It's a wanderful life, so it is

Ljubljana was very different from any city we’d been in the Balkans so far. It felt more ‘European’, if that makes any sense. This was all down to some architect dude called Jože Plečnik who travelled a lot in Europe and returned to Ljubljana to redesign the city. He didn’t have the classy resources of the Romans in Dubrovnik or Split so instead of using marble he used Gerry’s favourite building material, concrete! The man was a magician though and, like Gaudi in Barcelona, it just worked. Ljubljana is, quite simply, stunning.

The river running through the old town is traversed by many bridges, each unique and a work of art on its own. In fact, the city has a craving for bridges, with 17 in total and one of those – the Triple Bridge – greedily has three walkways merging in the main square. Ljubljana is know as the “City of Dragons”, so they’re not short of one of them either. Allegedly something to do with Jason, that bloke with the Golden Fleece, stopping off and killing one nearby. It makes you wonder why dragons are supposed to be so scary when every tale about them ends with one on the barbeque. Anyway, it all helps incredibly well when selling ‘tat’!!

The castle towers above the old town. Unfortunately the cable car up to the castle was broken, so we had a very steep climb up and down. It was lovely and the grounds included a very ornate family chapel but it’s no Edinburgh castle. 
Not that we’re biased in any way. 😉!

On our first day it hammered it down with rain. We were beside ourselves with excitement. As Niall once said of rain abroad, it was warm rain and fell straight down instead of sideways. Bliss!
And it justified our decision to prioritse our umbrellas over some other things.

There is an art installation in the main square called “The Area With Ljubljana’s Own Weather”, which sprinkles “rain” on a circular area right in the city centre. It was wasted on us on day one as no one knew what was rainwater and what was arty water!

The sun returned on the second day so we made the most of the arty rain that day. It also meant the views from the Skyscraper Terrace bar were magnificent. Skyscraper sounds impressive but it was only 12 floors up. Nice Soviet style building though. You really appreciate from up there how green the city is and the beauty of its setting.

There is a lot of art worth seeing here, classical and modern.

One practical thing to be aware of, like some other countries in this region of Europe, most shops are closed on a Sunday. So we made sure we’d stocked up on Saturday. Ljubljana is quieter than her neighbours which also added to her charms. Would we return? Definitely! We think a month in Ljubljana is definitely in our future.