Ljubljana, the city of dragons, may be one of the smallest European capital cities, but it is certainly not lacking in terms of personality, history and charm. After a few short days you’ll be so in love with this livable, walkable, and lovable city that you won’t want to leave!

An easy 90 minute drive from Zagreb, Ljubljana makes a great side trip if you’re visiting Croatia. It’s a city of many influences, managing to feel a little bit Eastern European and Mediterranean at the same time. In other words: it’s downright charming!

We had 3 unaccounted-for nights in our Croatia trip, and couldn’t decide if we wanted to explore Croatia’s Istrian peninsula or head north to Slovenia. We hemmed and hawed over this for weeks before finally deciding (we really need to get better about making decisions without obsessing over them).

In the end, we figured that by this point in the trip, we would have seen plenty of quaint beach towns, and a change of scenery might be appreciated. Plus, it gave us a chance to check another country off our list too!

We definitely made the right call: Ljubljana turned out to be absolutely delightful, and one of our favorite places of the entire trip.

Once we figured out how to pronounce it, that is. (Hint: treat the j’s more like y’s… so it’s pronounced something like lube-lee-ah-na).

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