The day was totally grey and threatening rain.  With Easter weekend upon us and knowing that just about everything will be closed Sunday and Monday, we focused on gathering provisions.

List in pocket, we headed to the market.  First we stopped at the coffee place across the street and then on Stari Trg to sample the little traditional cakes. The market was exponentially bigger and more crowded than when we were there on Wednesday. At the vegetable stall where I had previously shopped, there was a line about 10 people deep. We weren’t in a hurry, and it gave us time to people watch and refine our menus for the weekend.

We went into the downstairs market too, and got some sausages. Then we came back up and got some cheese from a woman who didn’t speak English, but did speak Italian, so that was fun and went smoothly.

I kept seeing bags of onion peels for sale. What the heck??? Finally I asked–they’re for dying eggs for Easter:

Loaded up, we headed home to unpack. Ken was really tired and took a nice nap while I read. BTW, I am reading and listening to Stephen King’s newest novel, Fairy Tale. It’s over 600 pages and I figured it would last me a good part of the trip and it has. I am enjoying it, but it’s way too long.

Jakob Franc Restaurant is “unashamedly a temple to pork” (quote from the apartment information book) and a special Slovenian breed of pig. Our late lunch there started with a glass of really nice local sparkling wine. Then a special Easter gift from the house, ham with fresh horseradish. Ken had really been wanting to get some horseradish in the market, but we didn’t know what to put it on. It had quite the wasabi-like kick with the salty sweet ham. Very nice combo.

We shared a fabulous roast pork and potatoes dish, grilled veggies and way too buttery rolled, cheese dumplingsthe . We drank a really good Slovenian Barbera with meal and had apple strudel for dessert. Then we were gifted little glasses of delicious quince liqueur. The lunch was wonderful except for the loud talking American guy who said fuck every other word. By the end of lunch we knew his whole life story. He was apparently trying to sell his wine to the restaurant.

From there we walked to the house of the main architect here in Ljubljana, Josef Plečnik. It was nice walking through the residential area. We were starting to feel a bit of drizzle so we headed towards home.

Do you think this is a mosaic dragon on the side of this bridge? Ljubljana is so big on dragons, there is even one on their flag:

We stopped into the beautiful Church of St. James:

I was curious about this open box on the altar–something for Easter, I am sure:

We came home and didn’t leave the apartment again. It was raining off and on and we were nice and cozy here. Another good day.