Mister and Misses JRy: Slovenia: Ljubljana

After we left Lake Bled, we backtracked about 30 minutes towards Ljubljana, Slovenia and checked into our hotel. Our hotel was close to the airport, outside of the city, and surrounded by cornfields.
After we checked in, we drove about 20 minutes into Ljubljana. We followed the blue "P" signs and ended up in a parking garage underneath the main square. When we came up the stairs, we were in the middle of the square.

This is the first view we had when we came up from the parking garage. I knew nothing about this city beforehand and it turned out to be very worthwhile. It has an old castle as seen above, little streets, a river that runs through the middle of town, and gorgeous mountainous view from the fortress.

It’s not as hard as it looks; it’s pronounced (Loob-li-on-uh), and it’s a quaint little city. Jeff even claimed he would live there. The locals say it’s not too big, not too little. We loved it. There were lots of cobble-stone walking streets to enjoy, different bridges, musicians, fortresses, etc. It was a perfect old European town. We enjoyed walking around and looking at things.

The Town Hall...we assumed.

Triple Bridge

This bridge was see-through. You could look down underneath!

There are a couple of different famous bridges: The dragon bridge and the triple bridge. We took plenty of pictures. The triple bridge you'll see near the end of the post...

The DRAGON Bridge

I wish they were bigger so I could put my head in their mouths or something, but they were still pretty cool.

Standing on the Dragon Bridge with the fortress to the left.

We love our kebabs.

There is a fortress on the hill. We’ve seen lots of them throughout Europe, which means that we’ve hiked a lot of large hills…which means my feet ache and my knees kill. I was definitely huffing and puffing.

There were lots of cool lookout spots. We went into old prison cells. There were buttons made out of bones, and small rock rooms. During the First World War, Italian P.O.W.s did most of the reconstruction work surrounding and leading up to the fortress.

On the battlements--there's a restaurant right beside us.

Cool old doors--this one had a peep hole

There was a huge hallway that led to a big door that was an entrance to...somewhere. On the ceiling was an original painting from probably a thousand or so years ago. It's a coat of arms.

Really, really, REALLY old painting.

The blue hippie thing in the middle is a video that plays and probably tells what it is you're seeing...I wouldn't know--I don't speak Slovenian.

Jeff was coaxing me out of the hallway because I was just standing there, but I told him to "wait--I have to imagine myself hundreds of years ago walking down the hallway, escorted by guards, on my way to prison." It was a pretty cool picture in my head. It's a little overwhelming when you think of things that way. It's just as mind-blowing to comprehend things of the past as it is to think of the future, or eternity.

Here's the Triple Bridge. See the stairs? They're on either side of the main bridge--they just lead to lower streets--but that's why it's called the triple bridge.

An open city center by the Triple Bridge.

There is a little chapel in the fortress that we went to, and a man was packing up his things. We figured he worked there during the day, and we all started talking. His English was very good, and he had his daughter with him. She only knew a few words, and liked the braid in my hair:) Jeff asked the man what he did, so he took out a paper, asked me to write down my name, and he did calligraphy. He gave it to us as a “gift”, so we gave his daughter a “gift” of 2 euros and told her to buy ice cream. It was fun talking with him. We exchanged contact addresses—said he had meant to come to America years ago, but his daughter was born, and he’s been meaning to ever since. He was nice—not just trying to cheat us out of our money like lots of people who sell things to tourists.