After our lovely GoOpti ride, Jo and I were distributed directly at the mouth of the Postojna Cave park, our destination for that afternoon. The very nice ticket people let us stow our backpacks behind one of the counters (which, honestly, was a bit of a gamble since we were not the only backpackers doing so). Luckily, no one bothered our stuff. We bought our tickets for the tour through the caves but had some time to kill so we got an expensive (but, thankfully, cheaper than in Venice) lunch and some coffee and relaxed a bit. While we were waiting we also took in some of the shops and cafes out front of the caves.
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| The play area of one of the cafes, replete with skylights, colorful hanging umbrellas, and an adorable train set on which I had to physically restrain myself from taking a picture as the conductor. |
The stairs up to the cave entrance.
This is, sadly, where my old camera really falls down. The inside of the cave was awesome, there were lots of different chambers and many of them were big enough to house multiple McMansions while others we had to crouch to walk through.
This was the station after we had already taken our magical, Wonka-esque train ride through the first part of the cave. The next part you walk through.
Jo trying valiantly to pretend she isn't freezing. We should've gotten the felt capes! (They give them out at the entrance to the first train station, but we were running late and didn't have time to grab one.)
(Humans for scale.)
Arriving back at the initial train station. Like I said, this was the trip that really made me realize I needed a better camera, and this stop was definitely one of the final nails in the coffin. These photos do not do justice to how incredible the caves were in size and stalactite/stalagmite diversity. Unfortunately most of my photos make it look like we were wandering around the inside of an airtight boot littered with dog droppings and penises. Alas.
When we emerged, blinking like sun-shy owls from our caving adventure, we carried on to the next attraction of Postojna- the Predjama castle. Happily, the park service that sells tickets also provides a free shuttle, hourly, from the cave to the castle. It takes about twenty minutes and is a nice ride through the rolling hills of western Slovenia.
View from a tinted window.
This is the view as you approach the tiny "village" (mostly just a street with some shops) outside the castle. To the right of the roof in the foreground you can see the yard where there seemed to be preparation for so me Medieval Times level jousting.
The bottom of the castle, for a better view of how it's sitting half inside/half outside the cave.
One more.
Some views of said village from the castle, plus bonus rolling hills, forest, and clouds for atmosphere.
I'm not going to pretend that I read this. I did not. But I did take a picture since it helpfully illustrates how one would build a cave castle, if one were so inclined!
Looking up inside one of the main rooms on the "ground floor" (although there were floors below it, this was the floor you could access from the village road). You can see on the left where the wall is man-made and on the right where they just used the cave wall.
Same deal; man-made and natural walls, co-existing in harmony.
There was a band playing what we guessed to be Slovenian folk music (it sounded a little Irish, to be honest).
A crest of someone important... probably.
Jo, expressing some ambivalence towards the medieval toilet upon which she sat.
The view from said shitter.
Creepy torture chamber, again built using a natural recess in the cave wall, complete with anguished looking mannequin. Because we wouldn't fully understand the depressing, sadistic nature of a dungeon without a hanged mannequin!
Just a little hallway with a view, and some antlers.
This was interesting, one the left was the man-made hallway/stairs and on the right the cave wall but it was covered in growth (mineral and vegetable) from the water running down it.
A lot of the walls had openings like this, facing downward, presumably designed to help protect the castle against intruders such as the tourist seen entering here. What I wouldn't have done for a water balloon!
And then we entered the second floor, where the curators/caretakers of the castle had decided that horrible, uncanny valley-residing mannequins were necessarily to fully illustrate their purpose.
(That's a mannequin peeking out behind that wall.)
No.
The chapel.
Terrifying chaplain (monk?). This may have been the worst one.
Although this bedroom was cool in theory, I imagine that it was probably freezing and a little stinky (that cave wall looked wet) during the winter.
Another view of the central room/hallways, from the third-ish floor.
This hallway led to an outdoor balcony kind of area, with a set of stairs carved out of the cave floor that led to a cave above the castle where there a few more rooms.
Lucky shot without tourists, you can almost imagine what it might have been like to live here a long time ago (if you can ignore the electric lights and fairly new-looking railings).
Although this is not the most centered of the many shots we took to get this effect, this one is my favorite.
The stairs leading up from that balcony were treacherous, steep and worn smooth from years (decades? centuries?) of use. I highly doubt they were intended to be used for such heavy two-way traffic, or much more than sentries really. Any yet. People climbing up and down them, at the same time. You can see the person climbing up is holding on a chain railing, I literally had to pull myself up them using it because they were so steep. Life is tough for us shorties, but I have to wonder, weren't a lot of people shorter back then? How the hell did people use these damn stairs?
