Day 4: A brief dinner excursion

About 6 pm we headed out to dinner.  There was a neat looking restaurant I'd turned up during my research, called Pod Verba.  It seemed to be pretty close to our apartment.  You go out to the street, go right, then turn down the next street a few blocks.

We went out the apartment, and went right.  The first street seemed like an alley, so we went to the next one which was a major street.  After a block or two, we saw shops and restaurants and thought we must have arrived.  But no Pod Vrba.  We kept walking.  Another few blocks, and then we saw a man walking down the sidewalk and he turned into a yard as we came up.

We asked for directions and he said to go to the semaphore and turn left, and it was about 500m down.  We started down and then heard footsteps behind us.  It was the man.  He said "Sorry, I was wrong, turn right at the semaphore."  They are very friendly here.

Now the problem became, was a semaphore a stoplight or a stop sign?  We assumed it was the stoplight.  So we went by the stop sign and all the way to the light, and turned right.  The main road seemed to have a huge wall on the right side of the street that went for more than 500 m.  So when a smaller road forked off, we took it.

The smaller road took us through a subdivision, so we turned left and got back on the bigger road.  And walked.  And then we saw a little old lady coming up, carrying what looked like a small milk pail.  I asked if she knew where Pod Vrba was.  It took her a minute to understand, because of my accent.  She said I should learn Slovenian.  But then she said she was going by there and we could walk with her.

So we followed the little old lady.  She went around the block, and then I think we got back on the main road again, because we passed the milk machine.  We went down to the end of the block, and turned on a smaller road, which wound through the subdivision, and kept walking and walking.  And finally there it was!  We thanked her profusely and went to the patio to find a table.  We sat down and realized we were staring at the backside of the complex where our apartment building is located.  It only took 45 minutes to get there!  Doh! 

Dinner was soooo worth it.  This was one of the places that I had looked at the menu online and used their English descriptions to translate words for my word list.  (Yes, I have an Excel spreadsheet of Slovenian:English words that I made up from menus.  I can't help being a geek.)

I had Veal Medallions in a Cabernet Sauce with Herbs and Homemade Gnocchi.  Frank had Pork Fillet with Prunes and Grilled Polenta.  (See the Menu.)  Mine was 11.50 Euros, his was 10.90 Euros.

The food was amazing!  My veal was more like 3 cutlets of beef, with an amazing gravy and gnocchi.  Frank's fillets were round medallions of pork, about 1-1/2 to 2" tall, stuffed with prunes.  There were 3 of those and 3 polenta "loafs."  I couldn't finish my food.  I was stuffed.  Frank had room for the Sour Cherry Strudel, which I took a few bites of.  It was good, but too sour for me.

After that, it was only a few hundred feet to our door, through the back of the apartment complex.