Balkans September 5, 2018 Ljubljana, Slovenia

7:00 pm.  This traveling stuff is tiring.  Today we met up with a guided tour in the old town area of Ljubljana after we got lost and walked an extra mile.  We walked around the old town, saw some beautiful architecture ranging from the 1700s to recent times.

Ljubljana was not bombed during WWII because they surendered early which saved a lot of buildings. They had a major earthquake in 1895 which knocked out many buildings so most of what is here is from then or later.

It was hot and the guide was nice but boring so I wandered around and took a lot of pictures.  The Ljubljanica River runs through downtown and there are a lot of bridges.  All motorized traffic is banned from the old town area which makes it great for walking around. 

Ljubljana is called the city of dragons.
The guide tried to explain the reason for that nickname but she lost me about halfway through a story about Greek mythology.  Anyway, there are lots of dragon sculptures around.

There were some very strange looking bronze statues around one of the bridges. The guide told us about their history and artist, but I wasn't listening, you can look it up if you're curious. The statue pictured below kind of reminds me of John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever on acid.

After the tour Sooz and I had a nice lunch and then for some unknown reason decided to hike up to the Ljubljana Castle which is of course on the top of a very high hill and was first built in the 12th century. The hike up to the castle was tough and really not worth it.  The tourist developers of the castle site integrated modern offices and  shops into the castle grounds and it doesn't work.  We hiked up more stairs to the top of the main castle tower, took some pictures and headed out.  Luckily we took the funicular down to the main city, why we didn't take it up to the castle I'll never know and my feet are paying the price.

We felt obligated to have some gelato before walking back to our Airbnb and collapsing.