I think this was the view from the top of those stairs. Pretty sure. As sure as someone who blogs about something that happened 8 months ago can be.
Tiny armory room, behind glass. Probably for the best.
Back into the castle, through a few rooms and up into another section of the cave, again with steps carved into the cave floor although this time I think this section must have been renovated because there were actual railings and consistently spaced stairs the whole way up.
View from the top of this section, that roof top peaking out is (I think) the main one.
Looking down at the stairs we just climbed, you can see the windows and doorways carved into the cave wall.
Beautiful climbing vines seen on our way back through the village.
Leaving behind Predjama Castle, we hustled back onto the shuttle and back to the main park, where we grabbed our bags and made the arduous, confused trek towards the center of town in hopes of finding the train station. Although in the end we didn't have too hard of a time finding the station (thank you Slovenia for putting city maps in your public spaces!) a lot of the walk was uphill which was.... less than great.
Some shots of the town Postojna:
We were so proud of ourselves upon arriving at the train station! As we crossed through the ticket office and headed towards the platform we saw a small herd of backpackers. Since it was only us, the backpackers, and one old man on the platform we made our way over to say hello. They the informed us that the trains weren't running (why, I probably knew at one point but like the sands of time, it is lost to us all forever). A bus would be arriving shortly that would take us to the same destination, Ljubljana, for the same price as the train. The guys were friendly and helpful enough, perhaps bordering on condescending, as when they informed us upon arriving in the capital and approaching the center of Old Town that the large, castle-like structure seated on a hill above the rest of the city was, in fact, the castle of Ljubljana. No shit, guys.
We got to our place for the night, h2o hostel, in the late afternoon and after the hectic go-go-go rush of the early morning/afternoon, we were happy to relax. H2o hostel is great, by the way, which is why I'm linking to it. The location was excellent, really close to a ton of restaurants/bars/interesting sights along the Ljubljanica River, which we followed without even really needing a map into the heart of town. Although we did eventually get out of our comfortable beds to explore the town, we didn't go far before sitting down to burgers and beers and then heading back to sleep the sleep of the over-ambitious traveler. We both agreed that we'd hardly done Ljubljana justice, though, so we woke at sunrise the next morning to climb up the hill at the center of Old Town to the castle our fellow backpacker had so helpfully identified.
The view when we stepped out of our hostel the next morning.
I honestly think Dragon Bridge looks best by early morning light. I mean, look at this. Hashbrown no filter.
Let's be honest, if I were an illiterate, uneducated Slovenian peasant living near or inside of Ljubljana at the turn of the century, I would not want to fuck with this bird.
Something something chicken wings.
Slightly less majestic/imposing/impressive: the information center's dragon mascot.
Dragon graffiti. Just a lot of dragon pride in general, all over the city.
The path we chose took a somewhat steep in areas but mercifully short climb up to the castle.
Looking out at Ljubljana by sunrise as we climbed.
"Fun" wooden path structure. Who was afraid of walking on this? Not me, obviously.
Probably my favorite picture from that morning. This, to me, screams, "EUROPE!".
Climbing back down along a somewhat gentler road.
IN EUROPE WE PUT PAINTINGS ON OUR BUILDINGS.
Peaceful.
Ljubljana's manhole cover game = on fucking point. Castle, dragon, moat, what else do you need to know?
The castle, from the river.
Preseren, the national poet.
The city really was almost abandoned, save for a few stray street cleaners and one or two ambitious bicyclists. It was like we had the place to ourselves.
Bizarre, small statue park located along the river (outside of what looked to be a university).
This one reminded me a lot of Francis Bacon and his obsession with meat. For reference:
Three Studies for a Crucifixion, 1962.
I guess this makes sense since the name of the bridge where these statues are located is Butchers Bridge.
The love padlocks on Butchers Bridge. This trend has seriously caught on, at least in Europe. I saw these in Poland, Spain, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Belgium, etc. People... wait for it... LOVE them. *removes sunglasses* *YEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!* (CSI: Miami reference, you're welcome.)
After our lovely early morning hike we headed back to the hostel to grab our things, then it was on to the bus station for some coffee, some snacks, some post cards, and our next destination: Rijeka, Croatia. But we wouldn't be staying there for long...
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