By Sophomore Connor Perkey
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| Photo by Ali Mackay |
Coming off of a hard fought 51 point victory on Thursday, the ‘Cats enjoyed a well-deserved day of rest on Friday. The day started with the team’s most dangerous leg of the trip; a trek down 8 floors on an erratic hotel elevator ill fitted to carry a half-dozen crammed basketball players desperate to get to breakfast 30 seconds faster. After surviving this treacherous leg of the European tour, we boarded the bus en route to Piran, a Slovenian city on the coast about 90 minutes from Ljubljana. This bus ride provided time for many important and enjoyable activities, such leveling up in Candy Crush Saga on our phones, and playing a raucous game of “Catchphrase” in which Joe Aase displayed a mastery of the English language while Jack Gibbs and Clay Tormey displayed a stunning lack of knowledge of major figures in world history.
Towards the tail end of the bus ride, the attention shifted to outside the vehicle, as we stared in awe of the beautiful view of the Adriatic Sea to the right of the highway. As we exited the bus and walked into Piran, Tom Droney and Jordan Barham led the team in scrambling to their iPhone cameras to capture shots of the beautiful city for their Instagram pages.
Piran, the largest town on Slovenia’s small Adriatic coastline, is a tourist hotspot for reasons immediately apparent upon first sight. Not only does Piran contain some of the clearest water and most beautiful views of the sea that most of our team had ever seen, the town is composed of picturesque buildings featuring medieval architecture and neat, narrow cobblestone streets.
Soon after arriving the team split up, with half going to the bell tower of St. George’s Church in pursuit of more pictures of the town that would yield Instagram “likes,” while the rest searched the town for lunch. Both groups enjoyed their decision, with the tower group successfully capturing numerous unbelievable pictures of the town, while those who opted to get food were entertained by 45 minutes of strangely comedic bickering between employees of a Macedonian kebob establishment. Afterwards, the two groups continued to independently explore the historic city of Piran.
Hurrying past a minefield of women abusing Europe’s more lax social norms regarding beachside clothing, the team reunited by the sea to end the day. At first hesitant to enter the chilly water, soon all but one of us were enjoying the pristine water (Instagram photo by Jordan Barham). We swam around while De’mon Brooks looked on vigilantly from above on a large warm boulder, earning himself the nickname “Uncle Bootz.” Brian Sullivan showed off his foreign language skills when he befriended three young German vacationers, and Will Thoni displayed his fear of marine life when he freaked out because these Germans tried to show him a sea urchin they had caught. I think he still had a good time despite his pulse once again being up around 140 bpm.
We concluded our time in Piran in the only way we know how, by enjoying 1 Euro cones of gelato being sold nearby the bus (little known economic fact: the gelato industry accounts for 79% of Slovenia’s economy.) We took the obligatory full team photo and reluctantly piled back onto the bus, sad to leave such a great town, but eager to pursue greatness in Candy Crush Saga and rest up for the rest of our journey. Tomorrow we head on to the next stop in our journey in Treviso, Italy, where we will hopefully continue to make priceless memories and take popular Instagram photos.
