Saturday, June 8th

This year’s Dungroamin sojourn was to Ljubljana (otherwise known as “Lubbly Jubbly” as it saves having to try to pronounce it) the capital of the Republic of Slovenia. It borders Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Croatia to the south and southeast, and Hungary to the northeast.

For Chris, the excitement of the trip started early, with a sighting of a red kite on the way to the airport. But having previous experience of his reaction from our historic trip to the Chilterns, we knew what to expect and were successful in stopping him jumping out of the car, waving his arms in the air and shouting ”Red Kite! Red Kite!”

Ljubljana is a city of culture (well it was until we arrived). It has managed to retain traces from all periods of its rich history; from the legacy of Roman Emona; through to the Renaissance, Baroque and Art Nouveau periods characterised in the house fronts and ornate doorways of the city centre, the romantic bridges adorning the Ljubljanica river, the lopsided rooftops, a park reaching deep into the city centre and some turds.

On arriving in Ljubljana on our Easyjet flight from Stansted, the heavens opened as a massive thunder storm passed overhead. Significant enough it seems for it to be unsafe for the baggage handlers to unload the luggage from the plane. So we were left hanging around waiting for the storm to pass over. Eventually we were reaquainted with our bags and were able to leave the terminal for the next challenge – the airport transfer.

The largest taxi appeared to be an eight seater, which meant that we could not quite all get into one. So we abandoned a couple of our number at the taxi rank, keeping our fingers crossed that the chap at the rank understood that they weren’t with us.

Unfortunately the abandoned two got the the hotel at about the same time – so another unsuccessful attempt at losing some guests!

The City Hotel turned out to be a pleasant enough place. Although the facia was probably old, the interior had been modernised. So much so that it had something called air conditioning in the bed rooms.

By the time we had booked in and reassembled for dinner, time was moving on and, as the weather was not too good, we decided to eat in the hotel where we had an enjoyable meal.

A typical room.