Ljubljana

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Last destination of this trip is the capital of Sloveina, Ljubljana. The weather has become very hot and it’s around 33C during the day, this means perfect blue skies but meltingly hot to be walking around a city. This is a small and attractive city with a good feel to it. It’s easy to walk around, with lots of pedestrianized areas. There’s a castle on the hill with views over the old and new towns. The old town clustered below the castle and based around 3 squares, the river and a collection of bridges. During the day it’s quite quiet and then in the evening it becomes very lively with lots of people out in the street cafes and restaurants that line the river banks. A great place to go around sunset is the Nebotičnik skyscraper which has a bar on the top floor (that's only the 12th floor but it's above everything else - no Hong Kong!) We were surprised that there was plenty of space to sit on a beautiful clear evening, it affords excellent views of the castle, town and surrounding mountains without having to pay above the usual rates for drinks.

Many important buildings in the city were designed by local architect Jože Plečnik, we enjoyed an open-air exhibition about his work in the Tivoli Park, one side had photos of his buildings taken this year by photographer Matevž Paternoster (made us want to retake all of our pictures of the city) and the other side was of contemporary photos taken in the 20s and 30s as the buildings were going up by Peter Naglič. One of Plečnik’s buildings that is well worth the 2 euro entry fee is the National University Library. You enter through massive doors into a dark, gloomy black marble entrance, head upstairs and are suddenly in the brightly lit library (going from darkness to the light of knowledge). He designed everything from the chandeliers to the desk lamps. It’s only a small space but very beautiful. The outside of the building is unusual as he reused building materials form other places to keep the cost down.

Altogether Slovenia is a very special country that we’ve thoroughly enjoyed visiting.

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