We slept pretty well and woke up around 7 am to go next door to the Cacao cafe to have some coffee and cake. When we opened the door to leave the hotel we found that it was actually raining outside. In the cafe we had some coffees and I tried a chocolate orange cake that was pretty good and not too sweet. I made the mistake of ordering coffee with cream, and ended up with a coffee with a big gob of solid cream on the top – wow! I wouldn’t make that mistake again – too rich for me.
While we were there watching the rainy day outside (and hoping the storm would pass) we checked out of our hotel, and also left our suitcase behind for them to watch. After our coffees and cake we headed out to look around a bit more (with our umbrella). As we walked around the storm seemed to be gathering strength rather than fading, and we ended up ducking into a dark old cafe that looked interesting just to get out of the rain. We ended up liking the place enough that we decided to stay for lunch. I had some smoked sausages, Kuniko had some Slovenian goulash (that was really hearty) and we sipped on red wine and enjoyed the atmosphere. It almost felt like an English pub, with lots of old dark wood and antiques around everywhere. We both really liked the place and it was a good way to kill some time out of the weather. It was a good thing we did most of our sightseeing on the previous day!
After a while we moved on, and ended up at a dessert cafe to have some strudel and a Slovenian traditional dessert called prekmurska gibanica. It was kind of a layered cake including fruits and nuts and was really delicious. It was a lot of food, however, and my second piece of cake before noon if you have been paying attention. We finally wrapped things up and moved on, a little more than stuffed.
Mainly our purpose today was to catch a ride with a driver that we hired to take us on to Budapest. We met him near our hotel, and in the middle of the torrential downpour he loaded our suitcase inside his minivan, and we were on the road. For some reason, the connections between Ljubljana and Budapest are not so convenient. I had looked at flights but there was no direct connections – we would have had to layover in Germany. I looked at trains but the travel time was almost 10 hours with no high speed service. That left driving, and eventually we found a service that offered just what we needed – a private transfer door to door. It was not cheap, but in this case our time was worth more than money and we felt like it would be nice to not have to worry about transport for at least one leg. As it turned out with the rainy weather it was one of the best decisions we made on this trip. Also it was good to be dry inside a car during the rainstorm – not dragging our suitcase to and from a train station in the rain.
Our driver Victor was very professional and spoke pretty good English. He was quiet and concentrated on driving, and we were left to relax in the minivan, drink our bottled water, look at the (wet) scenery, and take it easy. It was about a four hour drive to Budapest, so we had lots of time to rest our legs. We drove past lots more corn fields, and at a certain point he also saw lots of hops fields. I’ve heard Slovenian hops are getting more popular for beer makers, so it was cool to see the origin.
Just before leaving Slovenia we stopped for a mid point pit stop at a gas station. Kuniko stayed in the car, and I followed Victor inside to look around. He said he was going to use the toilet, and so I walked around the convenience store looking at the unusual products. After a while I left through the back door, passing an actual bar in the back of the gas station. They have bars inside of gas stations in Slovenia? Seems like a bad idea to me, but I’m not Slovenian so what do I know?
As I went outside I was happy to see the minivan was still there and Kuniko wasn’t TAKEN by any thugs or slavery rings. I didn’t want to be like Liam Neeson running around killing everyone to get her back.
From there we continued into Hungary. At one point I noticed that a lot of cars had one taillight that was brighter than the other one, and I asked our driver about it. He tried to explain it as a “froggy light” but only later did I realize he meant “fog light”. Because visibility was bad with the heavy rain, each car made themselves more visible by using rear fog lights. Good idea!
When we finally arrived inside the city limits of Budapest we ran into some heavy traffic, so the last part of the trip we could see our hotel but we could only creep towards it at a snail’s pace. At last we made it to the hotel, and Victor was paid and tipped and seemed very happy with the arrangement. I wanted to pay off a little bad karma that I had from our Philippines trip, so our driver was the beneficiary and maybe I’m even now.
We checked into our hotel, The Marriott Budapest, and then promptly went out to look for some authentic Hungarian food. Luckily the rain had stopped, and there were just some clouds and cool temperatures. I looked into my recommendations that I had compiled and we found a nearby place called Cafe Gerbeaud located in a touristy area. Although it was in a touristy spot the atmosphere was really nice, and the food turned out to be some of the best we had in Hungary. We had three dishes – chicken paprika, goulash, and palacsinta. We also discovered a new wine varietal for us, called Kekfrankos. We had a couple of glasses of the Hungarian red with our dinner, and then walked slowly back to our hotel and head to bed. We’ll be in Budapest for three nights, so plenty of time to look around tomorrow.
