Thursday, May 29, 2025
Today was another travel day, and the beginning of the end of our trip. We woke up at 6, showered, packed, and went down to the breakfast buffet. Nathan was sad that he missed the champagne yesterday, so I pointed it out to him today.
We had planned to take the 10:25 bus from Piran to Ljubljana, but when we were done with breakfast by 7:55, and basically packed, we decided to hurry to catch the 8:25.
We talked to three different people about buying bus tickets in advance over the past few days. The first person from the TI advised us to buy the tickets ahead of time. You never know. It could fill up.
The second person, a gal at reception, told us not to bother with advance purchase, we could just pay the driver when we board the bus. Finally, the third person, another woman from the TI, told us if we bought in advance, we’d need a way to print the ticket, and normally people print them at the TI but her internet was down.
So we took a chance with paying the driver, and I’m glad we did, because after all that planning, we ended up taking an earlier bus.
We boarded the bus and paid the driver no problem, and settled in for the 2 and a half hour journey to Ljubljana. The bus made several stops along the coast, picking up passengers, before turning inland towards the capital.
We were about an hour outside Ljubljana and Nathan was ‘resting his eyes’ and I started thinking about our journey home. Originally, I didn’t have enough miles or $ to fly us into Ljubljana, which is why we took the 20 train/bus/train route to get to Bled. It’s really, really, cost prohibitive to get into Ljubljana. Thousands more. For reference, that train journey was like 60 Euros for both of us.
So, my miles got us to and fro to Munich, and I had to figure the rest of it out on my own. To get from Ljubljana to Munich at the end of the trip, I wanted to get us on the 9:30 am direct Lufthansa flight, but a one way ticket this spring leading up to the trip was over 500 Euro each! So I settled on a pre-dawn Ljubljana-Frankfurt-Munich ticket for like 200 bucks each.
On the bus, I was thinking about that pre-dawn flight, and wondering what the cost would be to change our ticket, if it was even possible.
Well, Lufthansa must not have had any takers at 500 Euros (ridiculous for a 50 minute flight), because there were a lot of seats available and the upcharge was only 80 Euros.
Done. When Nathan woke up, I told him the good news. It’s a pretty big deal, because a 6:40 am flight would have necessitated we get up at like 2 or 3 am to get to the airport here. It’s 24 km or 15 miles outside of the city. A 9:40 am flight will still be early, but way more manageable.
The bus got into the main Ljubljana bus station around 11 or so, and we navigated to our hotel. We’re early, earlier that I told them we’d be, but the man at the front desk said our room was ready. He checked us in, gave us a map and restaurant recommendations, and we quickly prepped the urban backpack to walk around the town.
By now it was lunchtime, so we walked to the area with the daily food and farmers market and bought some cherries and Thai food.
The rest of the afternoon was spent people watching, walking around to various sights, and buying a bottle of Malvazija to stick in our fridge for later.
