We had been here before, some years ago. Fabulously beautiful, mellow city. A river city which means bridges and more bridges, and in Ljubljana, one architect (Jože Plečnik) designed the bridges and the plazas on both sides of the rivers, which are FULL of the cafes mentioned earlier.
And since it is colder here, the cafes have heaters AND little blankets or sheepskin set covers. Holiday time means mulled wine, which I generally am not a fan of, but the white hot wine is delicious, and makes people watching (under a heater), fabulous.
We were also mega-lucky, and caught an animation film festival. Both of the theaters were within 3 blocks of our lodging, with great food stands and cafes all along the way. And this city features “bio” food, organic, sustainably sourced, etc.
Did I mention English is a very strong second language, which meant, since the film festival was international, all the discussions and introductions were in English. (I am weird enough to wish for more Slovenian and less English, but we would have missed out on several great chats. When asking for details about a city bus, the woman we talked to made a comment about “Melana” (my spellcheck wants to change Melana to melanoma) when she heard we were from the US> I said, yes Melana is our Queen. The woman laughed, and we went on to talk about how none of us like our “king.” This woman also thought it was finny when I said we really liked Slovenia and Slovenians even though Melana was the Slovenian we head most about.
More than a few Melana jokes with others along the way.
Our last trip, we had headed for the mountains and got TOTALLY hosed down with days of pouring rain, so we decided to avoid a repeat. The weather would have probably been much better on this trip, since it was crisp and clear this entire visit. You can see the Julian Alps from in the city, and they had snow.
We have now chosen to skip 5 different productions of the Nutcracker Suite.