The Julian Alps, Ljubljana and the Slovenian coast

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After four hours on a train from Salzburg, I arrived in the far north of Slovenia. Although the country is quite small (about the same size as Wales), there seems to be a great variety of natural sights, many of which are very reminiscent of neighbouring Italy. In some of the tourist offices they have a leaflet “How to see Slovenia in 3 days” - it may be small, but I don't think 3 days would suffice to see the many wonders of this compact country. I began my week in Slovenia in the picturesque town of Bled, on the outskirts of the country's only national park, Triglav. Bled is truly a beautiful town, built around Lake Bled and overlooked by Bled Castle which sits upon a cliff jutting out into the lake. Bled was packed with people, and not just tourists, though there were a fair few of them as well. The town was preparing itself for the World Rowing Championships the following week, so was filled with rowers practising on the lake and people setting up grandstands etc. on the lakeshore. It was so hot though (35 degrees in the middle of the day) so the lake was only really filled with rowers in the early morning an evening. I walked around the lake a couple of times (it doesn't take that long) and there were some really amazing views of the town, the castle and the island in the middle of the lake. As the lake is surrounded by hills, the best views were obviously from higher up. Whereas the lakeshore was always jammed with people, there seemed to be no-one at all on any of the hiking paths that lead up to the hills above. Even the most popular hill, which offers a stunning view over the lake, was deserted for the whole hour I spent up there, and it wasn't even that long a climb. I also climbed up to the castle, where the view was not quite as good as from the other hills I had climbed; the castle itself was also rather uninteresting and plain – in hindsight probably not worth paying to go in.

The surrounding national park turned out to be of much greater interest than the castle. I paid an early morning visit to Vintgar Gorge, which is just 4.5km from Bled. The 2 kilometre long gorge was not quite as dramatic as the one I went to in Bavaria a couple of weeks ago, but it was much quieter (probably only because I was so early), so I probably enjoyed it more. From Vintgar I walked to Pokljuka Ravine; by this time it was absolutely baking so I was glad to eventually arrive at Pokljuka which offered protection from the unforgiving midday sun. The ravine was carved by a glacial stream, now dried up, and is as narrow as 60cm in parts, but is however passable all the way thanks to a series of suspended walkways. It has some very interesting (and different) geological features, and was completely deserted apart from me, which seemed rather odd.

I spent the entirety of another day at a different lake 30km or so away, Lake Bohinj (pronounced Boheen). The lake was very similar to Lake Bled, minus the island and the castle, and instead of rowers and international tourists was filled with Slovenians. Besides the picturesque walk around the lake, which turned out to be deceptively long, I also climbed up to Slap Savica (Savica waterfall), which was a small but beautiful waterfall not far from the lake. The only difficulty with the climb was once again the incredible heat, though I can't really complain about the spell of fantastic weather I enjoyed in Slovenia. That said, it was 34 degrees at 6pm, so I dread to think how hot it was in the middle of the day. On the other side of the lake I went to yet another gorge, though this gorge (Mostnica Gorge) was in all fairness different from the gorges in Bled. There are paths following the top of the gorge as it heads upstream, so you can look down a hundred metres or so into this very narrow gap and see the forceful stream below. Further upstream the gorge widens out and you can go down to the riverbed where there are all sorts of strange rock formations created by the eroding force of the river. The “elephant rock” was the most notable. The gorge was one of those places where you have to be there to appreciate its beauty – the few photographs I took didn't come out well at all. The path to the bus stop to go back to Bled was blocked at one point by some cows which had presumably escaped from somewhere – they were slightly stubborn to get off the narrow path but did so before too long.

After these few days in Bled and the Triglav national park, I travelled the short distance to the Slovenian capital, Ljubljana ("lyoob-ly-ah-nah"). The city wasn't a disappointment as I really didn't expect there to be much to see. And although this proved to be the case, Ljubljana still turned out to be a nice city to visit – though one day was more than ample to experience all of the sights. LJ (as the city seems to be known) is one of the smallest capitals in Europe (its population is only just over 300,000), so it obviously doesn't have that big city feel. Coming in by bus through the outskirts, the ugly concrete towers bear testimony to the Yugoslav communist period, but fortunately the centre is a lot more picturesque. The old town is centred around the Ljubljanica river, with the so-called “Triple Bridge” being the city's most famous landmark. The old town is filled with cafe-lined cobbled streets – it is rather pretty, but that is about the extent of the city. Looming above the city is the castle – for some reason something possessed me to climb up to in the midday heat, and it turned out to be a much larger and more interesting castle than the one in Bled. Plus it was free go in and have a wander. The only part you pay for is to go to the top of the main tower for panoramic views, which I wanted to save for sunset, as it said it was open until 9pm. Unfortunately when I came back in the evening the castle gates were shut with the notice “Castle closed at 7:30pm today for special event”, so alas I never managed to see the panoramic view of the city. There's not much else to be said about Ljubljana – besides a small section of Roman wall, the usual plethora of churches and some nice squares, that about covers the city. While Ljubljana may not be the jewel in Slovenia's crown, and probably not worth visiting unless you're visiting other sights in the country, it wasn't all that bad for a day.

