Eighty-Five Steps

We lucked out in finding our apartment.  In all of Ljubljana, we found three apartments that would work for us whose owners would rent for a five-month period.  This was a bigger issue than we anticipated, because the UN is moving a division here this spring for the next five years and landlords don't want to miss out on them.

Our apartment has "old world charm":  Our building is in the walking district a few doors down from city hall (in the picture below, city hall is at the end of the street, just below the castle), the building entrance is through a stone archway, and we have a balcony that looks right out at castle hill.  It's completely quiet, except for the bells.

However, "old world charm" also means our building has no elevator.  So, we climb to get to our apartment...fifty-five steps to a small courtyard and another sixteen to our front balcony.  And we climb in our apartment...there's a spiral staircase (just like in Cinderella's castle), fourteen steps, that leads up to the bedrooms.  Needless to say, we're getting our exercise.

What's funny is that we worried about the steps with the kids, mainly the spiral staircase.  We were certain one of them would take a header down it (I guess I shouldn't speak too soon; there's still time).  But, they mastered it in all of twenty minutes.  Now, they spend the majority of their time in the apartment on the staircase, which doubles as an escalator, car, boat, waterfall, rocket ship, airplane, and train.