Ljubljana – Jesenice 72.59km 🚴♀️ 4.28.03 ⏱ 16.2km/hr ⬆️ 695m ⬇️ 435m 🌡 28C
First of all, for all Strava people, Mas doesn’t really do Strava, the numbers do not add up. Mas cycles with a Polar watch. Polar is least kind with the incline and decline numbers. Suuz has a Garmin watch, that one is a bit more friendly already. But then there is Strava. This app just adds like 200 incline meters on a day like today. Oh and we use Google maps on a daily basis to see what the damage is. Google is mostly right, and definitely friendlier than Mas her watch. The data on the website is from Polar by the way.
So now this is all cleared up, we cycled today! Oh really? Yeah that is kind of what we have been doing for almost five weeks. We have cycled more than 1800 kilometres so far, including today. Let’s talk about today! It started a little chilly, cold even, it was about 16 degrees when we left, so for the first time this trip we wore a bike shirt 👚 because we finally could. Sleeves and everything. It was also really foggy 🌫, making Mas worried cause with fog you can’t enjoy the mountains ⛰ and we are cycling towards the Slovenian mountains today.
After breakfast, sunny side up egg 🍳 with bacon 🥓 for Suuz and scrambled eggs for Mas, we left the nice hotel 🏨 / restaurant / bar called Park Zibert where we spent the last two nights. There was this great bike 🚲 path leading out of the city, they put up signs as well so we hardly needed our Pocket Earth 🌎 app. This app also shows the official bike routes of Slovenia and since the route was so awesome we just followed the path for most of the day. It wasn’t always well paved, but even the dirt roads were pretty nice. After about 45 minutes the sky cleared and it was all sunny 😎 again. We swapped our shirts 👚 for the usual sleeveless top and enjoyed everything around us. The surrounding was absolutely stunning. Beautiful green fields, cute villages, and the mountains ⛰ in the background.
We loved cycling today. We didn’t even had to set little milestones to make it easier, we just cycled and loved doing that and just being there. Kranj was our coffee ☕️ stop today. Even the cafe we installed ourself in was great. The espresso tasted good, but the croissants 🥐 we took from the hotel were a huge disappointment for Mas (there was marmalade in it, yegh) and a happy surprise for Suuz. We went to the bakery after to get something for lunch (pizza and strüdel) or something in between. Just before that we had a good chat with a Slovenian cyclist 🚴♂️ who gave us advice on which roads to take. Great advice we must say, so thank you dude, it was awesome!
We cycled on and on and were just really happy. There was some climbing today but mostly it was just going up and down with flat stretches and some short steep uphills, and downhills, in between. There were a lot of other cyclists using this route as well. Mainly on race or mountain bikes. Some electric and some regular city bikes. Talking about bikes, Johny was great. It looks like the problem is solved by changing the free hub, jeej!
Our lunch stop today was at the lake of Bled. Bled is really beautiful and probably because of that also very touristy and insanely expensive. We decided to book an apartment about ten kilometres outside of Bled since a Schweppes bitter lemon already costs €3.80. And no that’s not a Liter, only 250ml. Since we were not staying there and it was still early, and no sign of the expected rain 🌧 and thunderstorms 🌩, we decided to make a little detour and cycle around the lake. Big mistake. Tourists are dangerous people. Definitely when on the move, whether in cars 🚗 or on bikes 🚲, on scooters 🛴 or on motor bikes 🏍 or just walking🚶🏼, scary!
But once we started we had to finish as well. Since it was so busy we decided to stay on the main road and not share a bike path down along the lake with the slow traffic. This means we added some climbing, pretty much a waste of leg power.
At some point we had to take another road and we cycled away from the lake and the hordes of people. Mountains ⛰ all around us and a silent road. Absolute joy. A steep downhill on nice tarmac was followed by an intense uphill on gravel. Since we were happy cyclists today it didn’t bother us. At some point we hit a busier road that would lead us to the apartment. It was a bit dangerous actually, but most traffic was going in the opposite direction and it was only a small bit. Just before arriving at the location of our bed 🛏 for the night this huge factory 🏭 showed up. We had to cycle around it in some kind of loop, very weird.
The apartment we are staying in is run by an older couple. The women is extremely clean, even for Mas’ standards. There was a sheet in our room with a list of ridiculously strict house rules. Rules make Suuz rebellious, especially when she thinks they’re stupid. Despite the rulebook the apartment was pretty nice. Only problem was there wasn’t really anything around within walking distance so after a shower we had to cycle 2km downhill to do grocery shopping for tonight’s dinner. We even had to go to two supermercato’s cause one of them did not have any fish 🐠. In the end we didn’t buy fish but vegan sausages. And kus kus 💋 💋 with vegetables 🍆 🌶 and feta. Before dinner we had a nice Paulaner and chips on the balcony whilst playing gin rummy, it was great. The vegan sausages were crap.
Afterwards we cleaned up and went to bed. Crossing the mountains ⛰ tomorrow, really excited!
Word het toch tijd voor de Apple Watch!!!