Eastern Europe Tour - Day 25 and 26 - Ljubljana

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It was with a sad heart that I said goodbye to Bled and caught the bus to Ljublana at lunchtime yesterday. However to console myself for my upcoming departure I booked myself in to have a manicure at the wellness spa that was attached to my pension. At first I was a little disappointed with my manicure (she made me bleed while she was cutting my cuticles) however when she added a gorgeous little flower design onto my little finger nails and then when I realised that in different lights the base coat of the french manicure that she gave me glows subtly different colors, well now I think it is one of my best manicures ever. Totally loving it.

Ljublana is a lovely city. However I didn't really see a lot of it yesterday as it was tipping down with rain. I had woken up in the morning in Bled with a massive thunderstorm going on outside my window. And the weather didn't really let up all day. So I hid in my hotel room in Ljublana for most of the afternoon and rested and watched a movie (The Young Victoria - which is acutally really quite good).

Today however dawned really lovely and sunny. The morning was spent looking around Ljublana. The first stop was a hike up to the ljubljana castle. This castle was actually quite a disappointment. The view from the top was lovely, but there didn't seem to be anything to look at in the castle. The belfry was closed, the pentagonal tower was closed, we couldn't get into the museum, but we could see the chapel (not really worth it). The castle was quite similar to the one at Bled in that it has been heavily restored (which is nice) but it didn't give you any history what so ever about the castle. So not much time was spent at the castle.

The next stop of the day was Tivoli Park. This is a lovely park on the edge of the city that borders onto a massive forest. The part is huge, but I have to be honest and say that it isn't the nicest park that I have seen over the last 4 weeks. To be frank Ljubljana is a beautiful city, but it doesn't really have all that much for tourists to see. It seems to me that it is more of a city that you need to just live in and experience. The best thing that we did was sit by the canal and have a lovely pizza lunch and a glass of wine. And it is very well suited to this activity with masses of outdoor cafes and restaurants. It doesn't have the fancy churches and palaces and musuems of other capital cities, and quite honestly that is a part of its charm. You can always tell how many tourists a place gets by the number of souvenirs shop that the city has, and Ljubljana has hardly any souvenir shops (which makes it hard to buy my christmas tree ornament).

One thing that is going on in town at the moment however is some kind of festival (it really must be feastival season as I seem to be hitting a few of them at the moment). In the main town square there were loads of stalls set up and children just everywhere, getting their faces painted, playing games, and generally running around screaming.

Because there wasn't all that much to do in Ljubljana itself, we decided to take a drive out and take a look at Lake Bled again. The weather was just gorgeous, perfect for picture taking. And perfect for my third stroll around the lake (yes that's right, another 6kms). After wandering around Bled we decided to head for another lake, Lake Bohinj which is another glacial lake about another 30kms past Bled. While this lake wasn't quite as jaw droppingly pretty as Bled, it was still stunning. This lake looked like more of the kind of place that you would take your family for a weeks holiday. It seemed to have all sorts of adrenalin outdoor activities. The place was really lovely, defintelty the kind of place that I would like to come back to and spend some more time in. While we were in Bohinj we saw some signs for a waterfall called Savica Waterfall. So we decided that it would be a great idea to try and find this waterfall. This involved a bit more driving, and it was the most amazing drive. At one point it honestly felt like we were driving along a forest hike. It as exaclty the kind of scenery that you would expect to see on a mountain hike, except we were seeing it from our car. The walk to the waterfall was about 20 minutes, up an awful lot of steps. Which I have to be honest rather tired me out (after all the walking around the castles and gardens in the morning, and then the 6km trot around Lake Bled). So I was rather happy to sit back in the car and drive back to Ljubljana. Especially as there was a bottle of Verve Champange waiting for me there 😊

Tomorrow we are off to take a look at the Postjana and Skocjan Caves.

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