Day 35 – Ljubljana (Friday 17th May 2024)

Our apartment is in the “old town” which is a very narrow strip of land between the bottom of the hill the Castle sits upon and the river. The rain had gone and the day was bright and sunny. Across from the apartment the daily market, every day except Sunday, was still in full swing. The market is huge, selling all sorts of fresh produce, flowers by the truckload, clothing, hats, honey and, of course, there was the odd souvenir stall here and there. LOL. On Friday’s vendors set up vans that cook all sorts of local meats – but only on Fridays. We also found a vending machine from which one could get fresh milk – BYO bottle or buy an empty one from the machine and then fill it. Kerry is always eye-ing off the jewellery stalls in case something strikes her fancy. At one such stall something did so, with the help of the stall owner who also created the pieces, she bought a couple of pairs of earrings and a matching brooch.

Immediately after the place where the last market stall stands is Ljubljana’s famous triple bridge across the Ljubljanica River. On the other side of the bridges in the “new town” is the Presernov Square, a large circular square (I find that amusing) from which radiates six important streets of the city. Only one of those crosses the river into the “old town” so until vehicular traffic was banned in 1997 you can imagine how congested and dangerous it was for pedestrians. Consequently, two broad pedestrian bridges were built in the likeness of the main bridge on either side. And so was born the Triple Bridge. It makes for quite an interesting street-scape. On Easter Sunday in 1895 a large earthquake struck the region, causing significant damage. Prior to the earthquake many of the major city buildings were built in the Baroque style. When reconstruction commenced the preferred style was “Vienna Secession” as at the time Ljubljana was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Consequently, many of Ljubljana's bridges, monuments, parks, and main buildings one sees today reflect the post-earthquake development period. For many the devastating earthquake was the catalyst for the transformation of Ljubljana from a large provincial town to a significant major city.

 

After appreciating the very attractive Vienna Secession architectural style that encircles Presernov Square and lines the streets that radiate from it we went in search of a Post Office as I had postcard to send to Mum. I use a mapping app called Maps.Me in conjunction with Google Maps to navigate foreign cities. It’s free and doesn’t use mobile data bandwidth. Rather, when one has a free wi-fi connection one downloads the maps of the area you’re in to your phone and thereafter it requires only a GPS signal. Just like a car’s GPS system, until Android Auto and the like came along. The maps are as extremely feature-rich as Google Maps and, at the touch of a button, can tell you where the Post Offices and postboxes are in a city. So, finding the nearest Post Office was a breeze. Postcard posted, we found ourselves on the perimeter of the car-free zone in the very large, featureless Republic Square dominated by a couple of modern skyscrapers and some “interesting” sculptures. One such sculpture is the 1975 piece called “Spomenik Revolucije”, a memorial to the WWII victory of the Yugoslavia Partisans and to honour the Socialist Revolution that defeated the occupying fascist forces. We scurried back to the much more aesthetically pleasing Vienna Secession architecture of the early 20^th century!

 

 

After a coffee in the lovely, treed Congress Square we crossed back over the river to the cobble-stoned streets of the “old town”, poked our noses into some of the stores in the precinct and then headed back home to retire for the day.