Holiday 3 of 4

Day Five – Friday,15 May 2026 RAIN

Free Day

On our only free day, FL (in case you haven’t read days 1 through 4, FL is my way of truncating Fearless Leader, and we’re also ending any superlative with “… in the universe”; keep up) took us on a local bus to her hometown and gave us a half-hour tour. On her day off. This was very commendable of her.

Radovljica (Rah-DOE-lit-sa; the Slovenian alphabet has 25 letters, one of them is J and they use it liberally, but it seems to be used as decoration as they do not pronounce it) is a medieval market town, and the centre still retains some of the old buildings. I believe it is a heritage site. FL gave us a LOT of information; she is very proud of her town and provided a surplus of superlatives. Mainly, the town is famous for its honey and chocolate.

Apparently, a famous beekeeper developed a special type of honeybee called the Carniolan which became so sought after that Slovenian beekeepers made more trading the bees than selling the honey. And even today the Carniolan bee is nearly the most widespread honeybee in the universe, second only to the Italian bee.

I learned this in the honeybee museum (of course they do) where there was more information about, and exhibits devoted to, honeybees and beekeeping than I thought possible. Across the hall from the bee museum were two rooms dedicated to a guy they consider to be the Slovenian Shakespeare. I’ve never heard of him, but then I’d never heard of Pink either, so what do I know?

Strange that the town had no museum devoted to chocolate. I think I would have found that equally—if not more—fascinating than how to construct a proper beehive. They did have shops devoted to selling chocolate, however, so we went in and bought some. A bit of it might even make it back to the UK with us.

The defining quality of Radovljica’s medieval quarter is its size, which is quite small. A look at the views, a breeze around the museum, a peek in the shops, and some warm strudel in a fetching café pretty much gave us all the town had to offer. Granted, we might have stayed longer if it hadn’t been raining, but even so, an hour and a half was more than sufficient.

One of the best things about the trip was taking public transportation. FL led us to the local bus stop and herded us onto the bus, which must have been a shock to the driver. While this tour was optional (actually, all the outings are optional; this is a holiday tour, not the Bataan Death March), almost everyone in the group decided to come along because Bled has, after a look at the views and a quick wander around, very few diversions. Therefore, twenty-four people filed onto the bus, filling the empty vehicle half up. And nearly that many—having decided an hour and a half was enough time to spend in Radovljica—congregated at the bus station for the one o’clock bus to Bled.

Once back at base, my wife and I set out in the rain for sustenance and shopping. With both accomplished, we retired to our room to dry our clothes, shoes and jackets and enjoy the wine and chocolates we’d bought.

You take your delights when and where you can.

Day Six – Saturday, 16 May 2026 SUN MIXED WITH RAIN

The Mountains

I’m in the lounge again because there is no place to sit in our four-star room. There is a chair, but my wife is using it as a wardrobe because she needs some place to keep her stuff, and the only other place to sit is the small patio set on the balcony, but it’s fucking freezing out there and there is no room to bring it inside. I could sit on the toilet, but it’s difficult to balance my laptop on the sink. So, I go to the lounge, where there are proper chairs and proper tables so I can get some proper writing done. And, as a bonus, there’s beer here.

Today was a mixed bag, weather-wise. The morning was cloudy and cool, and when we got into the mountains it was cold, but then the sun came out and it got pleasantly warm. The weather didn’t turn grey until we started back, but by then the bit of rain we had didn’t make much difference. We were just glad to be home.

It was a good day; long and tiring, but good. We started by boarding a new bus fitted with half-reclined seats. A few of us tried to get them upright to no avail. Turns out, that’s how they are supposed to be, leaving us leaning uncomfortably back for the duration.

I expect they were hoping we’d feel relaxed as the bus twisted and turned on the winding road with the certain-death drop-off inches away. I have not felt that queasy on a bus since the equally winding precipice we negotiated in Portugal. The views, however, were breathtaking.

The mountains were magnificent and seeing them up close and snow-capped was amazing.

After an hour and a half, we stopped at the Planica Nordic Centre, home of the largest ski jump in the universe and where Slovenian siblings Nika and Domen Prevc set individual records for the longest ski jumps in the universe: 242.5 m (796 ft) for the women’s record and 254.5 m (835 ft) for the men’s. There was also a superlative regarding a zipline attached to the largest ski jump in the universe, but I can’t recall what it was, so let’s just say it’s the longest zipline in the universe that is attached to the largest ski jump in the universe.

From there, we traversed more scary mountain roads. The route was supposed to be a loop, but a portion was still snowed under so we went halfway, then turned around so I could enjoy the winding, scary road from a different direction. I was glad when we returned to ground level.

To give the driver a break (and I agree he needed one after that drive) we were left to explore Kranjska Gora (KRAN ska GOR ah, not KRANG ska GOR a: remember, the J is used as garnish, like parsley). We were there for an hour and a half, but it only took about fifteen minutes to figure out there was nothing to do and all the shops were closed.