I was reflecting in Slovenia that the locals there probably stop noticing the stunning mountains around them after a while. Just like I was so charmed by the greenery in Spånga when I first saw it, but now rarely think about it. So here’s me paying attention to it again.

Also, taking an evening walk to get my daily exercise in.

Today is our 20th wedding anniversary. Happy anniversary to us!

Another Wednesday in the office, another reminder of there being a wider world out there, outside my own four walls. This time in the shape of a bunch of protesters blocking all traffic on Sveavägen, one of the main thoroughfares in Central Stockholm, by glueing themselves to the zebra crossing and refusing to move, thereby – in their eyes – drawing attention to climate change. In most everybody else’s eyes they were causing traffic chaos, delays and irritation, to put it mildly. I don’t really understand how they believe their methods would gain them any support or positive attention.

The pause in posting was mostly intentional this time. We were gone hiking for 10 days, but Ingrid preferred to stay at home on her own, and I didn’t want to publicise the fact that she was on her own here. Not that I have any untrustworthy characters reading this blog but it still felt better to be safe. Now that we’re all at home again and I’ve spent 2 days acclimating to work, I’ll be catching up in no time!

Our cat’s pose, in our cat’s spot, but not our cat.

There are so many cats in the neighbourhood that I sometimes wish there was a Facebook – in its earliest incarnation, when it was just a set of personal profiles with photos – for them all.

Adrian managed to scrape up half his shin in a kickbike accident and got an impressive bandage. He could feel the edges of the adhesive tape more than the (superficial) wound itself, so now he limps.

Full of energy after ten days of activity, I’m making a renewed effort to start exercising daily again.

We only had half a day at our disposal before it’s time for queueing at the airport, and a forecast of rainy weather, and a forecast of traffic jams on the A1. With all of that constraining our options, we went to the Ljubljana Technical Museum, which is in fact not very near Ljubljana at all.

It turned out to be a wonderfully eclectic agglomeration of exhibits. Housed in an old convent, the site itself was quirky and fun to explore.

Inside and outside, the museum’s collections ranged from old pieces of machinery with no labelling whatsoever, through collection of items with minimal labelling in Slovenian only, to very detailed and pedagogical exhibitions about the history of a particular branch of technology.

Our time here was limited so we didn’t have time for more than some cursory browsing and the occasional deep dive into a random area. We enjoyed an exhibition about the history of cars and other means of motorized personal transportation. I naturally spent a fair bit of time in the exhibition about the textile industry. There was also a surprisingly interesting and well-presented one about the history of forestry, where we learned about different methods for “first mile” timber transportation, including rafting, sledding, wooden timber chutes, and simply shoving the timber down the side of the mountain.

Ljubljana was lovely, but after a full day of seeing it from various angles, we felt pretty done with it. There were museums we could have visited, I guess, but instead we left the city behind today and went to see one of Slovenia’s grand cave complexes at Postojna.

The plan was actually to visit the caves at Škocjan nearby, which – from what we’ve gathered – would be less touristic and more exciting. However we were too late booking tickets, so all reasonable time slots were already full. Getting all spoiled here, with all the planning done for us on the other days.

Speaking of which, I want to give a shout out here to Walking Holidays Slovenia who arranged the whole trip for us. I am perfectly capable of finding hotels and googling for scenic spots and hiking trails, but a vacation becomes so much more of a vacation if I don’t first have to do weeks of work to arrange it all.

The experience in Postojna was quite touristic, with large crowds (quite well managed, though) and numerous souvenir shops and a little train taking us into the caves. But inside it was truly magnificent. During the two-kilometre train ride from the entrance to the cool parts, I kept thinking that they should slow the train down so we would have more opportunities to actually see the caves, and take photos. And then we got to the end station, and the reason for the speedy ride became obvious – the caves we had passed through were nothing compared to the grand views that opened up in front of us.

After a while my brain was almost overloaded with awesomeness. One vast, intricate cavern after the other; one wondrous stalagmite formation after the other.

All of it, unfortunately, nearly impossible to photograph well with my equipment. The photos give you no sense of the scale or the depth, and the lighting conditions were challenging to say the least. But at least they will remind us of what we experienced.

The hiking part of the vacation is over, and we’ll be spending the next two and a half days sightseeing. Today we saw Ljubljana from various angles: street level, from above, and from below.

A large chunk of central Ljubljana is a car-free area, very pleasant for walking and window shopping. There were nice riverside walkways and numerous pedestrian bridges, including the famous dragon bridge. Lots and lots and lots of cafes and restaurants with outdoor seating, and some truly excellent ice cream. (Chocolate ice cream with single-estate chocolate!)

We liked the circle of rain in Prešeren square.

Next we made our way up to the castle, and then even further up to its highest tower, from where we looked down on the city as well as the castle itself.

The castle itself was a mixed bag. The City Museum was not much better than the one in Bled, displaying disparate objects, each one perhaps interesting in and of itself, but often badly presented. Physically unreadable signs, often way too little context. (Seriously, nobody can read your labelling with tiny black letters on transparent glass in front of the object itself.) Same goes for the museum of puppetry in another part of the castle – I guess it can be interesting if you’re already familiar with whatever TV shows and movies the puppets are from, but without the local knowledge it’s just a random bunch of puppets.

On the other hand, the lower levels of the castle were impressive in and of themselves, as a cool piece of engineering. And the before and after photos of the extensive renovations that the castle has gone through were captivating.

In the afternoon we went for a boat ride up and down the river, so we could see the city from a new angle – and rest our legs.