Onward to Slovenia, with a flying stop in Austria
The next morning (Saturday) we were leaving Vilnius; Georgia to fly back to Rome and reality, and me to go on to Vienna briefly and then Ljubljana in Slovenia. Nicely, our flights were only about half an hour apart at lunchtime, so we headed to the airport together.
Because I was on a Finn Air flight I had to go from Lithuania to Austria via Helsinki (I had to go north to go south...), so I didn't get into Vienna until evening.
I only had one full day in Vienna. I'd been here before and the temptation to have a rest day and stay in my room and read and chill was pretty strong! But I can read and chill at home. I went towards the city and spent a few hours visiting Belvedere Palace and Gardens. There are actually 2 parts to the Palace... Upper Belvedere and Lower Belvedere, with the gardens between them.
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| Upper Belvedere |
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| Upper Belvedere |
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| Lower Belvedere |
The castles both contain huge amounts of art from many periods throughout history. But I've never been much into art. I love the buildings and the architecture. That was what I was there to see. This room was impressive, especially the ceiling. From every angle the 3D effect made it actually look like someone was falling from the sky.
A couple of the pieces of art caught my attention. But it was mainly the building that I enjoyed.
It was pretty difficult to get photos that weren't full of tourists. I've had to do quite a bit of cropping... (bloody tourists... who let them in...?)
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| Looking across the gardens toward Lower Belvedere |
And more...
There was more (much more), but my main goal for this part of the trip was to get to Slovenia and visit Ljubljana. So after a late lunch at Belvedere I made may way back to my room for a bit of a repack (things were getting fairly messy in the suitcases), a shower and an early night.
I was on the train to Ljubljana by 0800 the next morning and arrived there in the early afternoon. My Airbnb was only a 5 minute walk from the train station (10 minutes pushing my bloody suitcases on those pavements). And once again, it was up a big flight of steps with no elevator. I think that of all the places that I had stayed so far, only the apartment in Vilnius wasn't up a flight of stairs (with a 25kg suitcase). Venice was up 3 flights!
But Ljubljana, City of Dragons... I had wanted to come here for years, but had never made it happen on previous trips.
The relationship between Ljubljana and dragons supposedly began with the ancient legend of Jason and the Argonauts.
On my first afternoon there I just went for a wander to get my bearings and find some food. I was very impressed to see a group of people in one of the public squares in the city teaching CPR to anyone who was interested! They seemed to have a pretty good level of engagement.
It's very hard to tell in the below photos, but this is the famous Triple Bridge. The centre bridge was the only one originally, used for both pedestrians and horses and carriages (and eventually cars). As population and traffic increased there were frequent bottlenecks, so in 1929 a foot bridge was added to each side of the main bridge to fix the problem.
Thankfully there is a funicular that goes up the hill. There were some nice-looking walkways leading there too. But, as ever, time was pressing so I took the easy way up.
Then I started with a climb up the bell tower to have a look down over the city. It's easy to see where the original older part of the city surrounds the castle hill, and then gets more and more modern as it spreads out. You can also see in the castle keep that much of it has been overhauled and modernised.
Heading down from the tower there was a cute little chapel, and a row of prison cells. The information boards in the prison area described some pretty brutal punishments. It seems that if you weren't broken and crazy before you went in, you would be by the time you got out (IF you got out)!
I spent an hour or so wandering through the museum. It had pretty difficult lighting for taking photos, but I got a few.
This piece on the wall was fairly grim...
I nosed around a bit more and grabbed a coffee before heading back down the hill. At the bottom I came across this water fountain...
A couple of Australian women in their 60s or 70s were looking at it. While I stood there taking a photo or two, they were saying "I didn't bloody come halfway round the bloody world to see a bloody kangaroo. Let's bloody go!" And off they puffed. So eloquent... 😆
I spent the rest of that day wandering around and peeking into places. The following morning I took a short river cruise to see the city from a different angle.
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| I imagine she gets a little cool in winter... |
After disembarking I toddled off for some more exploring. The Cathedral of St. Nicholas was beautiful (as most cathedrals are).
After the cathedral, I spent some time at the City Museum of Ljubljana. It was well laid out and quite interesting, especially after going to the castle and hearing about the history of the region. Many of the displays contained items that had been described or referred to in the presentation at the castle.
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| A 3D arrangement of images of many of the people that have been influential in the history of Ljubljana and Slovenia |
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| The real oldest wooden wheel with an axle in the world (I saw a reconstruction yesterday). 5200 years old. |
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| From a soldier's grave, ~1st century AD |
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| Imagine pushing this monstrosity around... Especially with a rude and demanding noble person in it |
And that was it for my visit to Ljubljana. It was a nice place to see, but I left a little disappointed. I think I had romanticised it somewhat in my mind, having wanted to come here for so long. I had expected more dragons!
Dawn the next morning saw me pushing my suitcases over cobblestones in the pouring rain, to get to the bus station to catch the airport bus. I was off to London!
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| The streets were laid out long before the invention of buses. Narrow and winding, some of the manoeuvring and cornering was quite impressive |
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