A big appeal of booking this particular Adriatic Sea cruise itinerary was visiting Trieste in Italy, not because of Trieste (although we’d come to realise just how good that city was in its own right later in the day) since we’d been to Italy on numerous occasions before, but because of its proximity to Slovenia and the opportunity to take an excursion that crossed the border for a visit. We love ticking off countries from the visited list even if, thanks to a love of cruising, we mostly only visit those with sea ports.
It was a little overcast as Azura came into Trieste port early in the morning, adding a touch of coolness to the day that was a marked contrast to the one that had preceded it in Split, and a quick check of the weather forecast for the day’s excursion destinations indicated it was going to get cooler too, and likely damper.
Breakfast on the ship was an improvement on the days before but still poor. We boarded our bus not long after and headed off, quickly crossing the border with no checks required (thank you, EU (fuck you, UK)), and passed hilly areas, often passing through heavy downpours en route to Slovenia’s capital.
When we arrived in Ljubljana the rain, thankfully, hadn’t followed us. Our bus dropped us off at Kongresni Trg (Congress Square), an early nineteenth century plaza used for ceremonies and protests like all good squares. You might be wondering how to pronounce Trg but I’m afraid I’m not Welsh so have no real experience of saying words without vowels in them.
Baroque architecture featured very heavily in Ljubljana and I was immediately taken by the Ursuline church across the road from the square while the majority of people on our tour used the free public toilets situated in the square’s centre. The Ursulines are not lovers of bears if that’s what you’re thinking (I was); they are a monastic order of women who cloister themselves away from everyday life, but that doesn’t mean they can’t have a fancy church.
Our visit to Ljubljana would incorporate a short tour with some free time to explore afterwards, as is common with many city visits. A question was raised by one of our fellow passengers about Ljubljana Castle which could be seen on a low hill overlooking the capital city: could we visit it? The response was that if someone were to set off right at that moment they would have enough time to touch its wall before needing to turn around and come back to the meeting place. So, no.
Once all those who’d needed to relieve themselves had done so our guide led us the short distance to the next square, Prešernov Trg, the main square of Ljubljana. The square is circular just to mess with the minds of literalists and geometrists.
A sculpture in the middle of the square depicts the poet Prešeren and some scenes from his works, and the most prominent of the buildings surrounding the square is the Franciscan Church of the Annunciation on account of its pink-toned façade. The square’s current design and a lot of the architecture surrounding it owes much to the redevelopment that took place in the wake of a destructive earthquake that hit Ljubljana in 1895 when elements of Art Nouveau became incorporated into the surviving Baroque parts of the city.
The river Ljubljanica runs through Ljubljana so the city is adorned with numerous bridges. We crossed the Triple Bridge as it connected with Prešernov Trg in order to reach the final location our tour guide wanted to show us.
The last of the squares we were to be shown was Mestni Trg (Town Square) where, in front of the Town Hall (the building with the flags in front of it above) there was the Robba Fountain or, more accurately, a copy of it. This twenty first century replica allows the original eighteenth century piece to be kept safe in the country’s National Gallery. The pool of the fountain is local limestone and the obelisk at its centre is local marble while the decorative elements are marble from northern Italy.
At this point we were told when and where we had to meet up again and we were left to have a wander around on our own. We initially had a walk along the banks of the Ljubljanica because if you know anything about us at all by now then you know how much we like the water. It did make for some lovely views even if the weather was overcast and seemed to threaten rain at any minute.
Our walk took us towards the Dragon Bridge because our guide had mentioned that this was an important symbol for Ljubljana, and the final spot of interest we passed before reaching it was beside Saint Nicholas’s Cathedral. The Baroque (naturally) building replaces an earlier Gothic church on the same site that itself replaced an earlier Romanesque one that (also naturally) burned down. Churches do that a lot.
Our time in Ljubljana was too limited to allow us to venture inside any of the churches we’d seen, but that’s pretty typical for any cruise tour, but what we’d seen of Slovenia’s capital city left us knowing that this was a place we’d love to come back to for a long weekend to do it justice.
Our wander around Ljubljana has been split into two parts because someone – and it might be me – got a little camera-happy around all the abstract pieces of public sculpture artwork in the city, so in the next part of this cruise travelogue series we’ll reach the Dragon Bridge and I’ll continue our walk through Ljubljana and show off some more of its sights before we depart for the second destination in Slovenia on this day ashore.