Ljubljana - The Dragon City - 24th May 2026
- Brett Sedgwick
- Jun 5
- 3 min read
Zdravo from Ljubljana, the capital city of Slovenia. A.K.A. The Dragon City!
After settling up at Camping Fusina, we hit the road and immediately battled trucks for hours. We remembered that trucks park up in Italy on Sundays, so we’ll do big drive days then from now on.
Jen wanted a place to free park for the night, and we decided to park at the marina at the final Italian town before the Slovenian border: Trieste.
It cost 5 Euros to park overnight, so we parked up, paid up, and jumped on the bikes. There was a lot of construction in this town and bike tracks were interrupted all over the shop. Also, a mega cruise ship was docked, and there were Seppo-generians everywhere.
(Editor’s note: Sedgwick thinks he’s a funny prick and a wordsmith of sorts. Seppo-generian is one of his words that is a bastardisation of Septugenarian - which is a person in their 70s. Seppo-generian is a word used to describe old American tourists. Keep it classy, Sedgwick.)
Anyway, we slept in Delph and the next day drove over yet another border as we bid a temporary Arrivaderc, to Italy and entered Slovenia.
Now as you know, I was getting a bit worried about my gas…
No, not from salami, my gas bottles in Delph.
Me old mate Chatty (he’s been invaluable on this trip, and I’ve got him saying things like sweet as, chilled vibes, etc.) found a place on the Ljubljana ring road that potentially fills gas bottles.
We roll in, and the guy says: “Is your lucky day. We have adaptor!”
Yes!!! 45 Euros later and we now have two full UK gas bottles. Only van-lifers will know the relief and lack of anxiety that I felt when this happened!
Anyway, Tom-Tom (our awesome driving app) kind of fucked up a bit at the end of our trip, and we couldn’t find our caravan park. Not to worry, we found a Park n Ride, and for 15 Euros a night, we had power and a flat tarred pitch right near the train and bus station. Brilliant.
We got spruced up and grabbed the bus into the Old Town of Ljubljana. We’d had one night here 11 years ago and loved it so much that we swore we’d come back… and so we have stayed true to our word.
We checked out the Dragon Bridge and the main pedestrian street before a quick bevvie at a canal-side bar. We noticed a lot of white marquees in one of the side squares and lo and behold, we stumbled onto a food and wine festival!! What are the odds!!
The next few hours were spent sampling some joy and loving the sunshine, the vibes, the well-dressed gorgeous crowd, and basically feeling pretty good.
We had a drink in the Pirate’s Bar - what a dive; they were playing Justin Timberlake or some such shite on the P.A., rather than sea shanties - before we did a mini-bar crawl and caught the bus home, again, all before dark!
Before we left Slovenia, we jumped on the bikes and downloaded a cycle path that looked like a dog!! Cool, let’s ride that. We ended up in the old town for a coffee before we drove through beautiful parks, leafy cycleways and mostly flat tracks. A cheeky 20km ride and we were feeling a million bucks. Check out the visuals below:
Ljubljana is one of those hidden gems. The city is beautiful, the canals are captivating, the people are friendly, and the roads are good. The food and drink are excellent, and capsicum is big; fresh, cooked or smoked (as paprika), it’s great. We bought a kilo of cherries from a fruit stall that were fat and juicy and for 10 Euros, a steal.
As I said, we’d been here years ago and returning now was a real privilege.
Well, we’ve got a few weeks left in the Schengen zone, and it’s beginning to heat up, so we thought, righto, better get to Croatia and check out those incredible lakes in Plitvice.
Nasvidenje
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