Riding around Ljubljana

Checked the weather for today and arrghhh its predicting rain.  We were up and breakfasted pretty early so decided to go out for a bike ride early as the sky looked pretty clear, although it had rained overnight.  

Ljubljana has a great hire system - you register your details on line and then just enter a couple of codes into the machine to get going.  The bikes for hire are also placed every 300 - 500 metres around town so there's lots available.  We only had to go a street over to get ours.

We had planned ahead of what we wanted to see - just a simple route around the city, ending in Tivoli park.  We were very surprised as we got to where we wanted to go very quickly - this town is tiny!  Its quite pretty, certainly not as striking as some others but still nice.

the city laid out in a bronzed sculpture - castle is top left

Dragon bridge - mythical beast from the time of Jason

the river Ljubljanica

same river other side of the bridge

boys and bikes

along the riverbank there is a market - very romanesque style

Ljubljana Castle

one part of the triple bridge

 

making friends with a dog called Sacha - no the tongue did not connect

in the park

one of the many statues in Tivoli

After we returned the bikes it was time for a coffee.  Poor Tony is struggling to get a good coffee, besides the one from our coffee machine.  Nate and I wanted hot chocolate and we got a very odd version. You could only describe it as hot chocolate mousse - was pretty bad and we never ate drank them.

he was only smiling because he hadn't tasted his nutella version yet

While we were all energised and before the rain we decided to walk back to a supermarket we had seen on our travels.  We passed through the market that was only really half set up and had a look at some of the local goods and produce.  Tony bought himself a handmade black leather belt that the crafter sized and holed up for him.  We walked back a different way, over a bridge that had many locks attached to it (like the Paris one) and Nate stopped to say hello to an old boy playing a whistle thing.

Preseren Square

exploring the market

lock bridge

the old and the new

We sojourned to the hotel for the rest of the afternoon while the rain came and watched the Giro live on the TV.  While we were out walking we saw a Balkan restaurant so that was the dinner destination.  Oh boy it was so good.  Never had so much tasty spicy meat.  I thought we were in for a rough night with heartburn but there were no side effects at all!  

really wish you could smell how good this was

On the way back from dinner we decided to stop at the Neboticnik Sykscraper.  We did a giggle as this is only 13 stories high, a bit far from the sky.  Oh and we saw our policeman friend who wouldn't let us in yesterday - he wouldn't even make eye contact today