I've been on to the Tourist Bureau with the possibility of a new slogan… Ljubljana - When you have to be somewhere. Which just about covers our situation. We finished up in Dublin on 4 March… wanted to celebrate a massive anniversary, figured out where our various stashes of airline points and miles could take us and where we could use our IHG hotel points to most effect. And the answer to a question that could stump AI ended up being Ljubljana - with the added bonus that we hadn't been to Slovenia before.

We are here in Ljubljana for a bit over 3 weeks, cooling our jets and getting ready to start a housesit in Paris for almost 4 weeks. In the 3rd! It is minding a dog sized horse (or horse sized dog) called Willie. The description on the website was 'mixed breed' - but a fair bit of the mixture would have to be pit bull. Seriously, what we will do to spend time in Paris. But couple of good walks a day, glorious apartment and the ability to cross the road whenever we please - it will be worth it. Probably heading back to Sydney immediately afterwards, late April - bit of skintness is afflicting us and we can access retirement funds next January - though, of course, plan A (lottery win/other windfall) is still at the top of the things to do list. Being careful little chickens we prepaid all our bills out to April 2025 before we left on this trip. So skint. But not too skint.

We saw an article on Euronews website just the other day saying Paris has a decent whack of cherry blossom if Japan isn't on one's agenda… so we're looking forward to that. Saw a musical years ago called 'The Producers' and the theme song was "I love Paris in the Spring time" - so this will be our first visit and we are predisposed to loving Paris at any time of the year to be honest.

We chose to stay in a particularly nice hotel for five nights due to being part of their loyalty programme with some extra perks - and compared to staying 5 star in an expensive country which is prohibitive, this was quite reasonably priced - then with an upgrade to a suite and access to the Club Lounge via persuading birds to fall from trees, that covered our eats for five days as well. What with one thing and another, we had quite an economical stay for the first part of a Ljubljana visit - and seeing the castle lit up at night from the lounge was amazing. A stunning way to celebrate being together for 30 years.

The hotel was in the new end of town (but a short walk to the picturesque old town that features on post cards). We knew at some point our 5 star sojourn would need to end and spent a bit of time researching different options for the remainder of our time in Ljubljana. It's not like us to be quite so up in the air/seat of the pants-ish - but getting the Paris housesit while in the Dublin airport hotel as we prepared to fly to Ljubljana was quite the coup - so we locked in LJU to CDG flights at the same time and figured we would sort out the 'after the hotel' sector in due course. Due course seemed to come around quite quickly. In the end, having scoured the booking sites, AirBnB etc we found a great little apartment just a 2 minute walk from the edge of the Old Town run by a hospitality goddess called Polly. Wow - best apartment we've ever stayed in. Comfy bed, clean sheets every week, housecleaning every week, well supplied kitchen - good quality pots and pans, heating/cooling and clean - my god clean! We booked through booking dot com and used a cashback site as well - so ended up with a nice credit on that. Funnily enough, with Paris on the agenda in ink, we now had to fill our Ljubljana time. What better way to fill a set amount of time than with a city pass!

There is, not surprisingly, a strategy for obtaining excellent value from a city pass. We've been using this type of pass for going on 14 years now and know a good deal when we see one. Ljubljana's was an excellent deal - we couldn't actually believe people were paying for individual attractions when they were all on the pass and it was possible to squeeze non-stop entertainment from the one expenditure. We went crazy over the course of four days and did the group walking tour (as it turned out, we were the only people that day - so essentially a private walking tour for 2. Bargain.) We visited the castle, climbed the tower, enjoyed the vistas, saw the puppet museum. We visited the National Gallery, the Modern Art Gallery and the Natural History Museum (even a Woolly Mammoth skeleton to see - wow!) We took the electric tourist tram for a circuit around the town. Having looked on at the tourist boats starting to ply the river as the town woke up from its winter slumber, we were keen to take a cruise along the river (and back) and even got to wave at our baker and our apartment as we cruised past. We visited the city museum with the Roman ruins in the basement, one of the oldest wooden wheels in the world and a glorious, but small, silver cup found during excavations. We even visited one of those puzzle and optical illusion type attractions - we weren't expecting much and only allocated an hour for it on our way to something else but absolutely brilliant and ever so slightly mind bending. The pass was phenomenal value and we squeezed every cent (and then some) out of our expenditure. We had a couple of days rest once the pass officially ended then did everything else - the botanic gardens, the stroll around the remnants of the Roman wall, the open air garden/bar type thing on the river bank and Plecnik's Beach - where terraced seating sits along the river bank - the river must truly be the focus of all things when the weather really starts to heat up. As it is, it was Winter when we arrived and Spring had bloomed by the time we left, blossom everywhere, warm sunny days and even a couple of insect bites. We don't need to come back but it was a great visit - Ljubljana - When you have to be somewhere! But now, the end is near and - If it's good enough for the Olympics, it's good enough for us - Off to gay Paris!

(Photo: Triple Bridge by night.)