Nested Fall 2023

After spending our last two nests in the bustling metropolises of Istanbul and Sydney, Ljubljana was an easy, relaxing and delightful break. With a population of only about 280,000, it was easy to get around, walkable and very low stress. It’s a great place to go if you want somewhere beautiful, accessible and chill.

Currency

Slovenia is part of the EU and so uses the Euro. Its prices for groceries and dinner restaurant meals were about on par with our hometown of Charlottesville, VA.

When to Go

We came in the fall, and the weather was mostly dry and mild. It was very similar to temperatures in the fall in Charlottesville, although if you go into the mountains, of course it is colder.

How to Get There

Ljubjlana has a small international airport with 8 gates. We flew through Frankfurt, which seemed to be the most common way of arriving. The airport is about 14 miles from the city, and you’ll have to arrange transportation into town. The best way to do this is to go to the shared shuttle rides booths after you pick up your luggage. Locals recommend GoOpti, and it’s helpful to book ahead. Taxis can be unscrupulous and much more expensive.

Food

Slovenes are very proud of their food, and with good reason. It’s on the crossroads of Austrian, Italian and Croatian cuisine, and they do each one well. They make excellent cheeses, and their wines are just superb. While there really aren’t dishes unique just to Slovenia, you’ll find really excellent food during your time here.

The one thing you will be told you must try are their cakes. Lake Bled is the home to Blejska kremna rezina, a delicious vanilla custard cake. You will also find Prekmurska gibanica, a poppy seed, walnut, apple and cheese cake that is best topped with whipped cream. The sugarless cake store we found sells this.

Grocery Shopping

Every day but Sunday, Ljubljana has an excellent fruit and vegetable market. Pick a vendor and stick with that one – you will do better if your vendor recognizes you and knows you’ll come back. While the fruit and vegetables are sometimes cheaper at the grocery stores, the quality at the market is excellent and it’s where the locals all go.

Next to the market is a large building where you can step down into the basement (next to the weird milk machines) Down there, you’ll find cheese and meat vendors, as well as oils and bakeries. Dear to our heart was the sugar free bakery down there who made wonderful apple cakes. A great find. There is also a fish market down by the river there – there’s a spiral stairway by the trinket vendors labeled Ribarnica.

There are a lot of grocery stores throughout the city. You’ll find Aldis, Habers, Spar and the Slovene brand Merkator. Strangely, most of them have a “random stuff” aisle with items as incongruous as chain saws and bicycle seats. You never know what you will find. Merkators don’t have a butcher counter but pre-package all their meat which for me, not only made it easier to shop, but it seems they had discounted packages of meat much more often than the other chains.

Other Shopping

Ljubljana hasn’t yet come into its own as a top tier tourist attraction, and while you’ll see a fair amount of folks dutifully following their little tour flag around the city (often bussed up from Piran where the cruise ships dock) there isn’t a huge amount of souvenirs to buy. Those shops that exist tend to be expensive and have a lot of stuffed dragon toys. The major product that you might want to consider is honey. Slovenia has a strong heritage as the largest honey producer in Europe, and every other person you meet will have hives. Therefore, there is a wide range of honeys, honey butter, flavored honeys and honey products. Getting honey at the grocery store is probably your best bet – of course it’s still all Slovenian there, and with very nice labels that look like you spent more than you did. If you want some of the specialty honeys though, The Honey House downtown has a nice selection and their blueberry creme honey is legend. One of the other souvenirs that is unique to Slovenia are the folk art fronts to beehives – you’ll see them everywhere. Most are reproductions but if you’re in the market it is possible to get an original at the Sunday morning flea market by the river.

The best place I found to shop was at the small gift shop in the Ethnological Museum. They have handmade things from all over the country at very fair prices. I’m very fond of the beautiful wooden birds they have there.

Connecting with the Local Community

Since we have joined Rotary, we have not found a better way to connect with the local population. We were invited to a number of Rotary events and hosted for full day trips. They were very warm and generous.

Internations is also active in Ljubljana, having an event about once a month.

Public Transportation

You really won’t need public transportation within the city of Ljubljana. It’s small and very walkable. There are some green “Urban” trains that will shuttle you around the pedestrian zone if you need it, but it’s not very big. You will probably use buses and trains to go to some of the towns outside of Ljubljana, though. It’s pretty easy – just go to the train station and the very friendly salespeople will help. The bus station, equally friendly, is right in front of the train station. The trains especially are very comfortable, but both the trains and buses are not very reliable. They seem to always be running late.

