Unlike all of my other destinations, I’m not traveling solo in Ljubljana, Slovenia. My friend T. lives there, and she has a car! Our mutual friend Kim’s visit to Ljubljana overlapped with mine for several days, and so the three of us, in addition to hiking all over the city, also took a few road trips to various parts of Croatia and Slovenia that otherwise I never would have visited.

T. and Kim met up with me in Rijeka, Croatia on 31 May 2018. From there, we drove just a few miles to the cute little resort town (Croatia’s entire coastline sometimes seems like just one cute little resort town after another) of Opatija. (In Croatian and Slovenian, “j” is pronounced like “y” in English, so Opatija is pronounced something like oh-pah-TEE-yah.) T. is camera-shy, so you won’t see her in my photos. Luckily, her camera-shyness only extends to being in front of a camera, not to being behind it. Kim and I had no need to take selfies on this road trip!

After lunch, we hopped back into T’s car for the drive across the Istrian Peninsula to Rovinj (pronounced roh-VEEN), an even more picturesque Croatian coastal town. On the way, Croatian birds twice pooped on T’s car, which wouldn’t be too bad, except there was blood mixed in with the normal white bird poo. I don’t know what Croatian fowl (or are they vampire bats?) are eating, but whatever it is, it’s really not pretty when they’re done with it.

But enough of that topic. Rovinj is one of Rick Steves’ favorites. When I arrived, I could see why.

From Rovinj, we headed across the Slovenian border, to a coastal town called Piran rivalling Rovinj in picturesqueness. Unfortunately, T’s GPS confused right and left, and we ended up driving about 10 miles or so in the wrong direction on a Croatian highway with no exits and no places to make a U-turn. Since we were in the neighborhood, we made a lightning-fast photo raid on Pula, a historic town at the southern tip of Istria. Pula is best known for its incredibly well-preserved Roman amphitheater. We didn’t stick around long enough to see that, but we did carry out a drive-by (photo) shooting of a pretty bell tower.

Then we turned around and headed to Piran for dinner, paying exorbitant Croatian tolls along the way. T. is very clear about her preference for Slovenia over Croatia, and for Piran over any Croatian coastal town. In my estimation, Rovinj narrowly edges Piran in the beauty category, but Piran has slightly better people-watching, and more affordable food.

After dinner, T. took Kim and me on a quick tour of Piran’s dark, incredibly narrow, and twisting medieval streets. In most places, deserted streets late at night seem spooky or dangerous, but that’s just not the vibe here. Piran feels very safe. Somehow, without a single misstep, we made it back to the main square. From there, we hiked up the hill (T. called it an “incline,” but it was not. It was definitely a hill) to the garage where we’d parked and made our way to our main destination of Ljubljana (more on that city in my next post).

The following day, 1 June, we made a culinary road trip to a fine dining restaurant called Hiša Denk (š is pronounced “sh”) in northern Slovenia. Now one of my rules for this trip is my $30 a day food budget. I’ve blown that budget on a few of my days in Europe, but for each of my previous destinations, my daily spending on food (even including the copious quantities of alcohol I’ve consumed) averaged less than that. In Slovenia, however, since my lodging costs are $0 thanks to the hospitality of my friend T., I’m adding my daily lodging budget ($50) to my daily food budget, for a total of $80 a day to spend on food. Hiša Denk would challenge even this new, higher limit.

T’s GPS continued to be unreliable. We exited the highway and looked for the main road leading in the direction of the restaurant, and following her Garmin device, we ended up in a supermarket parking lot. Turning around, we tried the GPS’ re-routing, which led us over precipitous, narrow (but still two-way), winding country roads with no shoulder and steep drop-offs. That little detour did in fact lead to the restaurant, but, as we discovered when we returned to Ljubljana, we could taken the main road and avoided the white-knuckle drive along side roads.

But after all that, we arrived safe and sound and only 10 minutes late for our reservation at Hiša Denk. And I enjoyed possibly the most delicious meal I’ve ever eaten in my life. Six or seven courses, each just a tapa-sized portion. Looking at each one, it would be easy to assume they’re all style and no substance. But not only was each dish a tiny work of art, but they all also tasted incredible. Unlike the very enjoyable meal of mussels, clams, shrimp, and fish we’d eaten in Piran the night before, in which the chef had enhanced the flavor by over-salting everything, the dishes at Hiša Denk were prepared in such a way that they were scrumptious without being salty.

The final price tag: €80 ($93.41) each. Budget blown! But I shudder to think what a comparable meal would cost in Washington, D.C. Probably about $200 each, would be my guess.

After lunch, T. drove the now food-comatose Kim and I to the pretty little city of Ptuj (the pronunciation is the fun part: Ptooie!). It was raining steadily, so we settled for a photo of the scenic bridge there, shot once again from inside the car, and then returned to Ljubljana.

For our final road trip, we headed to Lake Bled in northern Slovenia, near the Julian Alps and the Austrian border, on 3 June. Appropriately enough, I nicked my upper lip shaving that morning. It was one of those tiny cuts that for some reason just won’t clot. I kept dabbing it with napkins or tissues to no avail. So for much of our time at Lake Bled, I had blood slowly trickling down my face. I bled at Lake Bled. Poetic.