On Easter Sunday we left Bled and caught the bus an hour South to Ljubljana. Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia, and it is a very small and pretty city.
When we arrived it was just after lunch and pouring down with rain. The bus station is on the edge of Ljubljana, so we got a good view of the city on our walk to the hotel.
We passed this fountain full of fat dancing horses on the way, they were so cute!
The city is full of beautiful old buildings, and has a similar feel to Prague with the Old Town being the main tourist sight. Much of the town was rebuilt after an earthquake in 1895 in an Art Nouveau style.
Ljubljana River runs through the centre of the Old Town, and has lots of bridges connecting one side of the town with the other. There are so many bridges some of them are literally right next to each other.
Ljubljana's most famous bridge is the Dragon Bridge. The dragon is the symbol of Ljubljana and is on the side of the tower of Ljubljana Castle. The Dragon bridge is only tiny, but has several large Dragon statues on each side of the bridge.
Parallel bridges
The rain was starting to get pretty hard, so we headed over to our hotel so we could check in and get some better umbrellas. Our room was a huge suite with a chaise lounge the size of a single bed and a huge shower with old fashioned brass fittings.
We had a shower to warm up and headed back out with our hotel umbrellas to get some lunch.
We stopped at a nice looking restaurant with a fantastic looking menu. We both ordered pasta with cheese dumplings on the side. All the food was delicious, probably the best meal we had while we were in Slovenia.
Of course we followed with a slice of cake, also delicious, and made us wish we had gotten two slices.
After lunch we headed up to Ljubljana Castle, perched on the hill overlooking the City. The castle wasn't as impressive as Bled Castle, but it offered some great views of the City.
The Funicular railway that takes visitors up to the Castle. We regretted not using this on our way down the hill, which turned out to be incredibly slippery in the pouring rain.
It was hard to take photos with our huge umbrellas which kept getting in the way. After a while we gave up and just used them in the photo!
We spent the rest of our afternoon at the Dvorni wine bar drying off and trying a few different Slovenian wines. Sufficiently tipsy, we had a late dinner before heading off to bed.
Our last day in Ljubljana was spent at the Lolita cafe, a popular cafe full of amazing treats and decadent furnishings. It was so hard trying to decide what to order, they had so many different types of cake, but also macarons and biscuits.
We ended up with apple streusel cake and some kind of chocolate mousse cake. Both were delicious, but just couldn't compare to the chocolate cake from the day before.
So our time in Slovenia was mostly full of eating and drinking which is fine with us. It seems to be more of a fine weather destination, but we still had a great time exploring the different regions and the stunning scenery.
The food looks decadent no wonder you do lots of walking.
ReplyDelete