Since we plan to spend the next three weeks in an urban environment, Venice, this was the day to fill up on nature.

We walked through town and found ourselves on “embassy row.” The American Embassy is in a stunningly beautiful building:

Almost everything is still closed for Easter Monday and the streets are quiet, but there were plenty of locals at Tivoli Park. And dogs! I almost cannot think of a dog breed we did not see during our visit–even a Borzoi, with its orange-haired look alike owner! The park is 5 square kilometers on the western side of the old town. It is green and full of white walking paths, benches, sculptures, and fountains. Interesting–they do not have water in the fountains until summer, so they are dry now. There are children’s areas including a small skate park which was being used mostly by little kids on scooters

At the top of the hill is Tivoli Castel, where we stopped for a coffee in the sun. Here’s the view from there:

Almost lunch time, so we headed home thinking of making a salad, but the smell of the gyro place just got me so we got take out gyro and little fried meatballs with great fries for lunch.

After a nice rest time we set out in the other direction, towards the Botanical Gardens of Ljubljana. The walk was through a residential area. We discovered these clever devices built into the parking spaces. You need a key to make it go flat so you can pull your car into your secured parking space:

Close to the gardens is The Library for the Institute of Contemporary History. I loved the colors on it:

We are a bit early in the season for the glory of the gardens, but there are a lot of wild flowers and daffodils for color. Most of the trees are just beginning to bud out. Just as we entered, there was a small pond with a heron standing there with a small crowd watching it. I have seen hundreds of herons in my life, but never so close as this one. The signage was great through the paths and in four languages but the plants were just labeled in Slovenian. Who knew that Slovenia was a very biodiverse country, largely because of its weather pattern and ancient factors of colliding plates. I loved that the path was called “Fleishman’s Parsnip Path” in honor of that particular plant. There is a good sized tropical plant greenhouse but we didn’t go in.

We came upstairs to start to get organized for our departure tomorrow. Couldn’t resist one more little walk to the candy store before we ate leftovers for dinner. Candy and Netflix afterwards.