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On September 30th, 2016 m’lady and I spent the day in the beautiful city of Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. We rented bikes and rode around the surrounding countryside before heading into the core of the stunningly cool dragon-loving mini-metropolis. We stopped for a horseburger for lunch (when in Rome…), visited a great park and explored the amazing city.
In the centre of what is known as the green (read: environmentally friendly) capital of Europe is a mountain, and atop that mountain is just the coolest castle. We parked our bikes at the base of the hill and rode the very necessary funicular up to Ljubljana Castle.
We paid our fees and walked a hundred steps up and around a steel spiral staircase, ultimately finding ourselves on top of the tallest turret. The views of the city from atop the highest point of a castle that was itself perched upon such a notable mountain were just spectacular. We gaped and gawked, held hands and took pictures with a giant Slovenian flag flapping in the crisp wind over our heads.
The site has been occupied since the twelfth century, with the present castle having been built in the 1400’s. It was eventually turned into a prison, twice (but then, aren’t all castles self-imposed prisons?), before it was finally bought by the city and turned into the collection of museums and public places that we now saw below us.
We descended the staircase and meandered the complex, which offered a lot of variety. We went through the small and inevitably creepy prison museum, I fell down some stairs in the dimly-lit modern art gallery and somehow didn’t break my leg, we went to the small but impressive chapel, and my favourite: the interactive puppet museum, which we had all to ourselves. I put on a silly marionette show for m’lady and she put on a shadow-puppet performance for me and we laughed and laughed. There were all kinds of things to pull, push and play with in there and it was a whole lot of fun.
With gravity on our side we shunned the funicular for the trip down, walking the very, very steep path back to the city’s Old Town, congratulating ourselves the whole time for being clever enough to take the funicular on the way up. Best 2.2 euro we spent all day.
Todd Man Out 