Trip to Ljubljana, Slovenia

From, Bern, on July 6th, we drove to Northern Italy and slept in the small community of Brazzano, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy.  The Airbnb we stayed in was modest but still comfortable.  Since we plan to do some extended Airbnb stays after our mission Merritt asked me if this one would meet my expectations.  Since it was better than our mission housing in Osijek the answer was yes.  One of the positive results of serving a mission is that your priorities change. 

Beautiful entrance to a home close to our Airbnb.

Church in Brazzano, it was originally a fortress built on a hill overlooking the village.

We spent the morning taking photos in Udine then drove on to Ljubljana.

Udine, Italy

More Udine, Italy

From Udine, we decided to take the backroads to Ljubljana which took us through parts of the Italian Alps by way of Tarviso  (it turned out to be faster than the toll road had we not stopped so often to gawk a the jaw-dropping scenery).,

We saw some sincerely beautiful mountains and quaint little villages each with their local church.

Lake Bled is located about 30 Kilometers north-west of Ljubliana.  We were there on a beautifully sunny Saturday which was a bit unfortunate since everyone else also figured that would be a great day to go see Lake Bled.  It was packed and after driving around the entire lake we couldn't find a place to legally park.  (We did pass many cars with tickets affixed to the driver's window)  Finally, at one point we just double parked real quick and took this photo.   Needless to say, we will have to go back on a weekday sometime and canoe out to the island.

Some of the best architecture in Ljubljana are the bridges which cross the river. This is the famous triple bridge taken at night with the main square in the background. 

We took a funicular tram to the castle which is built on a bluff that overlooks the city.  The castle had been recently renovated and the self-guided tour was quite interesting.

The dragon is the symbol of Ljubljana owing to the legend of Jason and the Argonauts who escaped to the location of the current city only to find that the bend in the river where they stopped to hold out for the winter was also the hunting grounds of a fire-breathing dragon.   You can read more about it here.   Ljubljana is a miniature Prague and we will definitely plan a longer trip back here after our mission.