Interrailing - Day 6: Ljubljana

For our first full day in Slovenia, we wanted to spend it mostly exploring Ljubljana. A friend had given us some recommendations, and it made sense to not go too hard after a long day travelling. We first discovered that Ljubljana has a great bike rental system – for only 1 euro, you can do unlimited 1-hour rides for 3 days. We ended up making great use of this, mostly doing a ~15 minute cycle to the centre of the city, rather than paying €1.50 each for the bus. We cycled to the centre and then meandered around, spotting quite a few pretty fountains and water features.

We first stopped for a matcha to share, which, most novelly, came in a transparent plastic can with a ring tab lid! A pretty creative way to ensure you can take the drink to go whenever you want. We then shared a vegan kremšnita (cream cake) at a local bakery as some brunch, as we hadn't had time to get much breakfast food the night before, which was very tasty! We then went and meandered around the older part of the city, seeing the famous "Dragon Bridge" with statues of the Ljubljana Dragon, while making very frequent stops and water breaks to beat the heat

We then briefly stopped and got some slop for lunch from a food truck, and had a quick look around the local food market. There were three fruit vendors here, who didn't seem to have much refrigeration, shade, or, weirdly, the concept of lids, so most of the fruit pots had been sitting in the sun for a long time and were covered in bugs. One particularly egregious example was the last vendor, who was cutting up some melon, and had a huge cloud of wasps swarming him. I wasn't really able to photograph it, but it was so many wasps you couldn't really get close. The funniest part is he seemed totally unbothered and just continued cutting his fruit.

By far the most annoying part of Europe so far has been the difference in wasp quality. Wasps are annoying in the UK, sure, but I've felt like the wasps in Europe are SO persistent, they refuse to leave you alone and will follow you for ages. They also have seemingly an insane sense of smell, just drinking a sweet drink for example will have them chasing your lips for ages. Plus there are also big scary hornets from

After this, we decided to take the funicular up the hill to visit Ljubljanski Grad – Lubljana Castle. This cost about 7 euros each and had a long queue, but was definitely worth it to get such a cool view – and skipping the walk on such a hot day was nice too!

The castle was cool, the funicular took you into the undergound section which had some toilets, and a very small art gallery / museum section (for example showing the cistern). Most of the castle had to be paid for, but we could look around the main courtyard, which had a cafe and the entrances to the various exhibitions. We were also able to go up onto some of the walls and had an amazing view out to the city beyond, with the Alps in the distance.

Fundamentally though, there wasn't too much to do at the castle without paying, so we didn't stay all too long, but it was pretty cool, and I'm sure the activities would've been good value for money, we were just cheapskates. After a brief stop at the gift shop, we headed to the castle grounds, which were pretty huge, and all on top of this big hill. There was a green Dotto Train which went around, and again, some really nice views. It even had a random wooden calisthenics gym, an apiary, and a vineyard! Right at the top of the hill was an old concrete structure that might've once been a war air defence bunker, but now had a large radio tower going up into the sky on it.

We then took a short walk to the local university's botanic gardens. While it was closing soon, we still had a nice look around at some of the plants, and enjoyed using the extremely aggressive automated sprinkler as a way to cool down. This place also had an apiary, which had some really cool information about bees, including, ironically, ways to avoid provoking them. Immediately after I had read this information however, one of us got randomly stung in the neck by a lone bee despite doing absolutely nothing – they weren't even particularly close to the hive. I felt bad, but it was also pretty cool seeing the bee trying (and failing) to un-corkscrew its own intestines out of my friend's neck.

It was getting late, and we were all hungry, so we hopped on some rental bikes and made it back home. Annoyingly, it happened to be a public holiday today, meaning almost all the supermarkets had closed early for dinner, and we found that eating out was quite expensive. Fortunately we had some leftover supplies, so made some very generic pasta and red pepper sauce for dinner, before nodding off for the night.