To the sea for the weekend: from Prague on a rental Nissan Juke to Slovenia
One of the many advantages of living in Europe is that you can travel around 5-6 cities and 3-4 countries over the weekend, without much straining. What we, in fact, did in one July weekend. And again the week-end tariff from RUNWELL.
This time my friend and I decided to take a nimble Nissan Juke for 185 euros for the weekend. By the way, I really liked the car: smart, excellent handling, comfortable, it was very comfortable to drive, and built-in navigation, Bluetooth, USB and other joys for such a lover of gadgets and modern technologies like me - I tried everything on the way, I was satisfied with everything
This is how Juke looks like)
So, Friday afternoon, we move towards Vienna, along the already beloved, in some places being repaired, route to Brno. In Vienna, we decided to pick up fellow travelers whom we had previously found on the Internet. What for?
- you ask - just like that, we didn’t have any special goal, it was only a sporting interest - to get to know new people and try to have fun on the road.
As always, before the Austrian border we buy a vignette (8 euros for ten days), and we also pick up Czech guys who hitchhike to the Slovenian mountains, but we only brought them to the outskirts of Vienna. It turns out that hitchhiking is quite a popular topic among local thrill-seekers. The guys told us that they have been traveling like this for 5 years already, getting to their destination for 3 days, but having fun.
And so, at 4 o'clock in the afternoon we are in beautiful Vienna, meeting with our fellow travelers: Zuzanna, her daughter and a pug (a dog from Men in Black)).
We agreed to take them to Trieste (Italy). For the time being, we drank a cup of Viennese coffee, ate the world-famous strudel and hit the road.
Before Trieste, we only stopped once at a gas station, to warm up, have a bite to eat, and buy a vignette for Slovenia. The rest of the time we admired the landscapes of Austria and Slovenia: mountains, meadows - incredible beauty - they are magnificent even from the car window ...I was very impressed by the Slovenian roads, downright absolutely perfect, many flyovers and tunnels, no extreme ascents or descents.
If you have a small trunk, no problem!
We arrived in Trieste around 10pm.
It is immediately clear that the gas station is Italian.
We were met by a friend of our fellow travelers: an Italian, a Sicilian (although rather the opposite). In gratitude for the fact that we brought his friends, he invited him to dinner. In this small port town, it was not difficult to treat yourself to excellent pizza at such a late hour and drink a cold white lambrusco in a wine bar.
(I mean, in Prague closer to 11 there are problems with food, and personally I know only one round-the-clock pizzeria).
Various grappas in the bar.
After such a dinner, we decided to stay overnight in this lovely town. Hotel Central was lucky to "grab" through my adored application on the iPhone booking. tonight, for only 55 euros. When we parted, our Italian friend gave us a farewell gift, again as a token of gratitude, with a bottle of vintage Prosecco. Broad soul man!
In the morning, having cheered up with a cup of strong Italian coffee and having a bite of panini, we went to the chic Unity of Italy Square, which overlooks the sea, which happens very rarely, and went to Izola, where our Prague friends were just resting. Trieste is a beautiful town, and we will definitely go there again, that's one hundred percent!
Unity Square
From Trieste to Isola it takes 15 minutes maximum. The road through the tunnels, past the cargo port and op, already Slovenia, and after a few more minutes the town of Izola itself.
Sea and cargo port.
By and large, this is not quite Slovenia, because not so long ago (before the Second World War) the city was subordinate to Italy, typical Italian houses, red tiles, a bay with yachts. There is a small passenger port from where you can get to Venice in 40 minutes by ferry.
But we just went to the beach. The beach, however, was, to put it mildly, not very good. You can only lie on a sun lounger, a mixture of pebbles and sand. Yes, and the entrance to the sea is not very comfortable, except for the stairs from the pier, but the water is clean. Naturally, we got lucky with the weather! In general, Saturday passed in complete relaxation: lying on the beach, drinking wine, eating Mediterranean fish.
A typical dwelling in Izola.
In the evening, we arranged gatherings on the veranda in the house, which was rented by our friends. A couple of points about this: a three-room villa 3 minutes walk from the sea with a park and wireless Internet costs 80 euros per day in Izola. This is probably why Isola is a favorite vacation spot for the Czechs.
People begin to book housing for the summer, starting in February, but due to the relatively low cost, the game is worth the candle and many enthusiastically track the “tasty” price offers for housing, both in the private sector (houses and apartments) and pensions and hotels.
Such dangerous steps led into the sea)
On Sunday morning we got up early to lie on the beach a little more and hit the road again. We were going to visit Ljubljana and Salzburg.
From Izola to Ljubljana it's only an hour's drive, and it's a pleasure to drive on an empty road on a Sunday morning. Ljubljana looks like a typical European town, with monuments, churches, red roofs, narrow streets, paving stones… but it doesn't look like a capital at all. The houses are not restored, with crumbling plaster, holes in the paving stones are carelessly patched up, there are no tourist crowds, although there are souvenir shops.
Perhaps it's Sunday morning and the sea coast, located quite close, but most likely tourists do not really like this cute little town. Here on the mountain there is a castle that you can climb on a funicular, a river flows along which there are many cute cafes, coffee houses and cozy restaurants.
fruit shop)
Leaving the car in the underground parking located in the very center, we wandered around the city for an hour and had an afternoon snack in one of the local coffee shops. And, having bought a batch of magnets, we went further.
Narrow streets in Ljubljana.
Embankment.
Our path lay in Salzburg, the birthplace of Mozart. The road took quite a long time, we did not take into account that summer weekends are an excellent occasion to drive to the sea and many use it, and on Sunday the traffic is so dense that traffic jams form. There was a real traffic jam in front of the payment terminal for the Karavanke tunnel.
The tunnel itself, at a speed limit of 80 km/h, was also not moving very cheerfully. The tunnel is very long, almost 8 km, I was really scared while we were driving through it, it seems that I even had an attack of claustrophobia. We drove slowly, there were a lot of cars, gas pollution and light at the end could not be seen for a long time. In general, at first glance, not a very long way took a lot of time, effort and pretty spoiled our plans.
Entrance to the tunnel.
Salzburg is wonderful. The first thing that catches your eye, at least to me, is the lack of red roofs. Salzburg is located on the banks of the Salzach River. On the one hand, the plain, the Old Town is propped up by a rather high hill with a castle, and then the Alps begin.
Sunday summer evenings in Salzburg are quite crowded.
The square in front of the house where Mozart was born and the library.
Panorama of the city from the castle.
Locals are definitely actively involved in the public life of the city.
A street library was set up on one of the squares, and a theater stage was built on the other. Many men and boys in national costumes. In general, in the short time that we had to explore the city, we were very imbued with the atmosphere and comfort of this place. After dinner with excellent schnitzels, we drove back to Prague.
We arrived at 2 am, tired, but very satisfied. It’s good that Runwell’s weekend rate ends on Monday at noon, we managed to get enough sleep)
-on the weekend you have to choose: either the sea or tourist walks around the towns. It is impossible to embrace the immensity.
-in the summer it is worth taking into account the traffic, although of course it is impossible to take into account everything, but you can safely lay a couple of hours on the tracks where there are turnstiles for payment and tunnels, and there is still a lot of repair work ...
-We liked the Nissan Juke. All negative comments are not accepted, you can’t please everyone, we were pleased))
