My wife and I will be traveling from Trieste to Ljubljana in a few weeks. There seem to be many options including express buses and non-express buses that cost more than the express bus does. Can anyone give us suggestions on the best way to do this trip? It looks like it will be about a two hour ride.
Happy Travels, Y'all!
Scott
Bus is surely cheapest/fastest/simplest. I took a bus (FlixBus) the other direction from Ljubljana to Trieste last May - took about 90 minutes, but the bus arrived 45+ minutes late. I'm glad I had the FlixBus app on my phone so I got notified that the bus was late but still coming! I would look at other bus companies too. See
www.getbybus.com
www.autostazionetrieste.it/en-us/linee/internazionali
www.flixbus.com
If by a few weeks you mean past the middle of June, you could also take a direct train to Ljubljana - they are restarting some direct trains from Trieste in June. Before June, if you still want to do it by train, you could take a local bus (or taxi if you have heavy bags) from Trieste to Villa Opicina (or Sezana) and catch a direct train to Ljubljana from there. This won't save you time or convenience, though. Some of us love trains and dislike bus rides; I would have taken the train last May but the scheduling didn't quite work that day. We were stopped 20 minutes at the Italian border for a passport check - so in addition to the 45 minute arrival delay, the train probably would have taken about the same travel time.
I wanted to report how things went. We found the bus schedule for the main bus station, which was next door to the train station we had arrived in, and the departure time to Ljubljana. We rolled our luggage from our nice little hotel, bought our tickets and climbed aboard. In about 90 minutes we arrived. The bus had plenty of room and it was a direct bus, no stops to worry about.
Our only issue was that we had about 30 minutes to buy our tickets and find the bus. We were third in line at the only open ticker window behind a young man and woman who spent a good 15 minutes at the window. I'm not sure what the heck was going on, but the line behind me grew and we all tried to make eye contact with the ticket seller. With 15 minutes to go, I even allowed another traveler to cut ahead of me because she claimed HER bus was leaving in 5 minutes. Finally the couple was moved to the side and we were all allowed to buy our tickets. When boarding the bus, I passed the person I allowed ahead of me. She fibbed a bit on her departure time--we were on the same bus! No harm, no foul. We were all happily on our way to Ljubljana.
Glad it worked out, Scott. I didn't have to wait in a ticket line because I bought my ticket on my phone (FlixBus app) but I don't know if you took Flixbus or not...
