Ljubljana, Slovenia

We arrived by train from Trieste and walked to our apartment. It wasn't ready yet so we dropped our bags and started exploring. We were here for two days. Using our gps my city app, we went to the major highlights of the old town. There are three well known bridges over the canal. (The canal is man-made and was designed and added to keep the city from flooding.) The first was Cobblers Bridge. It originally hosted shoemakers who sold their wares on the bridge to avoid paying taxes on land based shops. The second was the Dragon Bridge which has four dragons, two at each end. The dragon is on the Slovenia coat of arms and a major symbol of the city. The third is the Triple Bridges. This one was designed by the famous architect, Plecnik, who designed many of the buildings in the city. There was originally only one bridge but it became bottle necked with traffic. The other two bridges were added for pedestrians. Now they are all only for pedestrians and bicycles.

We also visited two churches - Franciscan Church of the Annunciation and St Nicholas Cathedral - both beautiful and ornate. The old town has many tgrs, squares, surrounded by many large, ornamental buildings from various areas of history. Slovenia used to belong to Yugoslavia and only achieved independence in 1991. In one of the squares was a farmers market where we bought peaches to eat.

In the evening we walked up a steep hill to get to the Ljubljana Castle. We walked around the grounds and had great views of the city as the sun set. The castle is used as an event center as well.

While here we have tried to find and eat true Slovenian specialties. We've had stuffed dumplings. You can get them stuffed with many things both sweet and savory. We had cottage cheese and cottage cheese and buckwheat. We ate at a Slovenian "fast food" place where we had stews and sausages. And we ate at a food festival and had liver and onions and dumplings with beef goulosh. And, of course, we tried a traditional dessert, layers of thin dough, nuts and seeds. We did have a good old American hamburger at "Pop's".

Our friend from Boston, Brianne, met us late morning. We spent some time at a cafe and then had lunch before she went to her room for a rest after traveling.

Our second evening we did a free walking tour that took us mostly out of the old town. It was a combination of old and new buildings. Some buildings were destroyed in the earthquake of 1895 and have been replaced by newer, more contemporary stores. We saw the shopping district, the city center living area and the cultural district. Our guide was very knowledgeable and talked about the history of the Slovenian people. His grandmother lived through 10 different reigns/ rulers from 1920 to 2010. The walk was followed by some local Union beer and some gelato.

The city is full of bicycles! They ride on the sidewalks and more than once we were almost taken it by one! A definite hazard we were but used to.Read more