After that I tossed around for an unknown period of time thinking about work. I got up a little after five. I remembered that I had not fully charged the computer battery, so I went into the guest room. I inserted the surge suppressor into the outlet, but the red light did not come on. Either the outlet or the surge suppressor was dead. I could not find another outlet in the guest room or in the bathroom, so I decided to try the bedroom. I quickly located the one that was recharging my AA batteries. I tried the surge suppressor in that outlet, and it worked.
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I ate breakfast with Patti, Tom, and Susana. The hotel offered essentially everything that all of the other hotels offered plus crepes and French toast. I learned that the assembly time was actually 8:45. Tom said that he would tell Sue. He did, but she was unable to get ready in time to eat breakfast. This was a pity. Sue loves crepes.
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Our group had twelve in the boat with the white awning and fourteen in the one with the blue awning. The captain of the other boat spoke English pretty well. He had a cell phone or some kind of communication device. A young man named Rok played the accordion. He sat in the white boat on the way out to the island and the blue boat on the way back. The captain of the blue boat never said a work.
I sat in the blue boat, which I think was named Antonija, with Lyle, the Corcorans, the Andersons, the Sharps, the Millers, the McKinneys, and the Brimmers. Sue rode on the white boat with the rest of the group except, I thing for Audrey, who did not make the trip.
) The captain of our pletna. | ) The other boat had Rok on the squeezebox. | ) Mike and Marge with the castle as backdrop. |
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The Slovenians seemed to enjoy comparing the pletne with the gondolas of Venice. The main thing that they have in common that each is propelled and steered by exactly one person. Otherwise they do not feel similar at all.
) Angela takes some photos as the Antonija approaches the island. | ) Joanne and the island. | ) The Vila Bled Hotel was once Tito's vacation home. |
The ride out was quite slow. It took us about twenty minutes. On the party boat the passengers got into Rok's music. On our more staid craft people took a lot of photos and soaked up the atmosphere.
) Joanne and Rawlins soak in the scenery. | ) Getting off the boat was a challenge. | ) Andy wants to take our pletna for a spin. |
The fact that the pletna does not have a keel means that the load must be precisely balanced. Someone got up once, and the boat rocked seriously from side to side. The biggest challenge was when we got onto the boat and when we got off at the island. People left one at a time, and care was taken to make sure that those remaining on the boat were evenly distributed on both sides.
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The church let tourists ring its bell. A long rope hung down from the ceiling in front of the altar. Allegedly if one can ring the bell exactly three times, one's wish will come true. It evidently took a deft touch. Susana warned us that physical strength ws not required. Almost everyone tried this. I was not interested in becoming a bellringer, so I passed. I know for a fact that Sue was not able to make it ring exactly three times, because even after she finished pulling the rope, I was still there.
I know two rally good jokes about bellringers. When you see me, ask me about them.
It warmed up enough while we were on the island that I took my sweater off and stashed it away in my backpack.
) The church's interior. | ) The ornate altar. | ) Andy, bellringer Tom, and Sue. |
) Paul and Ray. | ) Sue did not get her wish. | ) The church's organ. |
The little museum was basically a way to kill time until it was time to get back on the boats. They had quite a few crèches and dolls on display. It seems peculiar to me that people would spend so much time making these things. I saw a show on television about Naples. Evidently constructing of crèches is a major industry there. The most interesting one was the one made out of gingerbread. Sue attempted to make a house out of gingerbread once. I would rate it at less than a total success.
) The gingerbread creche. | ) It went in here, ... | ) ... and came out here. |
Upstairs in the museum building was an old toilet facility. It was a niche in a room with a seat. Beneath the seat was a hole. Leaves and ground were clearly visible beneath it. I photographed the seat and resolved to try to find the hole on the outside of the building. It was not trivially easy to find it, but I managed to get a pretty good photo of it.
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I come from Alabama with my banjo on my knee;
I'm goin' to Lou'siana my true love for to see.
It rained all night the day I left,
the weather it was dry;
The sun so hot I froze to death,
Susanna don't you cry.
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When everything was still;
I thought I saw Susanna dear,
A-coming down the hill.
The buckwheat cake was in her mouth,
The tear was in her eye,
Said I, I'm coming from the south,
Susanna don't you cry.
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And then I'll look all 'round,
And when I find Susanna,
I'll fall upon the ground.
But if I do not find her,
This darkey'll surely die,
And when I'm dead and buried,
Susanna don't you cry.
On second thought, maybe the last verse isn't too cool.
