Finally arriving in Piran!

And how the hostel messed up our booking and we landed somewhere else

A girl in Piran eating ice cream and enjoying the view.

Piran is along with Bled one of Slovenia's most famous destinations and one of the loveliest small towns we have. I mean, check this greeting card! Isn't it beautiful? The whole town was built on a small peninsula. The streets are so narrow there, the old center is closed for cars, only buses, delivery vans and locals with special permissions are allowed to enter.

That's why when we arrived in Piran from Portorož, we had to find parking for over night somewhere outside the historic center and then walk to our hostel, which had to be found there. Luckily, they provide many parking lots upon entering Piran. We found a big garage, parked our car (we paid 12 Eur for 24h) and then walked downhill to the old center.

Walking to Piran's center. This road is recently renovated. It took us about 30 min to reach there, because we took tons of photos and enjoyed the views.

Finally close to the main part of the old center.

There's the church. And the church is always in the center.

The long stretch of Piran's old center: Very picturesque.

Marina Piran.

My girl posing in front of the marina and the old Piran.

Marina again.

We were headed for the main square in Piran named Tartini square.

And finally arriving at Tartinijev trg (or Tartini square).

✰ The Hostel blunder

We were so relieved, when we reached at the old town, but it was late and we were tired, so we tried to find our hostel as soon as possible. Interestingly, in most of these old Mediterranean towns, there are only house numbers but no names of the streets. So basically it's like a maze. And we didn't have a map of Piran at hand, so I asked some old men, if they can help me with the directions. They were friendly and sent me in the right way. After some extensive walking we finally found the hostel, which was located in a very narrow backstreet. We go up to the second floor and the girl, who runs it, greets us. Everything was old and shaky. We booked that hostel, because it was cheap (25 Eur/Person) and because it was located in the old town. But then things changed. The girl started to mumble something about things not going right with the online booking and that we will have to go somewhere else. When I tried to figure out where we gonna sleep that night, she seemed so confused. She said a friend will come and pick us up with a car and that we'll be accommodated outside the historic center. I wasn't very pleased about all this, but well, what could I do?

We also had to walk to the rampa and the friend of that girl picked us up. We went uphill somewhere above Piran and then turned in a side road between some orchards and houses where local people live. So basically we stayed at that guy's home. That was an adventure we had not anticipated. The guy just gave us some towels and showed us where is what in the house and then he rushed off. We never heard of him again. Our room (click on the photo above to enlarge) was not really clean and not really new, but we had a nice balcony with a view on the sea.

The balcony.

Well, we'd rather stay in the old center, but I guess it wasn't meant to be. We decided to take a little rest, showered and then went back to the old town. It was getting late already, so we hurried up. But there was another problem: How to go back there again? We didn't wanna walk like over 30min again, our legs were mad tired already. Luckily there was a bus station five minutes away from the house we stayed. We waited for a little while and luckily the bus came and took us to the center. 10 minutes later we were at Tartini square again happily taking tons of photos. But then we had another problem, when we wanted to go back to our house in the evening.

More about that in my next post.

This is the road to our house, where we stayed overnight.

We found comfort in the beautiful sunset we saw just before we went out.

Well, it was weeks after this trip, where we realized, that my girlfriend mistook the hotel. That's why the girl seemed clueless, so did we. Despite the hostel blunder and the latter problems with coming home, we still had a great time in Piran. We'll surely revisit and make sure we go to the right hostel next time.

In my next post I will introduce the beauties of Piran to you.

Portorož :Before [Slovenia Tour 2010] Next: Piran, Mediterranean pearl>>

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