On the move!

I left Perugia on the 19th to head to Ravenna on the coast, so I said goodbye to my newly acquired friends. The journey took me via Arezzo, Firenze and Bologna. Despite first impressions from the train station, Ravenna turned out to be a nice, peaceful town. It was the western most point of the Byzantine empire and the 5th/6th century mosaics in some of the churches were really impressive and I liked the pictures of Jesus looking happy and friendly, instead of gaunt and sad as I'd seen in other places.
Since Ravenna is on the Adriatic, I went for a swim in the sea. It was about 8pm (when it was much cooler) and I was about the only one in the water. It was very warm and pleasant, but as I was about to get out I was stung by a jellyfish (I think). An area of my arm started to blister so I went to a nearby bar and explained what had happened (in a mixture of Italian, French and English!) and they poured some ammonium on my arm and after about half an ohur the sting was mostly gone and I've had no other ill-effects.
The temperature had been hot for quite a while and so I had been steadily moving north. Now I had to decide whether or not to leave Italy, which I was reluctant to do because I like Italy so much. Eventually I decided to go to Slovenia, so I travelled by train to Ferrara, Venezia and then to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. Ljubljana is a small, pretty city and is especially quaint at night. It was also very different from Italy, particularly because it seems everyone speaks English, unlike Ravenna where the most common languages I heard were French, German, Italian and English in that order!
In Ljubljana I met a nice Irish couple and we spent quite a number of hours together. They told me they were Catholics but asked me a lot of questions about the Bible and why God created everything and whether salvation came by doing good things or by faith, so I was able to explain to them some of what the Bible teaches about being able to have a relationship with God through faith and also what had happened in my own life. They didn't normally go to church and were very interested in what I was saying. When we finally said goodbye to each other I gave them a copy of "Why Jesus?" by Nicky Gumble, which they were pleased to get. I hope to keep in touch with them. I could see that God was speaking to them which was a joy to me.
Ljubljana started out being as hot as Italy, but after an impressive thunder and lightning storm, the temperature dropped significantly. I'm now up in the mountains at a place called Bled. It's a lot like Switzerland here and is very beautiful. It also has lots of people travelling by themselves, so I have been able to socialise more and went on a day trip to another lake yesterday with two others.