From Bled I moved on to their tiny little capital city called Ljubljana. Its the largest city in Slovenia, but don’t let that fool you, the population is 280 thousand. All of Slovenia is only 2 million. One thing about little countries though is that its piss easy to get anywhere. All I had to do was walk down the road from my hostel in Bled, jump on a bus that comes every hour every day, pay something close to nothing, and arrive in the middle of Ljubljana one hour later. Brilliant.
I had a few dilemmas though. One was where to stay and for how long. From talking to multiple people in Bled about both things I still had no idea. There were bad stories about all the hostels, but then also positive ones. I was told to stay there for two hours as theres nothing to do from one person, and then told to stay three days by another. In the end I decided on the hostel that was smaller with no social aspect to it, but that was better than staying somewhere with filthy bathrooms and weirdos. And I also compromised on two days there. The hostel actually ended up being really good (albeit quiet, but thats good sometimes), and two days was a good amount of time.
Its definitely true of what blogs and guides say about the city though. Its very very beautiful, but its tiny and theres nothing to do there. Its a city that you just relax in and walk around and take in the place. I don’t really mind this, not having to be a tourist and tick off all the museums is great (even though I don’t go to museums anyway). On the first night there wandering around the place I happened to bump in to two people that were staying in the same hostel in Bled, total fluke. So we went out that night to a traditional Slovenian restaurant, and I ate a gigantic Florentine steak. I gotta say though, ill take an Aussie steak that ive cooked myself any day. After that we headed to a place called Skeleton Bar, well I think it was at least. Its in an old cellar and its really dark with skeletons and stuff on the walls, pretty cool atmosphere. They are quite known for their cocktails, and offer buy one get one free, which is crazy. So that turned out to be a good night with nice people.
On one of the days I also did the ‘free’ walking tour which was quite good. But for such a small city it felt like it dragged on for a while. Because on your own you can probably skip around the entire city in two hours max, its that small. I decided to go up to the castle as well, and was pretty disappointed. Its tiny, and the view isn’t that great as its not that high over the city unfortunately. One thing I always love seeing though is inside the gondola to go up there, and inside any gondola anywhere in Europe it seems, is a sticker that says ‘Made in Switzerland. I know im in good hands when I see that sticker. The city also has some very weird art installations. There is a new walking bridge across the river, and theres about four statues in various places on it, that are just weird. One doesnt have a head, and another one has its intestines flowing out. And then there is metal fish heads on the hand rails. And on another bridge there is four massive dragons at each corner. Although that makes slightly more sense as its the citys mascot, but still looks weird. The markets were really cool, and were actually on every day. Mostly selling fruits and vegetables from the local farmers. We were told by the tour guide that the prices are usually higher than the supermarkets, as they are small time local farmers, but its far fresher and much tastier.
So yeah I don’t really have anything else to say on the place, as I didn’t do much. Its a great city to just not have to bother to do much. If you like cafes and coffee then you would be in heaven as there is a big culture of just chilling at the local cafes.
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