For some reason, the girls got a week off in February, so of course that meant we had to go exploring Europe! We originally planned to go to Italy but I got spooked when looking at car rentals and they all mentioned snow tires in the mountains, so we pushed that trip to Spring Break. Slovenia had been on our wish list for a while, and Jaime had been to Greece before, so it was a catch-up country for me. They aren’t really close to each other, but there was a direct flight back to Lisbon from Athens so it made the jumping around through Switzerland to get to both cities a little bit easier.
Ljubljana
We stayed at the Rohrmann Apartments, and it was great. The host was super friendly and since no one had booked the bigger upstairs unit she gave us a free upgrade. We are so glad she did because the view was incredible! It had a full wall of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the castle and river running through town. I asked the host about a nearby restaurant I saw named Most Restaurant and she said it was her favorite. She immediately called them to save us a table, and it was one of the highlight meals of the trip.
The next day we had an arranged tour planned to some nearby attractions. We waited for our driver at Dragon Bridge. Ljubljana is known as Dragon City and there are dragon statues everywhere, including two famous ones on this bridge. Our first stop was Postojna Cave, which we hadn’t heard about until we were looking at day trips and it kept coming up. We are really glad we added it to our tour. It starts off with the world’s only underground train and it was FAST! You walk around for an hour after the train ride, and then take the train back. It was a stunning cave throughout the whole experience. Speaking of dragons again, they had tiny blind cave “dragons” in a tank near the end and an underground post office. We got a lot of dragon souvenirs and then headed over to Predjama Castle, which was only 10-15 minutes away. It’s a beautiful castle built into a mountainside and is known as a hideout for a bandit that was somehow able to survive for an extended period when the castle was surrounded. It turns out that there’s a cave in the back where you can escape to the other side of the mountain so the bandit kept leaving to get food and supplies without anyone knowing. He would tease his would-be captures with fresh food too, and they thought he was the devil because of it! Last up, we went to the famous Lake Bled which you’d recognize if you Google Slovenia, and it’s even a screensaver on our TV. It has a church on an island in the middle of it, and a castle high-up on a cliff that I hadn’t seen before. Our driver took us around to different viewpoints on each side of the lake, and we took a short hike between two lookouts before heading back to the city. We walked around a little bit and had dinner at Pop’s Place (also fantastic).
The next day we spent exploring Ljubljana on foot. We started at a large market across the river where we got some coffee and dried fruits before taking a funicular up the hill to visit the castle. It felt relatively modern and we spent a couple hours climbing the main tower and walking around the hilltop surrounding the castle. Back down the hill we stopped at the market again for some hot chocolate and walked along the river. Crossing a bridge full of locks we walked to the outskirts of town to visit Union Brewery. We were obsessed with the dragon glasses and they called in an employee to open the merch store that was closed just for us to buy some glasses. We had a great lunch there too before heading back towards downtown. We walked through a nice park and then stopped at the Nebotičnik Skyscraper to get drinks and take in the views. Back in old town we explored some more before ending up at Sir William’s Pub for a couple pints. It was getting cold and rainy so the family went back to the apartment and I picked up a delicious dinner from Babu’s Asian Street Food.
And that’s it for Ljubljana! We really enjoyed it much more than we thought we would. Jaime even declared it’s her new favorite city in Europe! We headed to the airport and had breakfast at an empty airport lounge that had a nice outdoor terrace (if it wasn’t so cold) before flying to Athens.
Athens
Story time — we booked a trip to Athens right when covid hit. The travel industry was in chaos at that time. Some places would refund money immediately, others couldn’t afford to and would drag it out weeks or months. Some places gave credits for a couple months that of course all expired before we could use them. Luckily for us, our Athens hotel, The Pinnacle, immediately issued us a credit valid for 5 years! I nearly forgot about it when planning this trip. The credit did said they need 90 days notice before using it, and since we swapped this trip in earlier, it was within that window. I thought after all that time we wouldn’t even get to use this one! I emailed them begging them to let us use something, anything. They said the room type it was valid for wasn’t available but after haggling with their accounting department, they let us use it as a credit for the Executive Suite! The suite was about double the price, so the credit brought it down to a “normal” price. I figured if we were paying anyway, might as well take advantage of the credit.
They rolled out the red carpet for us. The concierge emailed me offering all kinds of add-ons, and I thought what the heck, let’s do a bunch of them. We were welcomed with several baskets of goodies, fruits, flowers, treats, a bottle of champagne, a bunch of balloons, and a hand-written card with my personalized message. It was definitely a nice touch! After settling in, we walked to Smak for pizza boats and wandered around various pedestrian streets before heading back to the hotel. We popped up to the rooftop for an amazing view of the Acropolis at night and then went to bed.
