Castles, Gardens, Buses and Trains. (Oh my!)
The garden at Maximilian’s Castle.
After breakfast this morning, I strode with an Italian and a German pre-school teacher over to Maximilian’s Castle, built on the Adriatic coast, a few meters from the Ostello. The castle was nice and luxurious, and the gardens were very pleasant. I could see why the guy on the bus had talked the castle up: you could very easily kill a morning or an afternoon just relaxing in the tranquil gardens.
I thought that it was interesting that during the whole of her trip, horticulturist Janet managed to miss every botanical garden she wanted to visit along the way, and the day after, I find myself standing amongst a wide variety of trees, and an Italian garden. Unfortunately, she was no longer at my side to rattle off horticultural trivia.
I missed the bus that would have gotten me to the train station on time to catch the train for Budapest that would have gotten me to Ljubljana. I actually saw the bus pull up, and decided that if I ran with my bags, I was unlikely to make it. Best to leave things to chance. I caught the next bus twenty minutes later.
At the station, I saw on the board that the 1036 for Budapest that could get me to Ljubljana was running twenty-five minutes late! It was still there! If only I could possibly purchased a ticket in an Italian train station in time! A mere twelve minutes later I ran down the hall with my €20 ticket and was seated in a train compartment. A moment later, the train rolled from the station.
The train lingered for a while at the Italian-Slovenian border. Time enough to check passports and switch engines. This was the first time I crossed out of the EU.
I could swear that the first bus had lingered for me to catch it. I could swear that the Italian ticket line somehow managed to squeak me through just in a nick of time to catch the train that just happened to be sufficiently late to pick me up. So, I had to wonder, what awaited me in Ljubljana?
