We Love Ljubljana (Slovenia)

The drive to Ljubljana was pretty easy, but dropping off the hire car wasn't. Even after negotiating the one-way streets of Ljubljana to find the Europcar office, it turned out that the office had closed hours earlier, and when Karina rang the Europcar man, he told her to come back tomorrow. Thanks to her amazing skills of negotiation (or maybe just her stubbornness), he agreed to let us leave the car with the hotel that housed the Europcar office.

After the stress of getting rid of our hire car, we went in search of a nice bar for a calming drink. We found ourselves on the bank of the Ljubljanska river with all the hip and happening people of Ljubljana, all enjoying the beautiful afternoon at the many trendy bars. We managed to snaffle one of the high tables right on the river wall, so had a fantastic vantage point to people-watch.

Our two nights in Ljubljana were spent in an old military prison that had been converted into a very colourful youth hostel and art gallery. Our cell had a double bed above the door and two small, barred windows looking out over a sea of graffiti. On our first night we enjoyed an excellent pizza from their cafe, and we both coped with the first shared bathrooms of the trip (although at 3am, we coped less well with the noisy bar next door).

For our first full day in the city, we we walked all over the inner city, looking at all the sites on the tourist map. We saw a pink church, the Triple Bridge, the Cobblers Bridge, the Mother-in-Laws' Bridge (officially know as the Dragon Bridge), Ljubljana Castle, the open markets, and generally soaked up the atmosphere of this fascinating city. Karina also got to finally go shopping!

That evening we went on a river cruise, and then loitered around a wonderful river-side restaurant until a table became free. The next morning we checked out the National History Museum, the Natural History Museum (or 'Bug World' as Karina had been calling it), and the Slovenian Ethnographic Museum, before hopping on our train to Croatia.

We both really loved Slovenia - the people were really friendly, the scenery was amazing and Ljubljana was so cool. Karina wants to move here (although Simon isn't sure what they'd both do) and we would absolutely recommend that anyone visiting that part of Europe spend some time in Slovenia.