Adriatic Adventure: Slovenia, Part 3 of 3

The last city we visited in Slovenia was its capital, Ljubljana.  (It looks like a tongue twister in English, I know, but it's pronounced "lyoob-lyee-AH-nah.")  This was probably one of the prettiest cities I've been in and the cafe culture was in full swing.  There are a few museums in the city, but we opted to spend our one day there strolling around the city, people-watching in a cafe, and tasting some local wines.

Here I am posing (awkwardly) on one of the many bridges in Ljubljana.

This view was taken on our way up to Ljubljana Castle (Ljubljanski Grad).  Rick Steves says there's most likely been a settlement on this site since prehistoric times, but that the first true fortress at this location was Roman.  It eventually fell into disrepair in the 17th century, but was rebuilt in the 1940s and renovated in the 1970s.

It was interesting to look at all of the before and after photos to see what was rebuilt differently from the original design and how much debris they had to clear away!  We only visited the free section of it (you have to pay to see the view over Old Town), though I agree with Rick Steves in that that was good enough for us.  There didn't really seem to be much else to do there unless you wanted to pay for a guided tour.

After visiting Ljubljana Castle we walked back down to Preseren Square, the heart of the city.  There we found a "locks of love" bridge, likely inspire by the famous one in Paris.

This is a shot of the Triple Bridge.

After having walked around all morning and early afternoon, we decided to indulge in some cafe culture and people-watching.  Here I tried bela kava, or white coffee, which is more or less coffee with a lot of milk.

We also stopped at Dvorni Bar, a wine bar recommended to us by Marco, our host at Guest House Marco that I mentioned in my Part 2 post a few days ago.  We didn't order any of the food on the menu, so I can't review that, but we enjoyed all of the wines we ordered.  In case you didn't know, Slovenia (and Croatia, which I'll write about soon) makes some pretty good wine.

I don't normally drink two wines at once, but when I do I make sure they're Slovenian wines. ;)  In my left hand I'm holding an orange wine, which I'd never heard of until visiting this country.  It's not made from oranges, as its name might suggest.  Basically orange wines are white wines that are made in a fashion more similar to how red wines are made.  They're made with white grapes, but there's prolonged maceration of the grape skins and seeds, which gives the orange wine its color.  You can read more about them here and here.

After our one-day stay in Ljubljana and a wonderful night's sleep at Galeria Rooms, we left in the morning and stopped at Skocjan Caves, which is about an hour drive southwest from the city.  Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take photos inside the caves (boo), but I highly recommend taking the time to see them.  These caves are a UNESCO world heritage site and are part of Slovenia's karst region.  We walked through at least 3.5 km of caves along elevated walkways that made us feel like we were in an Indiana Jones movie.  A must see if you like seeing natural wonders!