After Ljubljana I headed west towards the coast. One thing I do appreciate about Slovenia is that all of the journeys are so short – it was less than an hour to Postojna, where I next stopped. Postojna is home to one of Slovenia's most visited attractions (maybe the most visited) – the large Postojna cave complex. And off the top of my head, I would say they are the most interesting caves I've ever been to. They are quite deep (over 20km) with many enormous chambers, all featuring hundreds of stalagmites and stalactites. There are guided tours every hour, but despite this the queues to get in were enormous (even with the €22 ticket price). The tour begins with a train ride from the cave entrance to a few kilometres inside the cave – the train ride felt a lot like a theme park ride as the train was going quite fast downhill into the cave, with a couple of sharp bends, and a very, very low ceiling the whole way (the tunnel was just a few centimetres above my head for most of the ride). We then walked around some of the chambers for an hour or so before heading back to the surface. It was a really beautiful place – I couldn't get many good photos in that light, so you'll have to take my word for it. In the last chamber we saw some salamanders which they keep in a tank to show visitors – these blind creatures live in the pitch-black rivers that flow through many of the caves. Once back on the surface, I made my way to the nearby Predjama Castle. There was no public transport at all to the castle, which is 9km from the caves, and as I wanted to see it, there was no other option but to walk there and back. The castle is special as its built in the opening of a large cave, half way up a 130m cliff. Besides the impressive façade, the inside was also interesting, with some of the rooms built into the cave itself, including the dungeon. On the top floor of the castle is a drawbridge into the large cave opening, from where a passage leads in case the occupiers ever needed to flee. It didn't take even an hour to fully explore the castle, which in some ways was useful as I need to head back to Postojna before it got dark. There was not much to see in the town of Postojna itself, which was rather void of character shall we say. After one night in Postojna I headed to Slovenia's small slither of coast on the Istrian peninsula.

Istria is the largest peninsula in the Adriatic sea, jutting out from Trieste in Italy all the way down to Pula in northern Croatia. I spent a few days in Piran, which is Slovenia's most picturesque coastal town. As Istria was part of Austria up until WW1 and then Italy until WW2, the whole area has a very international feel to it. Piran seems to be a quintessential Italian town – the whole area is officially bilingual Slovenian-Italian, though there do not seem to be many Italian speakers barring tourists. Piran (or Pirano in Italian) is truly a delightful town in any case. It juts out on a headland into the Adriatic Sea, with many narrow streets, ancient churches, quaint squares and hoards of tourists. The best part of the town has to be the remains of the Roman walls, which offered an amazing view over the town, especially at sunset. In fact both sunsets I saw in Piran were truly beautiful. Even though there is no real beach in Piran, thousands of Slovenians lined the concrete seafront boulevards and seem to act as if they were on the beach – it was difficult to walk through with all the people laying everywhere. There are some rocky beaches just outside the town, but the sea was so rough the waves were battering the promenade beyond the beach. If Piran was a delightful town, its neighbour, Portoroz was exactly the opposite – another crowded town, but without any of the charm of Piran. The beaches here were so jammed with people I could only just make out that it was sand rather than pebbles.

From Piran I headed across the border to Italy very briefly to Trieste, which is by far the largest city in the area. Trieste isn't really on Italy's tourist map; being relatively close to Venice probably doesn't help, nor does being a border town. Trieste truly is at the crossroads of Europe, being on the border of Latin Western Europe, Germanic Northern Europe and Slavic Eastern Europe. Influences of all three are evident in the city, in both architecture and culture. The city boasts quite a few impressive buildings similar in style to those many in Vienna, which date from the years of Austrian rule. The main square is surrounded by such grandiose buildings. The Hapsurg Castle and romanesque Cathedral are much less ostentatious, but did offer a nice view over Trieste and the bay. Even though Piran looked very much like an Italian town, it never really felt fully Italian; Trieste by contrast felt very Italian – I was nearly knocked down a couple of times by Italian moped drivers, many of the street signs and directions on my map made no sense at all and nearly all of the shops seemed to close just after midday – so very much an Italian city.

On my way back to Piran from Trieste, I stopped off in Koper, which is one of Slovenia's largest cities (population just over 20,000) and its only port. Whereas Piran was packed with tourists, Koper was virtually deserted, even with cruise ships docked in the port (the passengers presumably headed straight to Piran). Koper is not that dissimilar a city to Piran, but being a port, it is just a bit squalid. It is the oldest town in the whole of Slovenia, and as such has an historic centre, though many of the buildings had definitely seen better days. Like Piran, Koper has no beach but the seafront promenade was once again filled with sun worshippers. I also stopped off at a village halfway between Koper and Piran called Izola, which had a very similar feel to both Piran and Koper but only on a smaller scale. Lovely views from the hill behind it though.

And so concludes my time in Slovenia. Even though I've only spent a week here I've been impressed with the variety of natural beauty this country possesses. I am just about to cross into Croatia (my final country), beginning in Pula before heading south to the Dalmatian coast. The next and final blog will come from there.

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