A beautiful day to visit Slovania’s capital city with its car free center.Architect Jože Plečnik shaped Ljubljana in the 1920’s, and it now recognized as a UNESCO, for his Human Centered Urban Design.This is a city designed for strolling and just enjoying the ambiance.We appreciated the details, like the lamps on the bridge. We imagine this would also be intriguing at night.Gorgeous buildings – this designed by another architect around 1907.A detail of the door at the Union Hotel.We are the first to sit for lunch at this outdoor cafe –Druga Violina – great local food that we thoroughly enjoyed!We also took in the City Museum to learn more about Slovenia. History from Neolithic Pile Houses in the nearby marshes, Celts, Romans, various dynasties, changing borders, to the vibrant country it is now.We walked around the town again, found some of the old Roman sites, and enjoyed people watching.Of course we needed to try some gelato! Raspberry and strawberry were both excellent.Ha – even a bit of rock ‘n roll. English is spoken by all we encountered – it is the common tourist language – right down to the music.
A folk tradition of Slovenia are these painted bee hive panels.This Bee Hive is the one in the park in Bled where the bees are busy making honey and then the honey sold from right from the other side of this hut.We went to the Museum of Apiculture in the cute village of Radovljica to learn more. They had a neat exhibit where you could watch bees come in and work.The Carnica bees from this region of the Alps are exported all over the world, including as shown on a historical map to Colorado.The history of bee keeping and how to produce more honey was described in this 1775 book.We also went to nearby Kropa, the cradle of Slovenian iron forging.The river is channeled off to an canal on the right….…that is controlled and provides the waterwheel power for all the iron forging.The museum had models to explain the ingenuity of this system.This area was well know for producing nails. It took 2 people to work efficiently on a nail while the iron was hot. Some of the nails were over a foot long to go into beams.Much of the more recent works are window grilles – this from the 1950’s.Amazing detail – especially when you think about how you have to form all this while the metal is hot.
Triglav National Park is the only national park in Slovenia. It is one of Europe’s oldest parks, with the first protection dating back to 1924.It is named after Triglav, which rises the highest (2864 m) in the heart of the park and is also Slovenia’s highest peak.We are thrilled to have such a beautiful day to explore this eastern part of the Julian Alps!There are 50 numbered turns – 26 up and 24 down…depending on which direction your traveling.On our way up we stopped at this Russian War Memorial, remembering those that died here in WWI.A few more turns, we found a place for cappuccino and pastry with an incredible view! Life is good……View in the other direction. Spectacular.At the summit of Vršič Pass, elevation of 5,285 ft – a mile high!We did a short hike to get up to this incredible view point.360 degrees of rock. The Alps were formed by the African Tectonic Plate crashing into the Eurasian, dramatically uplifting, then carved by glaciers.After a visit to the very interesting Alpine Botanic Gardens, the informative National Park Visitor Museum, we reached the mesmerizing emerald green waters of Soča River.Teal Water! For those Ernest Hemingway fans, this is where he was driving the ambulance during WWI, and written about in his “Farewell to Arms”. In case you want to read more of the gruesome WWI battle of the area.This area is peaceful and tranquil now. We enjoyed our day exploring.
We have driven south to Slovenia and the paradise of Lake Bled.The color of the lake does not look real. This was a steep hike up to the view point but worth the effort.All that effort calls for trying some of the local delicacies! The Bled cream cake is as good as it looks.We enjoy our balcony with a great view of the mountains. We are a 10 minute walk to the lake at Guest House Vera – a nice family home that has two apartments to rent.An early morning stroll around the lake.We enjoyed the reflections and the sunshine.The castle dates from 1100’s. I can’t imagine building it on this rock but it is very defensible.The scenery changes as you go around the lake but always spectacular.At the beach area, we stopped to try another Bled cream cake with cappuccino’s. A wonderful combination.We did some near by hikes including this one to Pokljuška soteska Gorgeand we did…A very unique hiking experience.We really enjoyed our balcony! We were able to use it every day as the weather was perfect.There is some beautiful mansions and stately architecture to enjoy on our walks around the lake. Here is a link to Bled tourism page.
