Hi, everyone!
While we were in Slovenia, we did a lot of walking and step climbing! Our hotel, the Grand Hotel Union, was right behind the Franciscan church of St. Steven. That’s why we heard all the church bells on Pentecost! The Franciscan church is on a square across the river from the old city of Ljubljana.
On Sunday morning, Grandma and Grandpa took me on a walk around the Ljubljanica river and the market. I made friends with a bear! Then I watched street vendors make sugared almonds, lace, and ice cream rolls. Cherries were in season at the market, and they looked yummy!
Because the Ljubljanica river runs right through the middle of the city, there are lots of bridges crossing it. Dragons are the symbol of Ljubljana, and there are four dragons guarding the Dragon Bridge. They all turned out to be very friendly! The Butchers’ bridge marks the spot where meat cutters used to work. They threw their scraps right into the river! The new bridge, built in 2010, is where couples put padlocks to show their commitment to each other. They lock the padlock to a railing, then throw the key in the river. I remembered seeing padlocks on the Cinque Terra trail railings! The sides of the bridge decking are transparent, so I could see right down to the river!
The Butchers’ Bridge and the walk on the new side of the river have a lot of sculptures by Jakov Brdar, a local sculptor. I made friends with one of the animal sculptures before I had lunch with Grandma and Grandpa at an outside cafe.
After lunch, we met our tour guide Livio-san and our local guide Mate-san at the hotel. We walked over to the plaza below the fort up on the hill. Then we took the funicular up for a visit!
Once we got to the upper landing of the funicular, we still had to climb some more to get to the castle! Parts of the castle are over 900 years old, but most of it was rebuilt in the 1400s! The castle was originally used to defend the city, then it was the residence for the ruling family. Whenever Slovenia was conquered by new rulers, like Napoleon or the Austrian Empire, the castle was used for military purposes. Now, the city of Ljubljana owns the castle and uses it for public events. What used to be a moat is now an outdoor reading room for the public library! I visited the main plaza where concerts are held. Then I looked at some old jail cells. There was a spiral staircase to get up to the top of the tower. I could see the park surrounding the castle and all over the old city of Ljubljana from there! We saw a short movie about the history of the castle, then we took the funicular back down.
On Monday, we went on a bus trip to Bled, on the northern border of Slovenia. The country of Slovenia is about the same size as the state of New Jersey, so it only took an hour to get there! Bled is a very popular area for tourists because it has an old castle and a very pretty lake. We visited the castle first. Bled Castle is even older than the castle in Ljubljana! There were lots of stone steps to get to the main courtyard, but the view of the lake below was very pretty!
Then I had to climb even more steps to see the chapel and the museum! I liked the fresco painted on the wall of the chapel, with “steps” leading to the choir loft! The museum had lots of information about the daily life of people in Bled, and how it has changed in the past thousand years. When I got back down to the main entrance, I visited the print shop. The press reminded me of exhibits at the Gutenberg museum in Mainz Germany!
Our walk for the day was the path around Lake Bled. First we walked as far as the landing for boats going to the island in the middle of the lake. It was a very hot day, so I was glad to have a rest while the oarsman rowed across to the island! I made friends with a dog on the trip! The water in Lake Bled is very clear, so I could see little fish and carp swimming near the shore of the island.
There were more steps to reach the chapel! Some of the decorations in the chapel are being restored behind protective screens. There’s a legend that ringing the bell in the chapel will grant a wish! Grandma helped me ring the bell, but I’m not telling anybody what I wished for! We could have climbed even more steps to get to the top of the bell tower, but we decided we’d already climbed enough steps for the day!
A walk all the way around Lake Bled was a long way for a little lion, especially on a hot day. There were pretty views of the water, the island and the castle as we walked. I was glad we stopped for lunch. Bled is famous for its cream cake!
We weren’t done walking! Livio-san took us to Vintgar Gorge to walk another two miles! The Radnova river runs through a rocky gorge, just the way the Maligne river does in Canada! It was cooler in the gorge with the river rushing by and very pretty! There have been boardwalks and wooden bridges for walking in the gorge since the 1890s. The Monday after Pentecost is a holiday for Germans and Austrians, so there were big groups of young people visiting when we were there!
Near the end of the walk, I had some nice views of the Julian Alps. Austria is right on the other side! Then we reached the dam. Everybody got sprayed with mist from the spillway! The path ends at the Sum waterfall. Nobody wanted to climb up and down the additional steps needed to see it from the front!
On Tuesday, we crossed back into Croatia. Our bus took us to Piemonte to start our walk. We walked a portion of the Parenzana, a path on an abandoned railway line. Livio-san told us that there used to be trains that allowed local farmers to get their products to market. When Mussolini and the Italians were in charge of this area in the 1930s, they thought their colony Ethiopia needed a railroad more than this part of Croatia did. So they pulled up the track and took the trains to send to Ethiopia. The ships carrying the train parts sank, so they never got to Ethiopia! Livio-san told us that there were no steep grades because the path was a rail bed. He didn’t tell us that we were walking five miles in the uphill direction!
It was a hot day again, but there was lots of pretty scenery! When I needed a rest, Garry-san was my resting buddy! There was a long tunnel on the path with solar-powered lighting inside. When we reached Groznjan, I was really ready to rest and have lunch!
After lunch, we went to a local winery for a wine tasting! Kozlovic Winery is in Buje. This part of Croatia, which is known as Istria, has better soil and fewer rocks than Dalmatia, the area Dubrovnik and Hvar are in. There are rows of grapevines without any stone walls! Every wine has a slightly different taste because of the kind of grapes, the land and climate where they grow and the way the winemaker processes them. Grandpa liked the wines he tried and wished he could get them back home. Grandma said I was too little to try the wines, but I thought the snacks served with them were yummy!
While everybody else was tasting wines, I looked around the winery gardens. There were all the plants I saw on Hvar: lavender and olive trees and rosemary. I made a new garden gnome friend! Then I took a nap!
We drove from Buje to our next overnight stay, in Opatija. This is Livio-san’s home town and he can’t wait to show us around! Our hotel is right on the shore promenade and it only has eight guest rooms! Ours is named for Vladimir Nabokov, a famous writer who spent summers in Opatija as a child. I have a very fancy place to sleep!
Love,
Lion-san