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Celje

There wasn't much we hadn't already seen in Ljubljana so next we headed towards the old city of Celje that lies about 80 kilometers northeast of Ljubljana. We decided to visit Celje because in Wikitravel someone had wrote that "you can spend the whole day just walking around the old town of Celje", and I guess we saw a couple of nice pictures from the city also.

After the comfortable train trip we soon realized that there's actually almost nothing to see at all. We walked in the old town for perhaps 15 minutes and it felt like we had seen everything even remotely interesting, and later from the Celje castle we saw that we actually had. Perhaps the Wikitravel writer was joking or something because I can't imagine anyone spending a whole day in the old town of Celje.

Travelling all the way to Celje wasn't total waste of time though as there's a nice medieval castle on top of a big hill right next to the city. The walk up took about half an hour along a muddy path. We didn't find the path right away and had to cross some river walking across a railway bridge - a good adventure that is! At the top we were sure that the castle is closed because of Easter, but were positively surprised to find that it wasn't the case as soon as we saw the entrance.

The entrance fee to the castle was a couple of euros and it was well worth paying. There weren't many tourists around and the scenery from the castle walls all around the area was really beautiful despite the rainy weather. Without any clouds it would probably have been even better. Inside the castle there was a small classy café and about a dozen boards telling about the long history of the castle. I would have never guessed that once the most important castle in the eastern Alps would lie in a tiny city like Celje.

On the way down we used a different route and just made it in time to catch the train that took us back to Ljubljana and to our hostel.

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