Category: in slovenia

le petit café

when i think of european cities, i think about intimate cafés. lovely, warm and cozy cafés, with steaming expresso machines, newspapers and a crowd of happy people, sipping their cups of coffee and eating chocolate cake. do you have this mental image too? i was secretly hoping ljubljana would be a bit like this, having heard good things about its cafés.

so on sunday, we tried le petit café (trg francoske revolucije 4).

the place was crowded! and no wonder: good food, good coffee, nice decoration, not expensive… it was perfect. well except… the cups and mugs. sorry to be this picky, but it as if they got the whole supermarket shelf of cheap luminarc mugs (plus a few spare they had at home) and put them to use. they don’t look so nice on a café and almost ruined my bohemian vision of this brunch…

…almost. :) it was a good start, i’m looking forward to more “café testing”!

home sweet home, ljubljana version

and now that we’re out of the house searching loop, i can finally breathe better. we got a slovenian phone number, called dozens of landlords and real estates, saw quite a few houses and ended up scoring a little apartment that we can just barely spot on some of the city’s postcards. :) right now, our fridge magnets are holding our favorite polaroids, there are maps on the walls, the table is a mess of postcards and notebooks and there is a cat (i don’t know who the owner is, but he likes belly rubs) sleeping on our patio chairs. it feels like home.

as a reward (or perhaps because of my persistent nagging), we went to see new moon on the cinema, yesterday. the room was filled with giggly teenagers, who clapped during the kissing parts and sighed loudly on the sight of their favorite shirtless character (vampire or werewolf), but all in all, i had a nice time. to me, new moon felt much more coherent with the books than twilight did and so the whole story felt familiar, matching what i had imagined when i read it. i can see why people dislike it, especially if viewed as a standalone movie, which it is not meant to be…

…frankly, i can’t wait for eclipse! :)

Post author By ana
Post date November 28, 2009
4 Comments on home sweet home, ljubljana version

in slovenia traveling

crossing europe, roadtrip style

i’ve been away from this blog. after the last post, there were 5 weeks of surgery-and-recovery on the countryside. p’s mom is doing fine at the moment, and so we’ve moved on with our life… which brought us to our original plan: slovenia! :D

we arrived to ljubljana late last thursday, after a pretty intense 3-day roadtrip across portugal, spain, france and italy. we got good weather for traveling, mostly sunny/cloudy weather, with no rain, and lots of lovely autumn views.

noted on the way here:
* we crossed a thousand different versions of seats, citroens, renaults and lancias… but also lots of luxury brand suvs (bmw, mercedes, audi) which, given the current gas prices, is quite odd.
* in italy, you collect a toll ticket at the border with france, proceed to cross the country, and then pay the toll fee on the border with slovenia – it’s brilliant! in france, we stopped 12 times to pay toll fees…
speed cameras in souther europe
* why the hell is portugal the country with less speed cameras among its neighbours? don’t we have one of the highest traffic accident rates in the world? :/

* i was expecting tunnels on this trip, but nobody prepared me for côte d’azur. it was kilometer after kilometer of tunnel-bridge-tunnel-bridge-tunnel-bridge… bridges are ok, but i don’t like tunnels that much… at a certain point all i wanted was to stop right there and let paulo drive… why is there never a service area when you need it?

on a positive note, our car handled the trip without breaking a sweat!

so we’re here, discovering the city and looking for a place to stay. more updates when we get that milestone accomplished :)

Post author By ana
Post date November 22, 2009
5 Comments on crossing europe, roadtrip style