June 17 – Lake Bled to Zagreb, Croatia via Ljubljana. Today we are leaving Lake Bled and heading to Zagreb, Croatia. On the way we are stopping in the capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana. It has gotten to be very hot, nearly 90 degrees. I guess they're making up for the long winter and cold and rainy spring. I'm sure that all the people with flooding problems are happy to see the sun and the warm weather to help dry central Europe out.
Our guide from Lake Bled lives her in the capital so she's guiding us again. We're walking around the town center. She has selected a shady route to keep us out of the sun. Some of the older folks are having trouble with the heat stress on top of the exertion of walking especially uphill.
About 80% of the population of Slovenia lives in Ljubljana. It has some great old buildings. We started at a large square
We are staying at the Westin Hotel in Zagreb. Since the air conditioning is passable I'm a happy camper.
We started off in Congress Square. The buildings facing this square are all fairly old. Of course, there's the congress hall, the University of Ljubljana and the Ursuline Church of the Holy Trinity. The latter doesn't look very church-like from the front. Looks more like a government building to me. We walked past the university building and behind it is the Fine Arts building. It has busts and plaques built into the façade honoring Slovenian writers, poets and artists. I hate to admit it but I've never heard of any of them.
From the university area we walked down to one of the city's museums. The most interesting exhibit here is a 5,200 year old wheel that was found in Kolo. Apparently this is the oldest wheel ever discovered. We continued on to the banks of the Sava River that flows through the town. We are in the Old Town part of the city and the buildings lining the river are all at least 300 years old and many are more.
We crossed the river on Shoemakers Bridge and oddly enough there's a shoe store on the other side. They've hung a wire across the street right outside the shoe store and there are at least 120 pairs of shoes hanging from it. Quite a sight. Our guide said that when kids get a new pair of shoes they throw the old ones up onto the wire.
Next we visited the Ljubljana Cathedral whose patron is Saint Nicholas. The cathedral doors are bronze and were cast in 1996 to prepare the church for the visit of John Paul II. The doors have scenes from Slovene history. From atop the transom John Paul II looks down on the scenes from a window.
The inside of the cathedral is pretty but not extraordinary. It's Roman Catholic so there's no iconostasis. The apse and the altar area classically done without over ornamentation. It's Baroque but with a subdued sensibility. The ceiling fresco is the masterpiece of the church. It's a depiction of Jesus being ministered to by angles as he is crucified. God is watching from heaven and Mary is shown, dressed in white, at the foot of the cross. It's a gigantic work that not only covers the ceiling but down the sides of the walls to the bottom of the clerestory windows.
From the cathedral we walked across the triple bridge to Preseren Square. In medieval era they built a very nicely designed bridge that linked Preseeren Square with the other side of the river very near the cathedral. As time went on the bridge became inadequate for the amount of traffic moving through the area. Rather than build a new bridge to replace the old one they built two copies of the original bridge, one on either side. It's a very attractive arrangement and solved the problem without destroying a city landmark.
To the right of the bridges is the Preseren Monument. France Preseren was a Slovene poet known for his love poems. In other words, women loved his work, men, not so much. He was in love with Julija Primicused, a girl who lived on the opposite side of Preseren Square. (Of course it did not have that name at the time.) She did not return the feeling and poor France never got over her. His statue faces the building that was her home. On the front façade of the house is a sculpture of Julija looking out the window towards France. Ljubljana's own Romeo and Juliet, except for the fact that no one died. A second bronze casting on the monument to France is seated on a column of stone above and behind him holding a laurel wreath. She is Erato, the muse of love poetry.
On the side of the square that's between them is the Franciscan Church of the Annunciation. Another church in the Baroque style, this time painted in a dusty rose pink and white. A very pleasant color combo.
After a walk through old town back to Congress Square it was on the bus to continue to Zagreb, Croatia.
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