinner in Berlin 3 weeks earlier, Dicke Wirtin.
We took our favorite bus, #109, into town and walked to Savigny platz. It was quite a bit busier than the last time we were there, but we got a table and soon had our traditional schnitzel and currywurst. We learned that "Dicke Wirtin" meant "Fat Landlady" so their mascot made more sense now. We also learned they had a smaller location around the corner called "Kleine Wirtin" or "Skinny Landlady" which we went to take a look at after we ate. We'd loved to have had a drink there, but it was late and we had a very early flight in the morning so it was time to get back to the hotel and into bed. Good old bus #109 got us there quickly and efficiently.
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