Slovenia

Everything we’d heard about Slovenia told us that we should not just stick to Ljubljana – we needed to get out to the countryside. So, on the recommendation of a fellow hosteler, we set our sights on the small country town of Bohinj, a 2 hour bus ride from the capital.  The direction we headed (NNW for the crossword puzzle geeks out there) took us into the Julian Alps section of Slovenia, a mountainous paradise with lakes and hiking and everything you could want!

Bled Lake and Castle

In fact, on the way to Bohinj we passed another retreat town well-known to Slovenians called Bled.  There is a rather large lake with a super castle perched on a rocky overlook on the lake.  Unfortunately we had to pick one or the other but we will leave Bled to another trip.  It appeared much more built-up and touristy than our final destination: Bohinj!

The View from our Hotel

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We felt like we had been racing around a lot, and thought it would be a nice treat to go and see a movie and take it easy.  Also, for the past seven months it seems like all of the movies we’ve seen have been dubbed into another language or have starred Steven Segal (if you haven’t watched his later movies, DON’T!  They have a strange fondness for them on South American buses, so we couldn’t really escape.  Some of the worst movies I have ever seen.)

So, we decided to go out and see the new Harry Potter movie!  And since we were in a large-ish city we were able to see it in English, with Slovenian subtitles.  Here’s what you can know about going to the movies in Europe.  It is just as expensive as going to the movies in the USA, but they serve beer and the popcorn tastes a little different.  Also, if you take a taxi to the theater (because there is no bus) you might just get driven on the longest route around the city and wind up paying much more for it than you really wanted to.

In all honesty though, it was totally worth it, at least to me.  The movie theater was really, really nice.  They have assigned seating, so you get to pick your seats off a little map before you buy the ticket, the seats are spaced much better than in the USA (there is a BIG gap between the screen and the first row of seats) and it was a big luxury to sit an enjoy a movie that I really wanted to see!  So cool!!!