Update from Day 1:
Everything worked out as planned. We checked out of the hotel at 5:00pm, Had a great evening meal in the airport using our meal vouchers from Austrian Airlines (because of the cancelled flight) and flew on time to Ljubljana. We arrived on time at 10:00pm. A van set up by VBT (Vermont Bike Tours) picked us (John, Ingrid, Janet and Ken as well as Dick and JoAnn who flew in from Zurich) up at the airport and drove us to our hotels. We arrived almost 12 hours after we had planned because of the flight cancellation. We checked into a quaint vintage hotel in the pedestrian area of old town Ljubljana and had a great nights sleep.
Day 2
We has a great breakfast at our Hotel Allegro. As part of our “pre-package” from VBT we had a walking tour of the old town Ljubljana with our guide Ida at 9:30 today. She was a fount of knowledge in history of the area, the buildings, the architecture and architects and we spent an hour an a half learning about the town and its history. Rick S. arrived just as we were going to lunch – so he joined us. We had lunch at one of Ida’s recommendations and then went back and visited in more depth some of the places we saw on the walking tour including a geloto place, a wood carving place, a bank, a pharmacy, a sausage place, and a chocolate place. A great afternoon of exploring. Gary and Terry joined us in the pm and we went for drinks at a nearby outdoor bar. Gary and Terry had walked up to the Castle above the city after they arrived. The rest of us are planning to go up there tomorrow. We decided to go to a nearby steak restaurant called Sorboara for dinner. We were seated outside and after lots of debate about ordering – we decided to go family style and had a sampling of several different steaks from around the world for dinner because they even though they sold the steak by the ounce they had had pretty high minimum weights and that moved us in that direction. The steak and the wine were delicious. Tomorrow (Thursday) we do more touring of the area and the rest of our group should arrive and we will start our bike ride on Friday and set up our bikes for riding … … …