Flying into Slovenia is like jumping into a fairy tale. As you descend over the extremely picturesque mountains, perfect little villages start to dot the countryside. It seems like you’re looking at a painting. Everything looks so perfect that you wonder if it’s real. It reminds me a lot of Austria, and that makes sense since they share a border. Then you land at the airport and reality sets in. Slovenia is part of the Schengen Area of Europe so we didn’t need to go through any immigration or customs checks. We simply retrieved our checked luggage, picked up our rental van, and headed off on our adventure.
Mormon Church with Underground Parking
Our only mission in Ljubljana today was to drop off some missionary care packages to some sister missionaries who met us at a nearby chapel. It only took about 15 minutes to get there from the airport, so we had a few minutes to scout the place out before they arrived. It was sort of an interesting building for a Mormon church. It looked very similar to other European meetinghouses you may have seen, but this one had a ramp going down under the building with a big parking garage below the church. I thought that was pretty cool.
After that we parked over by the castle and walked around town. The first place we stopped was Gelateria Romantika, which we had seen reviewed several times on YouTube. Everyone was saying how amazing it was, so how could we pass it up? Well, the waffles were nothing like the waffles you find in Belgium, which was a disappointment, but the gelato made up for the waffles. It was really something special. We especially loved the Sicilian Almond Cream. I would go back just for some more of that.
We took the funicular railway (fancy tram) up to the castle and did a self-guided tour up there. It was pretty, but not all that spectacular. We have seen a lot of castles now, so it takes something amazing to knock our socks off, and this one didn’t do it. The view from the top of the tower was pretty and the dual winding staircases up the tower were also fun and cool. After the castle, we wandered down through the restaurants along the river to find something to eat. The river was high. Much higher and muddier than we expected. They have been getting a lot of rain lately, which explains it, but it also made us wonder about the two adventures we have scheduled for the next tow days – it should be interesting to see how it all plays out. We saw a bunch of bridges along the river, including the famous Dragon Bridge. I expected the dragons to be a lot bigger than they are, but it was still pretty cool.
We stopped at a local pizza place and had some pretty good and interesting pizzas before making the short trip up into the mountains to the town of Bled.
