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Triple Bridge
It's actually 3 separate bridges next to each other down in the 'Old Town'. Well next it was onto a place where I had no idea how to pronounce the name of the place until I got on the train to go there. It's Ljubljana (Pronounced Joo-bil-lana). Strangely enough I didn't get a whole lot of sleep on the night train and pulled in there fairly dazed, but found my hostel really quickly, dumped my backpack and went out exploring. I had left the Swiss Weather Curse behind and it was perfectly blue skies so I wandered around a couple of parks and made my way to Ljubljana Castle, which although it doesn't have the history of the Western European or Middle Eastern castles, it was still pretty cool.
For the rest of the afternoon, I checked out a couple of slightly touristy things, then headed for the backstreets and got lost to see what I could find. It really is a very pretty little city and I found random rivers, bridges and parks everywhere. A couple of which, were great for a lie in the sun. Then it was back to the hostel for some local delicacies for dinner, which were delicious, and a fairly early night.
The next day was
Dragon Guarding Castle
One of the dragons of Dragon Bridge, with Ljubljana Castle in the background. my relaxation day as I was still recovering from the shocker of a night on the night train. I'll remember for the future not to be so cheap and get an actual bed, rather than just a chair. So I spent the day catching up on e-mail and other things, and finally left the hostel to explore a bit more around 3pm. They also happened to be playing the England Brazil match, so I watched that, then went and checked out a few bars, most which seemed to be fairly quiet for a Friday night.
The next day I had booked in for a Bohinj Adrenaline Rush, which was a day full of canyoning, mountain biking and kayaking. Joining me on this were a group of Brits on a stag weekend, and they were good fun. Although some basically had to be pushed off some of the ledges while canyoning. For those of you who don't know, canyoning is where you make your way down a river anyway you can. In this case, it included abseiling, sliding down rocks and the occasional jumping off cliff faces into rock pools whilst missing the rocks either side. But it is a
Ljubljana
The city from atop the castle. beautiful part of the country and I loved it. The mountain biking started off a bit wobbly, but after getting the hang of it after 10 years without riding a bike, I was flying along the offroad course. Then we finished up with a glide in the kayaks along the glass-like Lake Bohinj.
I joined the British lads out for dinner and their stag night, but disappointingly it turned out to be a fairly quiet affair. Even my gentle persuasion for them to get a few shots into them wasn't enough for them to start engaging the crowd and force some embarassment on the unlucky groom. Oh well, I will just have to make sure Cam's Stag Do definately does not end up this way.........
My muscles weren't protesting too much the next day, which was nice of them for my last day in the north of Slovenia. My plan for today was to head out to Bled, which is a picturesque little town, and is dominated by a lake with a church sitting on an island in the middle of it, and a castle on a hill 100m up overlooking the lake. So I took a relaxing
Lake Bohinj
A lake like glass. Part of the amazing scenery of the region. stroll around the lake and climbed my way up to the castle for some amazing views.
Next was a trip down south to see some of the caves that I had heard a bit about. And i'm glad I did, as these were absolutely amazing. First stop was a little town called Divaca, where I based myself, then I made the walk to Skojcan Caves, where our group of 7 went through and saw huge underground caverns and thousands of stalagmites and stalagtites.
Again, they said no photos, but again I managed to evade them and got quite a few. To clarify, for most of the places, I can understand why they have this rule, but not once have I got a photo using the flash, so I am doing my bit to protect whatever I am viewing. The guide did even show us the effect on the rocks of photography flash, and it turns them black!
Next were the Postojna Caves, and this is where the hordes of tourists were. The caves here were more impressive than the ones at Skojcan, but I prefered the others just for the peace and quiet. Also I got a
Lake Bled
With the Church on the Lake, and the castle to the left in the background. bit annoyed by the Asian tourists, who when they said no photos, kept taking photos with a flash, and kept tapping the rock formations to see what they felt and sounded like! Idiots!
But overall, the caves were definately worth seeing, and i'm glad I did manage to fit it in. And if anyone is considering coming to the country, it's cheap, and it has some of the best scenery I have seen, and definately the greenest country since I left NZ. Right, next country, and tomorrow I head back to Ljubljana before making my way into Zagreb in Croatia.
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Marko
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Confused?
The top green table for Ljubljana drives you to the highway and the yelow one is for normal road...