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) We only saw one basketball team. | ) This duck must have been running a day care center. | ) Tom at the trailhead. |
The castle was not very crowded when we got there. There was only one bus in the parking lot. A few came later.
) Hotels and pletne. | ) Pletne and the island from the castle. | ) The island. |
The big attraction is the vista. The views of both the lake and the surrounding countryside were spectacular. They must surely rank with the most picturesque views anywhere. The pletne were hardly visible on the water as they made their way slowly but surely to and from the island.
) It was hard to stop taking photos. | ) The Adam wine shop. | ) Beheaded bottles. |
There was a small museum there with costumes and weapons. I cannot say that we were very impressed by it.
) What a tragedy that the luge was not open yet. | ) Tony may have liked the museum more than we did. | ) The theater. |
A small theater played films on a wide-screen television. When we walked by the first time, no one was at the desk outside of it, and the film playing had a German soundtrack. When we went by the second time a young lady was there. At Tom's request she put one a couple of short films in English. I was hoping to get a definitive pronunciation of the name of this place. One announcer said "Blade;" the other said "Bled." I guessed I could have asked one of the locals, but I never did.
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We thought that there was a trail near the parking lot. We never found it. We saw the two ladies whom we had followed up walking on the road back down. We figured that they must know where they were going. Eventually we were confident of our bearings. We summoned up our virility and passed the ladies. What if they were older than we, one was crippled, and we were going downhill? It was the only time that we passed anyone in the whole trip, and we felt good about ourselves.
At the bottom of the road was a small soccer stadium. We checked it out. While we were doing so, the ladies arrived. They told us that they had let us pass them because they did not know where they were going.
By then we knew where we were. We showed them how you could see the hotel district between the buildings. It was only a few hundred yards away. They were happy to learn that, for once, the Brits had not been led astray by the Yanks. We bade them good-bye.
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Tom and I were looking for a beer. We passed a store with the name of Krčma on its awning. I told Tom that my old football team in the seventh and eight grade at Queen of the Holy Rosary School in Overland Park, KS, had been coached by two guys who were enrolled at the time at the high school that I eventually attended. Their last name was Krchma. I guess that they probably were of Slovene descent.
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St. Joe's two big ends ran a crossing pattern. [OK, they probably weren't big, but I was barely 100 pounds in the eighth grade.] One of their guys caught the quarterback's pass, ran smack into the other guy, and fell down on the two yard line. I heroically jumped on him so that he could not crawl into the end zone. Our ball on downs at our own two.
There still was enough time left for us to screw this up. On the first play the tailback [Why the tailback was passing the ball is still another story.] threw me a pass. I caught it and ran about thirty yards. We ran one more play, time expired, and our team was ecstatic. Maybe a tie is like kissing your sister, but in this case our "sister" was hot.
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Harlyn came by. He stopped for a minute to talk with us. He and Tom exchanged beard-trimming techniques. Harlyn used a trimmer; Tom favored scissors. Harlyn left, but a few minutes later he returned with a bag of pastries.
We saw Steve and Janet strolling on the other side of the street. We waved to them, and I took their picture.
We decided to call it a vacation, and we walked the few blocks back to the hotel. Sue told me that she had gone swimming in the hotel's little pool. She liked the jets that they had.
I used the Jacuzzi in the bathroom again. It was delightful. Then I took a rather long nap.
When I woke up, I signed onto the Internet in order to see if I could check our seat assignments on the flight the next morning to Prague. For some reason they would not let me do so.
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I bit my tongue during dinner. This is at least the fifth time that I have done it on the trip. I seem to have forgotten how to chew.
Most of the conversation was about travel arrangements. The other three people were all flying to London. Lauren helped Patti and Tom figure out how they would get around in their mini-vacation there.
Someone had purchased a card for Susana, and we all signed it. She gave all of us presents: bottles of paprika for the women and brandy for the men.
) The group. | ) Susana's good-bye speech. | ) Harlyn, Pam, and Andy. |
Susana gave a little speech in which she said that this was her least favorite part of every tour. Everyone seemed to agree with this sentiment. My biggest regret concerning this tour was that I got so wrapped up in the details of what I was doing that I did not take advantage of enough occasions to talk with other members of the tour group. I suspect that some of them were very interesting people and that I could have gotten a lot out of a little more conversation. This always seemed to happen to me.
) The dessert line. | ) Baclava was our last shared treat. | ) Exchanging good-byes. |
Sue and I had to get up pretty early the next morning, so we made an early night of it. Sue asked the desk for a wake-up call at 4:15. I finished the last Tomislav from the refrigerator, packed and went to sleep.