Interrail Day 8, 9, 10 & 11 - Ljubljana

After Trieste, I got to the capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana!

This city wasn't on the initial itinerary, but I chose it as my next destination when in Trieste. There was rain forecast for the few days to come, I had some work to do, and I needed to have good internet connection for Wednesday morning, so I decided to stay a few nights in a city instead of going straight to Bled. In retrospect, this was a great call.

I must say, Ljubljana was a very pleasant surprise. I'd barely heard anything about Slovenia before coming here, apart from Bled which was already on the itinerary.

Ljubljana is suprisingly small and calm city for a capital - it only hosts about 288,000 inhabitants! Despite being a small capital, there's still a bunch to do in Ljubljana.

On the first night I got there, I went out for dinner with 4 people I met through the Hostelworld app. One Irish, two Brits and a Dutch. We ate in a Slovenian restaurant, because the McDonald's down the road was too busy. (Note to reader: this is obviously a joke)

After that lovely dinner, we went off to look for a bar. We wandered a bit around the main street of the city center, saw a volleyball competition happening on the river (the players' feet were in the water, don't ask me why), and settled in a bar.

As we were drinking, a few other people from the Hostleworld group chat joined us, and we moved to an Irish pub to experience the local culture. The irishman with us said it was nothing like real pubs in Ireland - what a surprise.

I called it a night after that one, going for yet another shower. I'd never had so many showers in one week - I had probably 2 a day!

The bathroom in that hostel was in dire need of repair but it wasn't really dirty, so it was fine. I think that was just for the third floor though.

The following day, I didn't do much. Went out for a much needed load of laundry, popped into Lidl for some shopping and wandered back through the city. If you're travelling and want to feel at home, just go into Lidl. I was baffled at how identical the layout was compared to every other Lidl I went to half way across Europe.

The next day I did even less interesting things, working most of the day.

I did stop to chat for an hour with my Argentinian roommate. He was travelling around Europe since April 2022 and going back home in October. We talked mostly about travels, I gave him recommendations for what to see in France and mostly in Brittany (shameless self-promotion), and then talked about the economical and political situation of Argentina. Unfortunately, I didn't catch his name or contact info. If you ever stumble onto this blog post, hello roomie! 👋 (what are the odds)

Just as the weather forecast said, we were treated with rain for a few days. It poured down very hard on Monday night, and again on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, I left for Bled immediately after presenting my work in the morning, but that's a story for the next post!