Sweet Sweet Slovenia

Posted By: DAN, Posted In: Adventurer, at: 2014-07-26 21:18:56 EST.

Ljubljana (say Loo-Blee-Ah-Nah)was amazing. We arrived by bus in the afternoon (Tip: flying from Paris-Beauvais Airport into Trieste, Italy, then taking a bus to Slovenia saved us at least $100/person over flying). We had booked a place to stay on AirBnB. Neither of us had used the service before, but it ended up working out great. The place was only a 10 or 15 minute walk from the bus station. Ljubljana is super small, and we could walk to everything awesome quite easily.

Our host Luka was a cool guy. He met us at the apartment, and spent a solid half-hour over a tourist map circling all the great things to see and explaining the some things about the city for us. We took his advice about where to go for dinner and where to grab a great view of the city at sunset. The place and food he advised us to get were amazing, definitely one of the top meals on our trip, all for maybe $15-$20 for the both of us. Bosnian food is great, by the way. Its just a bunch of freshly chopped veggies & goat cheese soaked in olive oil, with a plate chocked full of 3 different kinds of sausages. And pita bread.

Afterwords, we hiked up a hill and made it just in time to catch a beautiful sunset over the city.

 

The next day we saw some sights and took in the town. I'm pretty sure Emma and I got into an argument about something, and ended up checking out the city by ourselves. It has one massive, beautiful park at the west edge of town. Its so large that it just becomes a forest after a while. I spent the afternoon there in my own little picnic, eating fresh produce from the open air market, and reading the book my thoughtful sister had lent to me. I saw an art.

After learning that I had visited Christiana, our host Luka insisted we go to the "artists" part of town. That night, we went out for some drinks in an area that was an old bunker back in WWII, and has since been squated and taken over by hippies and punks and all of those different kinds of outcasts that I love. The place was great. Emma and I instantly gravitated towards this bar that I dubbed the "Punk-Rock Paradise", mostly because it was Tuesday and seemed to be the only bar open.
It was blasting some hardcore low-fi punk-rock in a (probably) foreign language. The beer was cheap and the people were chill. So after Emma and I had another bosnian dinner, I tucked her in bed and struck off solo. I drank beer, played guitar, and smoked ciggarettes with a man named Veiking Leanard for a couple hours. After he left, I sat down near the bar waiting to get a drink, and was befriended by a group of people. They were quite the bunch, there was a Fabio-esque hair dresser, a cute and generous drug-dealer, her boyfriend, and - no shit - a Slovenian Olympic-Gold-Medalist Rower.

 

I got hammered-drunk with an Olympic Gold-Medallist. Who can even say that?! The dude loved me for some reason. He bought everyone shots of something he denied was tequila. It was a good night.

For our last day in Slovenia, we took a nature trip. We saw the majestically blue Lake Bled, complete with cliff-hanging castle and tiny island church.

 

After that, it was a short cab ride to The Gorge. It was gorgeous. Some of the prettiest nature I've ever seen.

 

 

The next morning, we woke early to take a bus back to Trieste, Italy.