All Around Town

Here are some snippets of things I've seen around town while getting lost, finding dinner, going on a city tour, etc.


A nice plaza along the river. You can see the castle watchtower in the distance.

They day after I toured the castle I hiked the grounds surrounding it. The views were even nicer than from inside the castle. I might have overdone it walking the first day because my legs were pretty sore until yesterday. I think I broke through some kind of barrier where my legs just don't care anymore. It's nice.

There are several bridges along the river, each with their own story. This is the Butcher's Bridge (so called because of it's proximity to the meat market) which was completed in 2010. Couples leave engraved padlocks and throw the key into the river to symbolize their commitment. Some use combination locks just in case things don't work out...


One particularly nice building detail. The city was destroyed by a fire in the late 1800s and rebuilt in mostly art nouveau style by Joze Plecnik, the city architect. Except for the obviously Yugoslavian buildings.


I thought this view from the castle grounds looked particularly like Portland.


I visited the Sunday flea market on the waterfront. It's rather interesting to see what local garage sales would consist of. There was a lot of china, lighting fixtures, books, and military paraphernalia (including Nazi stuff... that surprised me) and folk crafts.


A better view of he castle entrance and what used to be a bridge over the moat.

This is one of four bronzes on the aptly named Dragon Bridge.

I found a coffee shop on a floating platform on the river that provided the best photo opportunities of the river so far. I can't wait for the foliage to all fill in, most of the trees in town are deciduous so it doesn't feel very green yet.

Next: Tivoli Park?

Ljubljana Grad, AKA The Castle

The Ljubljana castle is perched on top of a hill that is surrounded on one half by the old town. From old town there is a funicular (cable car?) railway that saves you the 10 or 15 minute walk up the hill.
This is looking from the top down.


The castle complex houses a history museum, restaurant, chapel, event space, art galleries, and the watchtower. This is the view from the watchtower of the castle courtyard.


Here I am on the viewpoint promenade. Behind me is some of old town. It's a bit too hazy to see but there are actually giant snow covered mountains in the distance.


One of the interior art installations (giant ants crawling out of the walls of the cellar).



The castle is a fascinating mixture of crumbling and cobbled together stones with modern straight lines cutting through wherever it is needed, especially in the lower levels.


The dragon in the symbol for Ljubljana because of the story of Jason and the Argonauts who encountered a dragon that lived in the swamps where Ljubjana was built. So you see representations of dragons everywhere, like this one at the entrance to the castle.

Next: Wandering in the city

REBOOT! Ljubljana, Slovenia style!

Hello! I landed safely in Ljubljana, Slovenia (via Chicago, above, and Munich) on March 20th around 3pm here, which is around 7am back home. I was picked up by one of the school administrators and taken to the school where I was handed off to the director, Dule. He was very welcoming and showed me around their part of town and got me checked into the Hostel where I'll be staying for about a week while the apartment is being remodeled. It was great to talk to him and get answers to all of my burning questions but I was starting to get a bit light headed from exhaustion after being up for over 26 hours. Somehow that combined with the altitude change of three plane rides really throws me for a loop. I got to bed by 8pm!!

The hostel, Vila Veselova. I'm in the Pink Room.

The next couple days I mostly got lost on a wild goose chase to the Ministry of Finance (I was given a false location) in order to get a tax number so I could open a local bank account. Then I got a bit of runaround at the bank. But after two days it's all sorted out.

Yesterday I did my first real bit of sightseeing as a tourist rather than as someone on an errand. I went to the castle.

Much more on that next time, I have a walking tour scheduled for today that I don't want to be late for!