Today, we slept in and then packed up our room. Like true travellers, we ate our leftover groceries for breakfast! Mortadella, cheese and Milka chocolate!
We visited the big department store and had a look around, and then had a look in a few other shops. Then we had a quick look inside the pink church.
Next we headed to Tivoli Park. This park is larger than the city centre! We walked around the side nearest to the city. It was very green and large, but we’ve found it strange in Slovenia that there never seem to be any garden beds or flowers like there were in Zagreb.
On the way to the park we also saw the opera house and the national gallery, both of which were beautiful buildings. We then had a quick look inside a gorgeous Orthodox Church.
Our next stop was Nebotičnik, AKA “the skyscraper”. Its architectural style is similar to the Empire State Building, but it’s a lot shorter! We enjoyed lovely views from the top level at the cafe where we had a drink and some lunch.
Next we headed back to our hotel briefly, but we tried some yummy liqueurs on the way. Our favourite was fig. Apparently in winter people heat them up and do them as shots to keep warm.
At this point, we had a few hours left before our taxi to the airport. The museum we considered going to was closed. So we walked the 40 minutes to the zoo. We ummed and ahed for a bit due to tome constraints but eventually decided to go in. We were ambivalent towards the zoo. Some enclosures were up a hill in the forest and were wonderful. Our favourite animal (the lynx) was one of the lucky ones. But other enclosures were tiny and super depressing with hardly any vegetation. The elephant enclosure reminded me of the old one in Melbourne but even smaller. It made us feel pretty sad seeing the poor thing pacing up and down :( We also saw cheetahs (which Rob and I unfortunately didn’t see in Africa) and a leopard (whose enclosure was also depressing as there were no trees and leopards are fantastic climbers as we saw in Tanzania in January).
I had a teacher moment at the zoo. It’s so natural now for me to call kids out when they’re being disrespectful...oops! On the approach to the lynx enclosure, a family were walking near us. The kids started out excited which was fine, but then the boy turned into Dudley Dursley (Harry Potter reference) and starting shouting out at the poor thing trying to get it to move. I asked him how he would like it if someone yelled at him while he was relaxing. He stopped, and 5 minutes later his Mum got stuck into me about how she would rather they be excited than kill animals...right. Some kids can be as disrespectful as they like and they grow up thinking it’s OK because they’re allowed to. It’s such a shame! There is a difference between excitement and berating an animal.
We made our way out through the Australian part which had a few wallabies and emus. Then we made the walk back. On the walk to and from the zoo we saw many embassies, and we also saw a section of the Roman wall from the Roman settlement here centuries ago.
Now we are back at the apartment getting our things ready for our taxi ride to the airport, from which we will fly to Serbia.
We have absolutely loved Slovenia! Our day trips and our time spent in Ljubljana have been beautiful and lots of fun. Overall, the people have been lovely as well. I would highly recommend visiting Slovenia as it is amazing in terms of scenery, food and more just like other places in Europe, but nowhere near as touristy or busy. I suspect it will continue to grow in popularity as it already has over the past few years.
See you in Serbia!
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
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