The Big Trip: Getting there

On a Saturday morning we woke up (quite early) and headed off to the first “checkpoint” of our long trip. Our route took us through Hungary and into Slovenia.

Both countries require vignette‘s to be purchased in order to use their highways, so we had to buy one both for Hungary (~11.00€) and for Slovenia (15.00€). The one in Hungary was valid for 10 days (so basically we could use it on the return trip) but the one in Slovenia only for 7 days (one-way only 🙁 ). You can easily see the difference between the actual value of the two vignette’s… I must add, however, that the number of photos/videos taken on the Slovenian highways was much higher than the ones on the Hungarian highways (Hungary has quite boring highways… efficient, but boring…). Here is a short sample of the highways in Slovenia (these were made on the return trip, but it looks the same the other way around also 😛 ):

After arriving to Maribor, we checked in our hotel and went out to explore a bit this little town. I must admit it did not change much since I last visited: the streets were still very nice, very clean and this time the weather was better 🙂 . Given the better weather, we discovered that apart from the center, there is much life also in the river banks. There are nice pathways to just stroll around, have some fresh air and admire the swans. If you fancy you can also get into the many local bars and restaurants lined up there. An interesting POI that I just learned about is the house of the oldest grapevine in the world (over 440 years old):
Maribor vine
After enough walking around on the river banks, we decided to grab something to eat. We sat down at the most populated restaurant (Grill Ranca) which served local dishes and tried to figure out the what the names of the dishes meant. Luckily the waitress spoke a little English and with her help we found out, that most of the dishes contain minced meat (it was basically the same grilled, minced meat served in different ways). Anyway, I think the food is OK, even for such a limited variety. It basically resembles a well made burger (without the buns) and if you like burgers, then this is worth a try.

After somewhat filling our bellies, we had a nice walk back to the hotel and prepared for the next day, which was the most promising of all: the first contact with the cruise-ship.

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