Ljubljana, Day 3
Our third day in Slovenia took us first through the Central Market, an outdoor market with mostly clothes, fruits, vegetables, and flowers. I wish there was more here, but it just isn’t the right season to buy fruits and vegetables outdoors! The kids loved this kangaroo statue which has a big pouch. I think it may be a fountain in the summertime.
We took the funicular to the top of the castle hill to go to the Ljubljana castle. Again, it was really foggy, but the frosty trees were particularly pretty. We wanted to do the Escape Castle tour, but they would not let us since we had kids. The kids would have really enjoyed it I think, but apparently it is supposed to be for older kids and adults, even though that is not specified on the website. Instead we just got the regular tickets to go through the castle.
There was a puppet museum in the castle, and it was much more interactive than the last puppet museum we went to in Pécs. The kids got to put on several puppet shows—one with paper finger puppets, one with puppets on rods held from underneath, and one with puppets with rods held from above. They had a lot of fun!
There were several other exhibits, including one with some armor and weaponry, a chapel, and a Slovenian historical exhibit. There were also several large modern spaces that are made for parties and conferences I think. The entire castle was renovated, and in one exhibit they had side-by-side pictures of the old and new sites in the castle. One of my favorite places was the courtyard (even though it was cold and foggy), which had a lovely heart wreath; Zoey was able to take a picture of JonPaul and me.
Once we rode the funicular back down to town we walked again through the Old Town, the Prešeren Square, and the bridges. We ate at a restaurant called Druga Violina (Second Violin), which employs adults with special needs. Even though the food was just okay, I was glad to get to eat here.
We continued our walk north of the river and saw this lovely beer tree. We then saw a bakery with these huge doughnuts in the window, so we had to stop and get some! They were custard filled with chocolate icing—my favorite!!! They were absolutely delicious.
We walked to Metelkova Mesto, which is an area of old military barracks that have been squatted in since the early 90s. It is considered an alternative cultural centre, as evidenced by the graffiti completely covering the entire area. I was really nervous about going over here because I heard that, although it is really neat, there can be drug paraphernalia and other things we may not want to expose the kids to. It was pretty empty, and the few people there didn’t bother us. The kids, especially Ronin, really liked walking around and looking at all the pictures. I had to tell him not to pick up anything off the ground though, because he usually loves to find ‘treasures’ laying around. I just didn’t want one of the ‘treasures’ to be a dirty syringe!
Walking back to the car we saw this cool triangle building. JonPaul really liked this building, so I had to take a picture.
We drove the 4.5 hours back to Budapest, where we dropped off the car and walked to the metro. It was late, so the Christmas market was already closed. What a difference there was with the empty Christmas market versus the completely packed one we saw a few days earlier!
