Friday was supposed to be the biggest day of our four-day hut hike: 15 kilometres over Hribarice Pass to Vodnikov dom. In reality, we did not leave the apartment once.
Instead, we ate the leftover soup and worked our way through the lunch food we had originally bought for the hike. That was the entire day, and it was exactly what we needed.
On Saturday morning we finally ventured out. We walked down to Lake Bohinj, crossed the stone bridge at Ribčev Laz and stopped for coffee and toasted sandwiches.
From Bohinj we caught the bus to Bled. Our big luggage was still exactly where we had left it, which was a relief. We repacked everything into our usual backpacks and laptop bags, then caught another bus to Ljubljana, arriving at about 13:30.
Check-in was officially only at 15:00, so we decided to walk towards the accommodation and see how far we got. Along the way we found burek for “only” €3. We assumed that meant they would be small and ordered one each: spinach for Caro and pizza for Hugo. They were enormous.
We ate them in a park and then continued towards VIKSI, right in the old town beside the river. Just as we sat down to wait out the final hour, a message arrived to say the room was ready. By 14:15 we were inside.
It was another self-check-in involving a lockbox, this door, that door and several sets of instructions. The place markets itself as a hostel because the bathroom and kitchen are shared, but there was nothing particularly hostel-like about it. Our room was large, pleasant and mostly quiet.
After resting for a while, we saw that there would be free street concerts that evening. We wandered through the little cobbled streets and eventually settled on our third pizza in Slovenia, directly across from one of the folk-music performances.
On Sunday morning we set out again, still a little unprepared, and ended up taking the funicular to Ljubljana Castle before walking back down.
Castle Hill was settled long before there was a castle, with archaeological evidence reaching back to the late Bronze Age. A stone fortress stood here by the 13th century, but the castle took much of its present form in the 15th century, when the Habsburgs rebuilt and enlarged it during the period of Ottoman raids. It later served as a military storehouse, barracks, hospital and prison before the city bought it in 1905 and eventually began its long restoration.
Caro was still not feeling very well, so most of the day was spent resting while Hugo caught up on admin. We did go out around lunchtime to use a self-service laundromat.
Next to our entrance was a frozen-yoghurt shop that charged by container rather than by weight, meaning you could pile it as high as engineering allowed. We added frozen yoghurt, mango sorbet, chocolate icecream, pistachio sauce, Raffaello sauce and Oreo cookies.
While Caro waited for the laundry, Hugo used lunch as an excuse to rent an electric scooter to go an buy McDonald’s. Ljubljana seems to have found a reasonable balance with them: only a few scooters on each corner, always neatly parked, and only two operators. It was very different from Paris three years ago, where there seemed to be literal piles of fallen scooters lying on top of one another.
For dinner we went to Klobasarna for something properly Slovenian: ričet with kranjska klobasa. Ričet is a thick pearl-barley stew, usually with beans, vegetables and smoked pork; the Carniolan sausage came with mustard and fresh horseradish. It was simple, hearty food made for recovering people.
For dessert, we returned for more frozen yoghurt and ate it beside the river.
Monday was a workday for Hugo. Around lunchtime we went for another long walk, but there was not much happening at the Central Market, so we ended up at Lidl and bought a generous spread to cover lunch, dinner and the next morning’s breakfast.
We ate dinner beside the river and at 20:30 joined the free Open-air Cinema at Congress Square, organised by Kinodvor. The first film in its four-night programme was The General, Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman’s 1926 silent comedy, screened exactly a century after its release.
Watching a black-and-white silent film outdoors with the illuminated castle in the background was a very cool way to end our stay.
We really enjoyed Ljubljana. As someone from Budapest had described it to us, “It’s a nice little town.” Tranquil, quaint, walkable, neat and clean — exactly the sort of place in which to spend a few slow days recovering.
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