It was raining and cool so we had a late start to the day. We packed up and drove to Celje the 3rd biggest city in Slovenia less than an hour away.

We parked right on the river – a very nice spot.

It was a short walk to one of the museum buildings, the Dukes palace – a very striking building. There were Roman columns evident outside of the museum. We started there.

The ground floor had an explanation of the evolution of coats of arms.

The next exhibition was on Alma M Karlin a trained museum curator who from 1908 off her own bat and from her own expenses travelled all the way round the world for 9 years. She collected a huge amount of items and send them home. She was seriously ill with malaria at one point and just survived. She also kept running out of money.

There were lots of rooms with items from different places – including Australia and New Zealand.

We then went upstairs which had rooms with lots of furniture and painting collected by the dukes over many hundreds of years.

This is a hand engraved glass from the 1700s.

The central large reception room had an amazing painted ceiling from the 1700s rediscovered in 1926.

There were many interesting items. Maria Theresa is a significant person who ruled the large Hapsburg Empire from 1740 to 1780 and was the only woman to do so. She rehabilitated the empire after her father had let it run down, defended herself and made Austria into a strong country. I didn’t know anything about her but she pops up here and there in museums.

There was an impressive Murano mirror from the 1700s. Its reflection was perfect – unusual in old mirrors.

Once finished we had to check out the paperweight room from Slovenia . Rogaska Slatina where we have been previously had several pieces.

We thought we were finished but we were then told our ticket covers the other museum with Stone Age, Roman and dark ages pieces. So we couldn’t miss out on that.

We started in the basement where there were Roman foundations and a Roman road along with many statues.

We then went to the Iron Age section with the oldest bone needle in the world from 35,000 years ago.

There were many other pieces recovered from the same period.

There were some nice ceramic tiles and then a collection of skulls of the counts – very weird!

After finishing all these off we had a nice icecream on the riverbank – a very lovely area.

We then got back into the van and driving to Zalec for beer drinking or at their unique beer fountain – or so we thought.

Unfortunately when we got there they were setting up for a car race and our planned carpark was being used as a service area. So we had to find some where else.

So back to the app Park4Night. Luckily there was a nice aire down the road on a wetland – so it was all good. Just no beer fountain. It was at Vrbje (why bother with consonants?) and was 10 euro per night including electricity and water.

Glenn went for a walk to see the birds while I enjoyed a rest in the van and got dinner organised. Here’s what Glenn found.