This was our Acropolis day! We had breakfast at the hotel and went up to the rooftop again for a morning view. Then we set out and walked up the hill from the back to avoid the crowds. There were ruins all along the way up. We stopped at a large ancient theater before making our way inside at the top. The Parthenon was incredible to see in person. It was partially under construction so you can’t go inside (or maybe you can’t anyway). There are a handful of other buildings up there too. We took lots and lots of pics from all different angles. On the way back down I took pictures with a “Greek soldier” and when I tipped the guy, he gave me a great souvenir coin. After making our way back down the front of the hill, we went to Efcharis for lunch and then walked through the nearby Hadrian’s Library. Walking around some more we stumbled upon a super cute place called artFix Cafe, where we had some lemonade on a terrace with a sleeping cat on one of our chairs. We spent the afternoon going through the large Ancient Agora and Temple of Hephaestus. For dinner, we went to a sleepy part of town and ate at Tivoli, another highlight meal of the trip.
While our original covid-itinerary included a stop at Santorini, we didn’t have time to include it during this trip. We looked at some of the other popular islands and they weren’t recommended to visit at this time of the year because the water was very choppy. We were determined to visit a Greek island, so we took a boat to the nearest one, Aegina Island. It’s known for pistachios so we stocked up on them in various forms (pistachio butter was delish!). We zig-zagged through the back streets of the main town. You can tell it was usually much busier. We ate at Panagakis along the coast for lunch, and then walked out of town to the Temple of Apollo ruins. There was a small museum there that we enjoyed too. Back in town, we explored some more and stopped at the Tower of Markellos before getting some pistachio ice cream. We had some free time before our return boat arrived, so we took our time strolling along the water. It was a nice way to spend the day. Once we returned to Athens, we went to Pax Burgers for dinner.
Our big event for this day was a private food tour. Our girls are notoriously picky eaters and this tour was not cheap, so we bribed them to try something at every stop on the tour, and they did! We started with a popular sesame bread circle, and then had some spiked Greek coffee. We stopped to watch the changing of the guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider before our next stop with feta pies. These were the girls’ favorite. We then had a bigger lunch of souvlaki, which was so good we went back to the same place another day. While walking between stops, I hear someone yell out my name, and crazy enough, it was a former coworker that I hadn’t seen in years! We exchanged numbers and continued the tour through a famous meat and fish market. Our last sit-down place was a small restaurant hiding in the back of a sausage shop with thousands of sausages hanging from the ceiling. There we had an elaborate charcuterie board and got too full to finish it. Our tour guide offered up one more stop, which we couldn’t turn down, and it was a delicious dessert pastry. While the family went back to the hotel, I went out for drinks with that former coworker. He was in town preparing a newly acquired apartment and boat for his upcoming retirement. While Jaime and Emily went to find a Greek salad that Emily had on a prior visit, I took the girls to a Cat Cafe for the afternoon. On the way back we walked through a really cool neighborhood and I convinced everyone to go back there for dinner. Our first choice was overbooked so we went to our backup, Flint, for a nice dinner.
We had an “extra” day in Athens so we looked up other day trip options and landed on an extended tour of Meteora, which was 4+ hours away (each way!). It was quite a slog but we kept ourselves entertained. There were tractor protests along the highways which didn’t slow us down on the way there but did on the way back. Meteora is an area full of towering sandstone cliffs and atop several of them are ancient monasteries, as old as the 11th century. We started at the biggest monastery first but unfortunately it was closed for renovations so we only got to admire the outside. Our driver was very apologetic and quickly added a backup one to our itinerary. All the other ones we visited were open. They are all extremely elaborate with amazing views. At one of them we watched as they used pulleys to pull over supply carts on wires. We had more souvlakis for lunch and made a quick stop at a public hot spring, On the way back, we stopped in Thermopylae to see the Leonidas Monument where the famous battle took place. Back in Athens we went to The Traditional for dinner and wandered the pedestrian streets again before calling it a night.
Our final partial day in Athens was a bunch of loose ends for attractions we didn’t make it to earlier. We soaked in the views of the Acropolis from the hotel rooftop one last time, and then walked east to visit the Numismatic Museum. There we explored their vast coin collection and learned about the history of coins from around the world. Next up we strolled through the Athens National Garden which included an open air zoo. For some reason we were fascinated by a small pond with a LOT of stacked turtles sunbathing. After watching the turtles for an inordinate amount of time, we walked across town to the popular Monastiraki Flea Market. We did some browsing and shopping and stopped for Greek yogurt, our last “Greek” food item we hadn’t had yet. Lastly we went to a traditional dairy bar named Stani for dessert and baklava, and then we were off to the airport.
Normally at this point I talk about what the next trip will be, but in this case, we already went on it, so I will be writing about our adventures in Italy soon!