The unpronounceable capital

You might have heard of it, but can you say it? We are off to Ljubljana.

 

Come late September, Dora is up for sale.     If you or anyone you know is looking for a reasonably priced motorhome then please check out the following link; https://www.2wanderers.com/dora-for-sale/ or if you have any questions email us at; info@2wanderers.com Thanks

 

Last night was a bit weird and it resulted in Susana losing her boots that she uses while snorkelling. Also it could have been that a few things had moved around inside Dora and was the door left ajar. We just cannot be sure.

Somehow we could have lost the shoes, yesterday we nearly lost one of them before doing the laundry. It must have dropped out when we went to do some shopping around Lidl, it was still there when we went back.

But let us make something clear right now, we were not gassed.

There are extravagant stories amongst the motorhome community about how owners had had all their worldly possessions stolen. What is really surprising is that the insurance companies believe these tall and obviously fabricated tales. They go like this;

While we were asleep someone injected an anaesthetic gas into the motorhome. We awoke the next day to find everything gone.

Now obviously the bottle of cheap red plonk had nothing to do with it, ‘Oh no we are such light sleepers we must have been gassed.’

Anaesthetists have weighed into the discussions saying you would need a tanker load of gas, and as it is flammable, you would probably create a fireball if the gas fridge was left on. Also, unsurprisingly, they are a bit aggrieved, it takes them a shed load of time to learn to balance all these noxious gases so that they recipient just falls asleep rather than ending up in hell or heaven, but apparently any thief on the Rivera can master it in an instance and there are no reported deaths. Also this seems to be a little contagious, even Jenson Button recently fell foul of the dreaded gassers. How really gullible we all are. When the Russians tried this in a hostage situation a lot of those involved died!

What is bizarre in all these situations is why they feel the need to invent something so ridiculous, some maybe are into insurance fraud pushing up all our premiums, some may feel a little silly; got drunk, got robbed.

So once again, let us make something clear right now, we were not gassed.

I don’t think we will ever know, but we only lost a €20 pair of shoes we use for snorkelling and kayaking, we need to find a decathlon!

Perhaps our security regime need a bit of a review, eleven months on the road may have made us a little sloppy.

 

From the border, where we stayed last night it is a short hop to the Slovenian capital and we find a nice place to park Dora in a park to the north of the city, just €6 for the night, and €6 for the day, and it is within walking distance of the centre.

It seems everything revolves around the river here and everyone seems really proud of the bridges. This one is known as, guess what, the dragon bridge.

And a beautifully clean river.

There is just two items on the agenda today; the castle and a museum. The castle has this cute little funicular wandering up into the bowels of this historic monument.

And it exists into some futuristic, brutalism sci-fi landscape, like something out of blade runner. Lots of concrete and rusty steel. Very nice.

There is no slavish copying of the historic stuff here; what’s old is old and what’s new is new.

And outside the situation is the same. This is a castle with attitude, but also one with a future, a modern future. There is a restaurant, looks nice, and a coffee bar terrace, numerous exhibition spaces and they hold weddings here. The place is full of a mix of people, locals and tourists. It looks like a real success.

And threaded in between all this stuff is the history of the castle and the region. We have an audio guide, which is a bit too clever. It automatically starts talking about an exhibit as you get near it, sometimes a little to enthusiastically, over and over again.

And then there is the interactive display of marionettes, a touring torture exhibit and a wonderful exhibit of underwater macro photography.

And then of course there is the tower.

And from the tower, the views.

Inside the tower is this new double spiral staircase; one for up and one for down, but then quite a few just cannot get the hang of this, idiots.

And it creates quite an interesting image.

We like this place.

And we spend quite a bit of time here, so much time the interactive museum has now closed. What a shame, lets see the rest of the town instead.

Back to the river

The sun is now setting on the waters.

There is a modern bridge with all those couples showing their undying love for each other.

Set against some scary glass, nice view though.

And some wonderful sculpture, dissected to show the innards; Francis Bacon meets .

The town is a little nauseatingly cute for my liking, but it is clean and pleasant.

And their most famous bridge, buy one get two free. How the architect got away with that, who knows. Sorry very difficult to photo, but there are three separate bridges built on the curve of the river so that they fan out.

Why you would you build one bridge when you can always build three? SM

More cuteness.

exemplified by pastel shades, but that is a rant best left for another sickly town.

What’s going on here?

We think probably a fountain which was unfortunately not working, maybe a memorial to war dead, but quite beautiful.

And some old renovated houses.

We gravitate back to the river for a drink, just like all the other tourists and residents of this unpronounceable capital.

It may have been a quick visit, but we are off to the mountains, away from the pristine cleanliness, quiet and tranquillity of the city.

Oh, and that three part bridge again.

GDR