After washing our clothes the next morning (wahoo for access to a washing machine at last!) we walked in the rain to town. We headed up the hill to Ljubljana Castle which from the outside looks like a fairly modern castle but inside were swanky bars and galleries, fancy glass floors and a virtual museum. The central square is covered by tables and the grassy edges are spattered with pieces of "modern art". The castle gallery had two shows on, one was an interesting installation with lots of rocks and photos taken down what looks like a well, and the other was a collection of black and white photos in an exhibition called "Country Wedding". It was a really cool show, but I will have to tell you about it another time, as we´re still in Expensive Internet Land!
The sky was cloudy so we didn´t go up to the viewing deck but instead wandered down the hill, in our soggy shoes, to look for some hot chocolate. We sat in Cafe Don Cortez and ordered our drinks. The chocolate was less a drink more like melted chocolate mousse and it was delicious! As we were drinking (eating?) we heard the eerie church bells from the Church of St James, which has the highest belltower in Ljubljana and the spookiest bells I have ever heard. When leaving the cafe I noticed an interesting numberplate: LJ 30 ORK!
Heading towards the rail station we passed a car at some traffic lights blaring out Euro Pop. There were two youngish guys dancing wildly in the car, and we couldn´t help but dance as we walked past them. They even turned their music up for us and gave us a thumbs up. Making friends is fun! By now our feet were super wet. I was wearing my jelly shoes but John´s shoes had almost completely given up hope. He bought some new ones, and after leaving the shop we saw some old men wearing skate shoes and realised we were no longer "hip".
We saw two blue nuns on our way back to the hostel and on our daily stop at Mercator to buy strawberry juice we noticed chocolate and vanilla scented washing liquid and wished we´d known about it before washing our clothes in boring powder. The prices here are around 3 times higher than in Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, as I noticed when I went scouring tourist shops for snowstorms. I came across only two and they were both around €8! I refuse to pay that much for tourist tat, much as I love them. I did, however, buy a postcard showing the Ljubljana dragon. Legend says that Jason (and the Argonauts) founded Ljubljana and slew the dragon who lived there (which appears on their flag and all over the city).
That evening we ate pizza in the pizzeria below the hostel and headed into town to visit a bar we had read about in a guide book. The bar was called Pr. Skelet and the guide book says it is full of "grinning, cackling, spinning and copulating skeletons". We foolishly forgot it was a Friday night in a studenty city and by the time we got there it was completely packed, but it was, indeed, full of skeletons: animal skeletons in cages, human skeletons in glass coffins set into the floor, skeletons everywhere you looked.
We left the bar, deciding to go again next time we were in the city, and the rain started again. It was heavy. This time, my shoes decided to die on me and John´s new ones performed brilliantly.
Where We're Going
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