In the previous parts of the travelogue, we looked at the city of Trieste and its surroundings in Italy. Now we will stop to admire what Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, is like. Have you walked over the Dragon Bridge or eaten a cake in a café on the banks of the Ljubljanica River? I really recommend Ljubljana as your travel destination.
Did you think I was going to stay in Italy? But no, I went abroad again!
What bus goes between Trieste and Ljubljana?
One morning I walked to the Trieste bus station to take a FlixBus to Ljubljana. From Trieste, you can take a bus to many beautiful places in Slovenia and Croatia. From Ljubljana, you can go on to many places. The bus was 40 minutes late and on the way back I found out the reason for the delay, I will tell you later.
The trip between Trieste and Ljubljana took 1.5 hours. From the Ljubljana bus station you can go almost straight to the Dragon Bridge, turn right and you can already see the market and from there the old town. Ljubljana is a very small capital.
What is Ljubljana like on a Sunday morning?
On Sunday morning, the city was buzzing with a nice holiday atmosphere, backpackers strolling the streets, taking pictures of everything beautiful (which was abundant in the old town) and sitting in the shade from the sun in cafés. A local band was performing in the park.
I also had a decent breakfast at the Ljubljana Market restaurant (compared to the dry crisps at the Trieste). Here, the quiche was made with free domestic chicken eggs, goat cheese and stone-ground rye flour, plus local salad dressing. If you want to eat well, I recommend coming to Slovenia.
Ljubljana – the city of beautiful little bridges
Ljubljana is one of the most beautiful old towns in my opinion. The city is made beautiful by the Ljubljanica River and the large number of bridges built to decorate it. Every few steps there is a bridge, and sometimes even three bridges side by side! For example, in front of this pink Franciscan Church of the Annunciation.
It felt like I had stepped into a fairy tale and glimpsed a flicker of forgotten times. This is where memories of, for example, dragons, ornate houses with thin antennas on their roofs, as if capturing invisible, but still perceptible, energy, live on.
The houses were very nice to look at, it’s a shame that people in Tartu don’t know how to appreciate such architecture.
There was a castle on top of the hill and it wasn’t hard to climb up to it. I’ll give you the views of the city.
Once upon a time, suits shone beautifully. And I guess people only looked up at the sky, not in front of them.
I really liked that there were drinking bowls for the dogs on the streets. There were many types and sizes of dogs and they must have been very hot.
What is a cyanometer?
There is an interesting instrument in Ljubljana – a cyanometer. It measures the blue of the sky! The inventor of the cyanometer, the Geneva scientist Horace Benedict de Saussure, determined the blueness of the sky with a simple circular color wheel that had 53 shades of blue. Martin Bricelj Baraga was inspired by this and hoped that the current monolith would raise people’s awareness of the quality of our living environment. Heartwarming!
The cyanometer also displays the level of air pollution, on a color scale from red to green, and in case of pollution, indicates the main pollutant in real time. Information can be found on the website cyanometer.net.
What a pity that there is no cyanometer in Estonia!
In Slovenia, however, the sky was light blue and beautiful to look at.
How long should I plan to spend in Ljubljana
I walked through the streets and bridges of Ljubljana in 4-5 hours. Afterwards, I sat in a café on the riverbank, ate a very good cake, and enjoyed the cool down.
To end the day, I bought strawberries and sweet grapes from the market (sweeter than the ones I got in Italy).
This time, FlixBus was 25 minutes late, and the reason for the buses’ delay became clear at the Italian border crossing. The Polizia came to the bus and collected people’s passports. The passengers waited for half an hour, and the Polizia didn’t even come to return their identification documents or apologize for the delay, but ordered the bus drivers to hand out the passports. Bus drivers were obviously worried about this obligation.
So the promised 1.5-hour trip turned out to be an hour longer, and in this reason I’m happy that I didn’t manage to travel to Slovenia for the second time.
How I got back home
It would have been very easy to get back to Tallinn from Trieste via Stockholm. My new Swedish friend did this – she flew to Stockholm and straight home from there. For some reason known only to me, I wanted to get home 1 day earlier than the Stockholm flight. So I flew to Kraków one night.
At the Kraków airport, I settled down to sit on a hard bench (the airport’s customer-to-chair ratio is detrimental to the chairs). That’s how I held out until 4 am, when I was able to enter the gate and sit on a softer chair in the café. At the Krakow airport, it was possible to get absolutely good food and cakes, so I am happy with that. Looking at the little green toy dragons, I also remembered that I have been to Krakow and it was a really great city.
Then I flew on to Stockholm. There was only a 2-hour layover, so I was worried about those corridors, terminals and gates. Luckily I didn’t have to go far and I managed to eat cake again. So I’m a bit overeated now, but it’ll pass when I get home.
How to travel easily
For those who are still afraid to ask how I dared to travel again, Ryanair tickets are sometimes around 25-90 euros each. If you only go with a backpack, you don’t have to pay extra for luggage. Accommodations don’t have to have stars for a good experience. And once there, I take local buses and trains. My travel bug has weaned me off wanting many things that other people seem to need, and it has also weaned me off being like everyone else. I prefer to collect memories, ideas and information. Find beauty and inspiration. Notice smiles and glances.
During this 4-day trip that I have now told you about, I managed to eat cakes in Italy, Slovenia, Sweden and Poland. I saw different cultures, people, buildings and so on. I found new sparks of inspiration and fragments of information. I saw the sea and the sun.
I wish you, my dears, a nice summer and definitely do something that you have never done before! Dream, and then turn your dreams into beautiful memories that come true!
I also send my best wishes to my new friend from Sweden!
The previous parts of the travelogue can be found here: