The MT IV - Ljubljana! Wait.... where?

EDITORS NOTE: This is a NOVEL of a post.  I hope you enjoy reading, because apparently I like writing.  Skip over all the fancy words/sentences/paragraphs down to the photo journal at the end if you are so inclined.

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It started off as any mystery trip should; with a burrito twist.  Well, 4 of us did have a burrito, but the burrito-less member (Ashley) was starting her day out of London for work so was going to meet us at the departure location.  That meant revealing that we were indeed taking an aeroplane for this mystery trip (shocker, I know!).  I told Ash to meet us at Stansted Airport for 15:30 leaving us lots of time check in for our flight and get through security.   The rollercoaster ride began on my walk to the local burrito hut when Ashley called me to say her train was delayed and there was a chance it might get cancelled altogether.  Various updates came with the final blow: train was cancelled, no trains were going and she was stuck 50 miles from the airport.  She held it together well and fought through the adversity and got into a cab and raced to the airport arriving pretty much at the same time as the group.  What a trooper.

Nicknames - I should probably point out the low-light of the trip before I get into its goodness.  This was a big personal failure for me as I assigned nicknames for the weekend, none of which really stuck.  I blame this on the participants of MT IV not buying in and letting the names take them over.  I don’t know why.... here were the proposed names:

                Thomas ‘The Mailman’ Benson

                Ashley ‘The Say Hey Kid’ Jakobi

                Greg Wamsley – ‘The Big Hurt’

                ‘Shoeless’ Danielle D’Lima

                Colin ‘Boom Boom’ Freeman

None of the above really stuck.  I like to think there is still a chance that they will. The dream is not dead, just on hold.

The Reveal - Anyway, so we are at the airport and the time came for the group to put on their Mystery Trip blindfolds.  This is a standard practice in Colin Freeman planned Mystery Trips – they should have expected it.  So, while they may have got a few odd looks they did the trick for the main intended purpose: to make the group look silly:

The time came to board the flight and the mystery became a little bit mysterious for some members.  Greg was the first to realize where we were going, followed by Tom and then Ashley – all before we even got on the plane.  Epic failure!  Danielle continued to happily blast music on full volume and keep her eyes off of the screens as we boarded the plane.  Before we knew it we were in the air and Danielle was still in the clouds on where we were headed.  A few hours later and we had landed in a mysterious land.  Danielle made it as far as one realistically can without knowing when she walked into the terminal at Ljubljana airport and read a few signs and figured out what city we were in.  I emphasize the word ‘city’, because she revealed that she still didn’t know where Ljubljana was and there was unaware of what country she was actually in.  Ah, the joys of travelling slightly obscure European locations.  Within a few minutes we were through and evidently the lovely Slovenian border control was a giveaway for Danielle.

Friday Night - So we were all ‘in the know’ and found the pre-arrange cab and were off to find out hotel in Ljubljana.  The highlight of the drive into the city was finding out that Elton John was actually in town and playing a concert that night.  For approximately 46 seconds we deliberated trying to track down the venue and scalp us some EJ tickets.  At the 47^th second it faded from our minds and we moved on.  I knew I had booked us a pretty swank hotel as I had done some shrewd negotiating on price, so was excited for the group to arrive likely expecting a hostel.  Turns out LJU is a pretty cheap place and November isn’t exactly high season which meant it was easy enough to weasel our way into a nice spot for the same price as a dump in most other cities.  We arrived at the hotel – or so we thought – only to be told that we were at the wrong location and needed to walk 5 minutes to another building.  In hindsight this just added to the mystery as the first spot was fairly nice leading the group to assume the second place would be a pile of crap.   

We arrived at the real location as it was as advertised.  We got shown up to our room at it was fairly ridiculous in how nice it was.  Here is a picture to show the wonderful furniture and old beam ceilings:

After settling in, we went out for some hot wine and a few cheap beers along the river.  Within a few minutes, we discovered how small the city was and managed to orient ourselves and get back to the hotel in one piece. 

Saturday

An early wake-up call and quick breakfast and we were off to the bus station for a day trip out of the city.  We headed off to Lake Bled which I had read about and heard good things about from a few other people.  It was just over an hour on the bus and we were there mid morning.  Lake Bled is a stunning little place with a castle overlooking a lake with one small island.  The colour of the water and mountains surrounding the lake make it very picturesque and you can see pretty quickly why it comes highly recommended.  We did the typical things you do in Bled, like hike up to the castle, walk around the lake, and stop and take pictures with blindfolds on:

After hours spent wandering around the lake we made our way back to Ljubljana for the evening.  We took full advantage of the Spa facilities (when in Rome? right?) before heading back out for a nice dinner and another chance to check out some local establishments.

The highlight of the night was the scrumcious dinner had by all – despite the small piece of hard plastc/glass Danielle found in her meal.  It didn’t stop her from finishing the meal and she got a nice discount – so all is well that ends well.  I will regret this sentence if she gets internal damage from said plastic/glass.

Sunday

I hopefully had lulled the group into a false sense of security in that we had stayed at the same hotel for two nights.  With hopes that they thought we were spending another day in Ljubljana, I set the group wake up time nice and early and we are out of our hotel with bags in hand by 7:30.  Back to the bus/train station we went.  Turns out the ever-so-reputable Slovenian bus company I had booked with online wasn’t quite as squeaky clean as I assumed.  The mini-bus was already full, which meant we got to ride in the bonus vehicle with no other passengers which sounded great.  Once in the vehicle it was revealed that we were headed to Mestre, which is a city about a 10 minute train ride away from Venice, Italy.  The bus ride was due to be about 3.5 hours so the group could relax, that was until said sketchy Slovenian bus company promptly began driving 170 km/h and scaring the bejeezus out of some members of the MT team.  Once those members fell asleep it was all OK and we made it to Mestre in one piece – not to mention in GREAT time (just over 2 hours). 

From there we took the quick train into Venice and spent a day like the Venitians do, assuming Venetians aimlessly wander Waterworld and do this:

And this?

The weather was impeccable - around 15 degrees in the sun (compared to 4 or 5 the day before in Bled).  We had a great full day of touring around and eating delicious food and were ready to head home on our flight late Sunday night. 

And that was that.

Key lessons learned from this MT:

- Blindfolds are awesome

- Burritos are a great pre MT meal

- Don’t eat glass as it is bad for you

- Lbuljana is underrated – very cool small city.  Highly recommended visit.

- Venice has a lot of water!  Who knew?

Next up is Danielle in late January so hopefully you don’t plan on reading this blog much over the holidays.  Good luck Backpack, you are gonna shock the world I’m sure.

Sincerely,

Boom Boom

P.S. If you skipped over all of that reading - here is a photo entry of the trip.

First, I blindfolded them to prolong the mystery.  Then Ashley continued eating chips.





Then we went to Ljubljana market and castle

Then we went to Lake Bled

Then we were still at Lake Bled

Then we went back to Ljubljana

Then, on Sunday, we went to Venice

Official preferred backpack carrying style of Mystery Trippers