LJUBLJANA: 24 hours in the city of the dragon

So, first post…
In these next couple of weeks, we will post about our trips in retrospect. We will gradually share with you some of the amazing places we’ve visited over the years (think Los Angeles, New York, Andalucia, Miami, Lisbon, Barcelona and Las Vegas, to name a few) and you will get to know all about hidden gems, good food, the best beaches and most comfortable places to sleep.

To kick it off, I’ll share some of my experiences of last month, starting with… Ljubljana!

I can’t categorize Ljubljana under CITY TRIPS, since I’ve only been there for 24 hours and spent a lot of them, well, drunk. Ljubljana was the city of choice for our annual incentive and we got to see the city under a huge pile of fresh snow.

So what did we do? Well, first of all, we made a lovely boat trip in the freezing cold:

Later on, we got to know some Slovenian dishes at the top floor of our hotel, followed by a party. Slovenian cuisine includes a lot of cottage cheese, pork, sausages and excellent wines. Not very refined, but all the more tasty.

We stayed at the Vander Urbani Hotel, Ljubljana’s first design and boutique hotel, located at the heart of the city. The rooms were very nicely decorated and the staff was genuinely friendly. The only downside: all the rooms had open glass showers. Not for the shy…

The next day, we were in for a surprise and were invited to take a helicopter flight over the city. We got to see Ljubljana Castle, the medieval city centre and the mountains that surround the entire city. This was my first helicopter flight EVER and I couldn’t have wished for a better introduction. The pilot was just THE nicest guy, the weather was perfect, the view was amazing.

And then for our last stop and the highlight of our trip: a seven-course dinner at Gostilna Skaručna that took about four hours. Skaručna is a small village located between Ljubljana and Brnik and this restaurant is simply one of the finest I’ve been to in a veeery long time. Words can not describe how delicious the food was; from the smoked trout to the marinated steak to the biological wines. The restaurant only serves traditional Slovenian dishes and the owner, Slavko, takes his time to explain how everything is prepared (we got the grand tour in the kitchen) and, if you’re lucky, even spins some records of his vinyl collection. Absolute delight!