A sojourn by the river.

Rick Steves did a segment on Ljubljana in 2019, and then posted it again in September 2022. I wasn’t really a Steves devotee in 2019, but I caught the 2022 post and this beautiful Central European city was quickly added to my “must visit” list.

I have to admit that my geographical knowledge of countries in the “Central Europe” category was pretty basic before I started planning this trip. Honestly, it hadn’t even crossed my mind that Italy and Slovenia shared a border (how embarrassing), so when I started looking at train travel options from Italy I was pleasantly surprised at the accessibility of places like Slovenia and Croatia.

I booked a fabulous airbnb on the “skinny end” of one of the main streets right near the Ljubljanica river which wends its way through the town, making Ljubljana one of central Europe’s most picturesque cities.

Our accommodation had one other GREAT advantage; two bedrooms, lots of space and a fantastic hot shower! Four nights in the same bed (by myself) what a luxury.

Our first day in Ljubljana was just lovely. We were a bit tired from traveling and so decided to take it easy. After a late start we headed over to Tivoli City Park for a wander. This park is about 2 square miles in the center of the city. We walked, sat under trees, and made daisy chains.

Although we really only explored one section, it was just beautiful.

While visiting this “neck of the woods” we were recommended to go to Lake Bled and the surrounding area. Honestly, I’m not much of a “joiner” when it comes to tour groups. Don’t get me wrong, I love meeting new people and I could literally talk the handle of a kettle once I get going, but it’s more the scheduling of these things and looking like a dopey tourist following behind some loud-mouthed guide with a flag on a stick that makes me cringe.

Luckily, I chose an airbnb “local recommendation” tour with the lovely Milovan and 5 of the funniest, most down-to-earth, anti-tour people on earth. We all piled into Milovan’s 8 seater mini-van and took off up to our first stop Savica Waterfall. Milovan let us know that he was there to accommodate our schedule, and not to rush us. So we took our time to climb up to the waterfall to take a look.

Imogen has always LOVED waterfalls, so this was the perfect thing for us to do. We wandered around the area and felt the spray from the water on our faces, and then met the gang back at the bus to head down to a visit to the “big lake” Lake Bohinj and the beautifully picturesque riverside area next to it.

There’s my happy mermaid again with her shoes and socks off wading in the water. Glacial, freezing, make-your-skin-go-bright-red, water. We watched the fishes, threw skimming stones, and generally chilled out by this river for a good 45 minutes, before we were invited to each a traditional lunch with our host at his fave restaurant. By now we were all getting to know each other pretty well, and spent a lot of time chatting and laughing as we piled in and out of our little van.

After lunch we hit the highlight of my day. Lake Bled. In the center of this amazing lake is a church on an island. It is the Assumption of Maria Church on Bled Island.

I can’t really explain how I felt being there. I had actually done some research on this area and knew it was a “must see” for this leg of my trip. But I wasn’t really prepared for the beauty and, frankly, the size of the lake. Milovan recommended that we climb to the Ojstrica to get the best view. Ojstrica literally means sharp peak in Slovene, and that it was. Our little crew clambered its way up to the Ojstrica to observe Bled from the tippy top of the mountain behind it. I don’t think I’ve laughed so much. Here we all are!

Next we hiked down (which as many of you may know is MUCH harder on the knees than going up) and made our way back to Milovan's pal’s restaurant to well-earned cream cakes and some delicious local vino. It was now 5 pm and we were supposed to be being delivered back to the Dragon Bridge. But what about the rowboat to the castle? We couldn’t possibly leave without doing this, and true to Milovan’s gentle nature he organized two boats for those of us who wanted to row. Immy and I took one, Margaret and Alan took the other with MeMe on board, Holly and her buddy stayed on shore to sip coffee/wine and chill. As I said before I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard in a long time, but the boat adventure really takes the cake. Our gorgeous Scottish gal MeMe had us all in stitches as she proclaimed that she didn’t know how to swim, and then proceeded to screech with terror every time Alan and Margaret’s boat rocked slightly. It was SO FUNNY.

Imogen decided she wanted to row and I acted as cox. At first we had the boat backwards, to she was “pushing” us toward the island. But after we did a full circle and turned ourselves around it was full steam ahead from there. What a star athlete my kid has turned out to be. LOL!

The trip out to the island took longer than it should have but it was well worth it. Such a gorgeous place. Thank you Margaret for taking this photo.

We decided not to go into the church (as our day was already creeping into 2 hours overtime and we figured poor Milovan probably had other things to do), but I have to include a shot from the church down to the water. You can still attend special masses here, have your child baptized, or get married. Wow. If you’re interested in more the history of this iconic landmark, check out this page. Very interesting.

Needless to say after climbing the Ojstrica, I chose NOT to take on those stairs. But I took this photo to show the perspective of the height of the church on the island.

Upon our return to shore we ate cream cake (well I didn’t, but everyone else did) and sipped coffee or local wine. I had some wine, and it was superb. We looked at our watches and realized that Milovan had allowed us to dilly dally over our trip for an additional 2 hours. What a nice person. If you ever get a chance to travel to Ljubljana please do this trip. It was amazing! We were all delivered safely back to Dragon Bridge and vowed to stay in touch.

The next day we could barely walk (LOL), but we managed to make it to the castle (via funicular) for a look around and literally collapsed in their cafe for some coffee and dessert. I have always felt bad about not making the most of being a new city for every SINGLE minute that I am there and usually run myself ragged trying to do/see everything. But today our bodies were just not having it. So we had a short look around to soak up this 900 year old architectural wonder and decided to call it a day. The Dragon is the Slovenian “mascot”, so there is a lot of Dragon action in the old town.

Even that little bit of castle action wore us out, so Immy decided to go back to our place to chill, and I grabbed my diary and ventured over to the the bar on the 12th floor of a local building to do some writing before my scheduled meet up with Margaret and Alan for a wee drink. I have met some extraordinary people while traveling the world, and just love learning about their lives and where they are from. It just so happens that this lovely couple are from Bristol (UK), where my uncle lived for many years be fore he passed, and my cousin lives now. So there is definitely a visit on the cards in the future. Bristol is also where the famous street artist Banksy is from, so I know it won’t take too much coaxing to get Jude there!

Our last morning in Ljubljana was spent at the Contemporary Art Museum. And what a surprise this collection was. Really avante garde, very women focused, just fantastic. My favorite work was a collection called “Photograms” by Aleksandra Vajd. These pieces were described as “hand dyed photograms on silver gelatin paper”. Each piece was laid in a tray on the floor and left to “react” to the process of hand painting over the gelatin. Really cool.

This Museum also hosted a very famous work called “Rhythm 0” (1974) by Marina Abramović. This piece reminded me so much of the Yoko Ono works I saw at the Tate Modern in London. The premise of this piece is that the artist put together a group of 74 items on a long table, and then subjected herself to 6 hours of audience collaborative performance art; allowing the audience to use any and all of the items she had amassed to be used in whatever way they saw fit. One item was a gun with one bullet in it, which an audience member put to her head and was about to pull the trigger when another audience member stopped them. An interesting study of human endurance here… and human cruelty. Recently, Abramović was the first woman to have a solo show at the Royal Academy in London. And when I say recently, I mean the Fall of 2023! Better late than never? To learn more about this long overdue ‘honor’ visit HERE.

After spending more time than we really had at this incredible museum we hot-footed it out of there, back through the market place where we ate some lunch, picked up our bags and walked to the train station. Good-bye beautiful Ljubljana. Zagreb here we come!