Taxis are not a good idea. Better to use the OptiGo if you need to go to the airport.

Discount Cards

There is a discount card for Ljubljana that includes bus transportation, admission to 20 places, a city tour, a boat ride and four hours of bike hire – but it’s pretty expensive, starting at 36E for 24 hours – and of course you could never do all that in 24 hours. (There is a 72 hour option for 49E, but it’s still overkill.) The museums aren’t very expensive and they also will give even tourists a discount for seniors, so it’s better just to pay as you go.

Favorite Restaurants

Ljubljana has a reputation for good restaurants and quite honestly, we were pleased every place we went. We especially liked the lunch option up at the castle – usually a place I would expect to be overpriced and touristy, but even the locals love to go up there to grab lunch. They have a 2, 3 and 4 course option for lunch that when we were there for E25, E30 and E35. If you want something a little less expensive, Hisa Pod Gradom, a hotel with a restaurant located right near the tunnel, has a terrific lunch special for E11. You’ll do best to eat lunches out because that’s where the deals are – make sure you ask for the special lunch menu because they don’t always automatically give them to tourists. Another place with a great lunch is Operna Klet, right by – you guessed it – the Opera house.

However, our best find was Pen Klub, hidden away in an old house near to the American Embassy. It’s got a simple, unassuming door, and is up a flight of stairs – but then you’ll enter a very elegant space with a price fix menu. It’s a little bit more than most lunches in Ljubljana, but it offers some of the best food I’ve ever eaten. Lunch is half the price of dinner, so I’d recommend going then.

Weather

Weather in the fall in Ljubljana wasn’t much different than the weather back home in Charlottesville, Va, except it was a little colder by the time we left in November. All in all, very pleasant, with little rain. Average weather for Ljubljana is here.

Health Care

Slovenia has good health care. The biggest difference you will find is that if you need any medications that we would consider over the counter, you still have to go to a pharmacy to buy them, where you will consult with a pharmacist. It won’t cost any extra, and you won’t need a prescription for something you could normally get over the counter in the US, but you’ll need to go there even to buy aspirin. When I told a Slovenian you could buy aspirin in a gas station in the US they thought I was joking.

After writing this, we unfortunately had a major experience with Slovenian health care. Al broke his femur while riding his bike. He had to be transported by ambulance to a hospital where he had emergency surgery and then stayed in the hospital for 5 days. After that, we were sent to a spa for rehabilitation.

The care was wonderful. I’m writing this segment a year after the accident and Al is now back to riding his bike on trips as long as 100 miles. He occasionally gets sore if he’s still or standing for a long time, but that will probably be a life-long result. It was a serious accident and he’s much better than we feared when it happened. Much of that is due to the excellent care he received in Slovenia. The doctor spoke English and consulted with my cousin who is a doctor in America and by the time the train got me to the hospital in Brezice by the Croatian border, he was in surgery.

The Brezice hospital was currently being rebuilt so the part he was in was physically a bit run down and there were 6 people to a room. Not sure if that is true today with new facilities but it was a little rough then. There was only one hour a day for visiting, and we soon realized that it was the culture – and necessary – to bring food in. They do feed the patients, but very little. But that would be the only complaint. The health care was superb, the nurses were kind and attentive and when we went back to the States and his Stateside doctors checked him out, they were impressed with what the doctors had done. Even better was the time at the spa. He had three and a half hours of physical therapy every day for 5 days, in pools, on machines and teaching him exercises. It was challenging but a huge part of why he is where he is today.

And the cost? The Slovenian health care system billed Medicare for the cost of the treatments. For the ambulance ride, the emergency surgery and the 5 days in the hospital the cost our insurance was billed was about $6000. Our out of pocket expense was about $1500. Slovenia is a good place to break your leg if you’ve got to do it.

Festivals and Events

There were no major festivals when we were in Ljubljana. Some of the towns in Slovenia, most notably Ptju, have spring festivals when people dress in big grassy costumes and parade through the streets.

When Packing for Ljubljana, Make Sure you Bring…

Hiking boots and poles – a lot of the trails are very steep

A bathing suit to visit one of the hot springs or thermes