Lori and Troy do Europe 2025

We are now getting really good at train travel and I can feel the stress reducing. It is still there but not at the level that it was. I took pictures of the tickets just in case there is no internet. I have the seat reservation ticket in hand and we are ready to board. I see the order of the train cars on the monitor and know where it is going to land on the platform. All is good and ready.

We are traveling 2nd class because there were no 1st class tickets and the guy was not sure that there was even a 1st class car on this train. He reserved us 2 seats in a cabin in second class. The cabin has 6 seats, 3 on each side facing each other with a door that you can close but not lock. Not much leg room when you have someone sitting across from you. Lori and I are already bickering because we want to see if there are any seats in 1st class but don’t want people packing into our cabin. I figure that if I get in the cabin fast enough and scatter our stuff around enough then know one will want to sit with us and then we can have the cabin to ourselves. 

We entered the 411 car and started looking. We passed by empty cabin after empty cabin and finally arrived at our reserved cabin seats. Of course there are 2 people sitting in our seats. Here we go again! This time Lori took over and politely said “I think that you are in our seats”. They produced their ticket and we were right. Why couldn’t I have been the right one this time? I think Lori knows when to step in and take the glory. Now we just have to get them out of this cabin and into a vacant cabin because they could choose to stay in 2 of the 4 remaining seats. Fortunately they had reservations in car 408. I whipped out my phone and produced the train car layout. Lori explained that we had the same problem a few rides back and it was “no worries”. The guy then asked where in Canada that we were from? I asked why do you think we are from Canada? He said because you said “no worries”. Hmm, another little nugget in case we need to disguise as Canadians. We told them that we were from Michigan and they said that they were from Georgia but tell people that they are from Canada. I laughed and told them that I just read an article about some Canadians complaining that Americans were sewing Canadian flags on their backpacks to disguise themselves. The lady then told me that she does that. I laughed as they went hunting for their seats.

A short while later the train ticket guy appeared. Bring it on! I confidently whipped out the pictures of our tickets and he scanned them. And then scanned them again and again. I asked if there a problem? He said these tickets are for Saturday. Huh? He then said that today was Friday. $%)#$(^(#$^!! How did that happen, I thought? He said “I don’t care but when you cross the border into Slovenia, they might”. Oh crap! that can be a big fine as the people from UK explained yesterday. They made a mistake and got a ticket without the chance of fixing it. I immediately got on the Eurail App and was able to easily cancel the Saturday tickets and then purchase the right tickets for today. Lori then said, if the guy doesn’t care then maybe we don’t have to waste a days worth of Eurail tickets? Hmm, I considered that for about 10 seconds and then decided to just get the tickets. We crossed into Slovenia and another ticket taker appeared. He did not look as nice as the last one. I produced our tickets and all was good. Winning!

We took a break at about the half way point in our trip. We stopped in Liubljana, Slovenia for about 1.5hrs. We ate at the train station and had cheese burgers. They looked awesome until you bit into them and then you noticed a bleached out patty of something that we could not identify. I was hungry and plowed through it. Lori could not finish it. The whole day we were expecting some sort of intestinal catastrophe. The first leg of the train ride was about 3.5 hours and we still had about another 3 hours to go. The train had about 10-1st class seats and was closed off from the rest of the train which was packed. The bathroom was right between the 1st and 2nd class sections and is not a place you want to visit. So the fear of the mystery meat burger weighed on us for 3 hours.

Lori found a hotel while we were traveling in the train. It ended up being 1 stop before our original destination at Opatija, Croatia. It is on a bay of the Adriatic Sea and is beautiful. Lori and I like a room with a view so when we arrived at our hotel and was assigned a room on the bottom floor Lori went to work. She worked over the girl at the front desk. The check-in girl started taking us around to rooms so that Lori could view the balcony and the bathroom. Bathrooms are important to her. We settled on a 3rd floor room with a beautiful view and a handicap bathroom. Hopefully none try to check in while we are here because Lori is not moving.

The hotel is like a cruise ship on land. It is huge and long. It is kid friendly which could mean petri dish. The lobby bar has a ball pit in the middle. I guess it is to help numb the pain while the kids play. Makes sense.