After my trip to Croatia, I visited another beautiful country right next to Austria – Slovenia! I have been to Slovenia several times before but this was my first visit to Ljubljana. During my last visits, I was always deeply impressed by Slovenia’s nature and its amazing landscapes, like the Soca valley. But to be honest, most cities I had seen so far weren’t impressive at all… Therefore my expectations were quite low when we decided to make a short sightseeing stop there on our way to Bled. How wrong I was!
Ljubljana is a vivid, hip and young city with wonderful renovated buildings and a broad spectrum of activities and attractions like the Butcher’s Bridge. This footbridge spans the Ljubljanica River between the Central Market and Petkovsek Embankment, and is Ljubljana’s version of a “love bridge”. All along the railings, couple have attached padlocks with their names. But that’s actually not the interesting thing since you can find such bridges all over the world. The really ironic thing is that the bridge seems to represent the opposite of everlasting love. There are several sculptures from Jakov Brdar on the bridge representing figures from Ancient Greek and Christian/Jewish mythology: Adam and Eve, shamed and banished from paradise; Satyr or Prometheus. Besides, there are also some smaller grotesque sculptures of frogs and shellfishes – not very romantic at all, but this contrast makes it definitely worth seeing!
After Ljubljana, we continued to Bled, an alpine town alongside the glacial Lake Bled. The lake and it’s small island together with the iconic Bled castle form a unique atmosphere. Due to some lucky coincidence, we visited Bled on the last day of the annual city festival. The highlights of this day were hundreds of floating candles placed on the lake and an amazing firework – a spectacle you shouldn’t miss!
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