Gorgeous despite the cold

I arrived in the mid-afternoon on the train and headed straight to the hostel. There is a nice feel about Ljubljana and for once I was able to find the hostel without any aimless wandering around. The hostel doesn't have a big sign outside but the building is easy to find if you know the street number.

It was so nice and warm inside and I was given a very friendly greeting by Tanja who was on duty. I dropped my stuff and headed out to the supermarket to get some stuff for dinner. There is a department store next door to the hostel which has a small supermarket in the basement. It even has vegies that you can eat. I got some stuff and decided to be good and cook a proper meal that would last for a couple of days. I did vegie burgers in the end and they were actually pretty good though lacking in a few spices.

After cooking and eating (fairly early because of the lack of a proper lunch), I sat around and watched TV for a little while. Most of the channels are in German but that didn't matter. Slovenian TV is quite hysterical. They have all these old programs like Ally McBeal and Married with Children on (in english with subtitles). It's like being in a time warp.

On Wednesday morning I headed out into town fairly early to check out the sights. It had been raining but luckily had stopped. It was still very cold and grey though. I think that it made it to 6 degrees for the day and was only 4 when I left the hostel. It is quite easy to navigate in Ljubljana as most streets tend to head towards the river eventually and then you can just follow it along until you get to where you want. I crossed the river and went to the info centre. The main one is just next to the triple bridge. I grabbed a smaller map and set off into the cold again. They really shouldn't have the info centre so warm. I could have stayed in there for ages.

I walked back across the bridge and to the Church of the Annunciation, which is a large pink Baroque church. Most of the churches are only open for a few hours in the morning and in the late afternoon/evening, so I figured I should go and see them straight away. The church is on one edge of a little square that is called Presernov. It is being resurfaced at the moment which kind of spoils the whole look but they should be finished soon. There are lots of impressive art nouveau buildings on the other sides of the square.

The church itself is very baroque and is the full wedding cake on the inside too. It's quite large but much darker than the other churches that I visited. I walked along the waterfront and crossed back over the river (to the castle side) at the Dragon Bridge. It's named for the four dragons that sit on the pillars. They are quite impressively scary looking but unfortunately have been graffitied like much of Ljubljana. I walked down Cyril-Metodov Square which is more like a wide street really, past the produce market and onto St Nicolas Cathedral. I made a little detour into a side street on the way to take a picture of a great doorway with two giants holding up the mantle while dressed in lion skins. Very impressive but unfortunately, crumbling away.

The cathedral is also baroque and is a very impressive building. The outside has various paintings on the walls and two bronze doors that were added for the visit of Pope JP II in the 1980s. One has six important bishops from Slovenia and the other the history of Christianity in Slovenia. They were having mass when I arrived so I decided to come back later.

I continued along Mestni Square to the town hall which isn't particularly impressive from the outside. The inside is meant to be better and during the season I think that you can go on tours and see it. There is a great Baroque fountain outside that is bedazzling white. It almost hurts your eyes.

I walked through the old town. It is also mostly Baroque because there was an earthquake in the 18th century that destroyed a large part of the old town and everything was rebuilt in the new style. Lots of them are a bit run down but it's quite a cute little shopping street and I imagine a nice place to have coffee in the summertime. Though, Slovenia has discovered the gas heaters so that you can still sit outside in the cold. Lots of cafes also have blankets so that you can keep your legs warm. I think that some of it is that Slovenia doesn't allow smoking inside food places (incredible I know) so there are people who want to sit outside all the time. It's so pleasant to be able to go to a restaurant or cafe and not have them blowing smoke all over you.

I hiked up the hill to the castle. I took what the LP described as the easy route and it was still quite hard work. There definitely weren't going to be raging hordes running up it. I got to the top and wandered around a bit in the park behind the castle. It has a couple of nice memorials in it and would be a nice place to sit in the summer. I sat and had a snack up there but got quite cold once I was still. I walked all the way around the castle before going inside. They are doing some archeological work on one side of the castle at the moment. It must be really miserable sitting on the ground in the cold digging very small holes. I guess they don't want to do it in the summer when all the tourists are around.

