{"id":83,"date":"2013-06-20T20:19:27","date_gmt":"2013-06-20T20:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valeriechang.net\/blog\/?p=83"},"modified":"2013-06-20T20:19:27","modified_gmt":"2013-06-20T20:19:27","slug":"ljubljana-bryon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/valeriechang.net\/blog\/?p=83","title":{"rendered":"Ljubljana (Bryon)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After our relaxing stay in Lake Bled, we boarded a bus back to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ljubljana\">Ljubljana<\/a> (roughly pronounced lyoob-lee-ah-na), the capital and largest city of Slovenia. Despite being the largest city, Ljubljana only has a population of about 280,000 and feels more like a large town than a city. The downtown area was converted to a car-free pedestrian-friendly zone a few years ago by the mayor at the time (who may once again be mayor).<\/p>\n<p>Valerie found a great deal and got us a room at the convenient and swanky <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Grand_Hotel_Union,_Ljubljana\">Grand Hotel Union<\/a>, the very first hotel in Ljubljana, built in 1905.\u00a0After setting in, we took a quick self-guided walking tour of the city. At the center of town is the river with several pedestrian bridges: the Triple Bridge, Dragon Bridge, Cobbler&#8217;s Bridge, Butcher&#8217;s Bridge, etc.<\/p>\n<p>The Triple Bridge, in front of city hall, was redesigned by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jo%C5%BEe_Ple%C4%8Dnik\">Jo\u017ee Ple\u010dnik<\/a>, probably the most famous architect in the city&#8217;s history. Rick Steves recommended that we visit his house\/workshop, so we did. From the excellent guided tour (free because it happened to be museum day!), we learned that this\u00a0Ple\u010dnik was an easily offended anti-social workaholic. The son of a carpenter, he designed his own wood furniture to be uncomfortable (to encourage himself to work harder and to discourage others from visiting him). I have no idea how a man who so disliked talking to people was so beloved by those same people.<\/p>\n<p>After the workshop, we took a guided walking tour of the city organized by the Tourist Information office. We learned a bit about Baroque architecture before visiting the castle on the hill via a tourist train (actually a tram shaped like a train). For those visiting the city, the tour is totally worth the 9 euro price. After the tour, we ate at a local pizzeria (Foculus) which was happy to make us a delicious cheese-less pizza before heading back to the hotel. Overall,\u00a0I really liked the relaxed and youthful feeling of Ljubljana.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After our relaxing stay in Lake Bled, we boarded a bus back to Ljubljana (roughly pronounced lyoob-lee-ah-na), the capital and largest city of Slovenia. Despite being the largest city, Ljubljana only has a population of about 280,000 and feels more like a large town than a city. The downtown area was converted to a car-free [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/valeriechang.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/valeriechang.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/valeriechang.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valeriechang.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valeriechang.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/valeriechang.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86,"href":"http:\/\/valeriechang.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions\/86"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/valeriechang.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valeriechang.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valeriechang.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}