After finishing my first class of the term, I decided to reward myself with a trip to a place that exceeded my expectations. Booking last minute trips has become my specialty, and Airbnb has become my new favorite website. My friends Will, Alan, Kyle and I decided to choose Slovenia because we know a ton of people who have gone recently and only had good things to say. Our two destinations were Ljubljana (pronounced like lube-li-anna), the capital, and Lake Bled, one-hour northwest of Ljubljana. Slovenia borders Austria on the south so it was a relatively short four-hour bus ride on Friday night.
We arrived in Ljubljana around 9pm and checked into our airbnb and immediately searched for food around the Old Town surrounding the castle. While walking around at night, we decided that Ljubljana reminded us of a more active, exciting, and larger Zagreb, Croatia. Visually they looked really similar since most of the buildings were heavily graffitied. We passed by a Slovenian restaurant called "Sokol" and quickly decided to eat there because of their food options. My dish consisted of deer, potatoes, and some wonderful wine, and everyone else got either Goulash or some other soup with a house Slovenian beer. It was an amazing first meal, but that could have just been because we were starving (but I doubt it, the food really was the best). While there we met two guys from London who were traveling around Slovenia. We chatted with them for quite a while and they gave us a recommendation of a jazz club to visit the next night. We finished off the night with a typical Slovenian dessert of Gibanica, which is a layered cake of poppy seeds, walnuts, apples and cottage cheese. It may sound like a very odd concoction of foods to make into a cake, and we were a little skeptical getting it, but we were so glad we did because it was delicious! And of course I forgot to take a picture of it because I was so excited. I’m very bad at taking pictures of food because I’m just always so excited to eat and have no patience to wait and document it. So if you can get your hands on some Gibanica somewhere, I highly recommend you get it!
Saturday morning we woke up bright and early to catch a bus to Lake Bled for the day. The weather was quite cloudy with a little bit of sun peaking through every so often. For the majority of the day we walked around the perimeter of the lake, which was a total of four miles. We would stop every so often to take pictures, hike, or any other activities we ran across and we also rented a wooden rowboat for an hour and rowed to the island in the center of the lake. The island is called Bled Island, and on top of it is the Pilgrimage Church of the Assumption of Maria, or The Church of the Mother of God on the Lake. It had a few names and we couldn’t figure out which one is the official one. Once we got back to shore we decided to go hiking into the forested mountains surrounding the lake to get a beautiful view from the Ojstrica lookout. It was a fun hike but a little harder than expected because the rocks and leaves were wet from rain the night before. However, we ran into a lot of dogs on the way so that made up for the trouble… The view of the city, the lake and the Alps in the back is something I will never forget. I know people (cough cough my parents) who don’t quite enjoy traveling to places that are extremely cold, but I think you can miss out on so many things you can only see in winter! After we finished our walk around the lake, we went to the Bled Castle for another famous Bled/Slovenia cake called the Cream Cake. It is exactly what it sounds like: an egg and cream cake with whipped cream on top! Again, super delicious! After visiting the castle we rushed to get our bus back to Ljubljana, however the bus driver let on people who were buying their tickets on the bus FIRST instead of letting on the people who already had their tickets. Because of that we had to wait for the next one an hour later. We really didn’t mind because we hung out at a bar and drank with some of the other people who were waiting for the bus as well. When we arrived back in Ljubljana we searched for some dinner and wound up eating at an outdoor food shack called "Saraj" and had Bosnian food for the first time as well as some mulled wine. To finish off our Saturday we went to the Jazz Club in the Ljubljana Castle that the two men from London told us about the day before (the jazz band that was playing were performing a Jimi Hendrix tribute). For two hours we drank wine and champagne and sat up high on a spiral staircase to watch from above. It was an incredible experience to sit with the locals and hang out in a castle at night.
We had a late start on Sunday because the only thing we had planned was an 11am free walking tour held by the city. Our guide took us around Old Town, Congress Square, Triple Bridge, Butcher’s Bridge, Dragon Bridge, and Cobblers Bridge. Yes there are a lot of bridges because a long river runs through the city. It seems like each bridge has a theme and every one is unique! Butcher’s Bridge had locks on the rails and weird looking statues on it, Dragon Bridge had four beautiful dragon statues, and Cobblers Bridge had a man wearing a deer mask playing the ukulele. That guy was a lot of fun to watch and we even ran into him again later in the day, but in a different spot. For lunch we went to "Druga Violina" and paid a ridiculously small amount of money for a four-course meal and a bottle of wine. Our tour guide told us earlier that two of the best places to eat in Ljubljana were Sokol and Druga Violina, and we hit both in our time here. We visited Ljubljana Castle for a second time, but this time during the day so that we could actually see it. Unfortunately it wasn’t that exciting because it was pretty small and not a lot to see. But we saw it anyway! Before our bus ride back to Vienna we had a few hours to spare so we got some rolled ice cream at Ice Wave. I’ve seen rolled ice cream all over the internet for some time now and I’m glad I finally got to have some! It was really cool to watch and of course, really yummy! And as a last hurrah, we hung out at an outdoor bar and had some drinks before we left.
Every time I go somewhere I always come back and say, “This was my favorite place I’ve been to so far!” I think that just goes to show how much I love every place, and I guess how easily impressed I am. When I came to Vienna in September I didn’t know where I would be traveling to, and I really didn’t know that I would end up exploring mostly Eastern Europe in total. You usually hear about people visiting England, Spain, Italy or France for international vacations, but never any Eastern Europe countries! Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, and Hungary are not common vacationing places for most people but I think so many people would really enjoy it! It is a whole new world with amazing food, sites, nature and people!
Next week my friend Amanda is visiting me from New York! She’ll be with me for a week and luckily my class schedule and workload is conveniently light while she’ll be here. I’m planning a lot so expect a lot of pictures and a long post coming up!
I also posted more pictures in the Gallery section of my blog as well!