Top of the Hill in the Heat

Thursday, Aug. 4, 2016--Maribor

One common chore as we travel is that we have to deal with future transportation plans regularly to make sure we will be able to get from place-to-place when and as planned.  Today, we went to the train station to buy tickets to get us to Zagreb on Sunday.  I had three possible routes I had found online.  The best, an all-train route, isn't available that day.  So we had to buy a train ticket which will be combined with a bus ticket.  Then at the bus station, we found that they could not confirm the schedule for getting back to here to catch the train; we will have to wait until we get to Ptuj tomorrow to determine that.

After that business, we wandered through parts of the city we had not yet seen.  We visiting the cathedral which we found NOT to be very impressive.  Then we visited the university area which has some nice old building.  We went by the football stadium where there will be a major soccer match tonight between the Maribor team and one from Aberdeen, Scotland.  (We had seen fans arriving from out of town by train when buying our train ticket.)

Finally, we made the effort to make the long, hot climb up to what is called the Pyramid.  It's a shrine on top of a mountain that has a pyramid-shaped top.  The only reason for going up there is to see the view over the city.  It was a nice view, but we found a better one later in the afternoon.

Since it was hot, after coming back down from the hill, we decided to walk across the river to the large shopping mall.  We wandered it enjoying the air conditioning and watching people.  At one point, we went into a restaurant and found a fantastic panoramic view of the old city just across the river.  It was much nicer and prettier than the view from the top of the mountain.

There were no events scheduled in the city other than the football game, so we bought another pizza and ate it at our apartment as we watched the game on TV.