I headed into the castle and the inside isn't that impressive. They have modified a lot of it over time to make it into galleries and function rooms and at least one section was modified in the sixties or seventies and is quite unfortunate.  I didn't head into the tower as the weather wasn't good and I figured that with a couple of days up my sleeve, I could wait until it cleared a bit.

I walked down the front of the hill and back into the old town. I went back to St Nicolas' now that mass was finished to look at the inside. It's quite lovely inside with the full baroque painted ceiling with saints and angels and so on. It's a little over the top but fairly restrained for baroque.

I headed back across the river over the Cobbler's bridge and went to look at the university. The university was founded in the 19th century and they have some pretty impressive buildings around. It is like a little uni suburb really it takes up so much space. The library is a more modern building and is really very unusual with its mixture of bricks and stone (see the photos). It has a large entrance hall that is made of black marble but it really needs a good polish.

I headed back to Kongressi Square and looked at the Philharmonic building and the Church of the Holy Trinity. Unfortunately the church was locked so I couldn't see the inside. Republic Square was my next stop and it's really just a large concrete carpark with a couple of ugly skyscrapers on the edge of it and a shopping centre. Not even worth going to. But across the road is the Parliament building which is worth a look. It has a large modern, sculptural doorway which is quite interesting and very communist. It reminds me of a nicer version of some of the Russian stuff. By this stage, I was cold and hungry and headed back to the hostel to get some lunch.

After hot lunch and a warm up I headed back out into the cold to see some more stuff. I headed to the edge of the university district to see the roman wall which is pretty much old and covered in moss. It's the only remains of the old Roman city of Emona which stood here in the 4th century. I followed the road back down to the river and crossed at yet another bridge. I went to the church of St James, which is another large baroque number. I wandered back up through the old town and over the river into one of the shopping streets back to the hostel.

The next morning was a nicer day and it was much warmer when I headed out in the morning. The cloud had cleared a bit and you could see the mountains in the distance, all covered in snow.

I headed up past the opera house (which is currently just a facade that is being renovated) to the Serbian Church which is really lovely. It's fully painted on the inside like the Russian ones. It was completely empty and very peaceful inside.

I walked along the street to Neboticnik, which is a famous skyscraper. It was covered in scaffolding though so I couldn't really see any of it.  I walked to Miklosicev Park which has lots of old buildings around it but it is all a little shabby.

I walked in the direction of the ethnographic museum and stopped at the sport centre which is the home of one of the Slovenian soccer teams. It's an impressive building indeed. I didn't go into the museum as it was clear and I wanted to make it back up to the castle while you could still see the mountains.

I made a couple of brief detours on my way back to the castle. I went to the church of St Peter which is in a building that used to be an Orthodox church  but is now catholic. It has some awesome paintings of Jesus and the four evangelists on the front wall. They are decidedly out of place when you see the interior of the church. Inside it is baroque with some rococco additions. I also stopped at the Church of St Joseph which I think is greek orthodox (judging by the strange letters and the white and blue colour scheme). The outside is like fake romanesque and the inside is very plain. It looks like it is used more as a gallery than as a church anymore.

I walked up the much steeper side of the hill to the castle and was actually hot when I got to the top. I headed into the tower and went straight to the top. There is a really good view of the city from the top and it makes you realise how large the valley actually is. They had set up the staircase well as it had a separate way of getting up and down so that you didn't have to pass on the narrow patches.

There is a short film that they show about the history of Ljubljana. It's three D so that you get to wear the stupid glasses. The film is quite interesting and goes through the important points in the life of the city. They do some mock ups of what the city used to look like before it had the modern buildings too.

After the film, I headed back down into the city and went shopping. I'm sick to death of the clothes that I have and just wanted to try something else on. I ended up getting some stuff so that I have something decent to wear in Italy. It was so hot in the shopping centre. I was coated in sweat by the time that I made it out.

In the evening, I headed out to a restaurant called Sokol with some of the girls from the hostel. The food was really nice and not that expensive. It has mostly traditional Slovenian food (including horse) and some Austrian stuff.

The next morning, I didn't do much other than pack my bag and walk up to the bus station to head onto Bled.