Slovenia

We walked to Ljubljana’s Central Market yesterday morning just after 9am and it seemed very quiet in the nation’s capital – hardly any traffic, not many people around. The market was closed and a quick online search told us that it was the Feast of the Assumption, a very important day in the Christian and Catholic calendar. Slovenia is around 60% Catholic, and Croatia is over 80% Catholic. Italy is nearby also, so that explained why there were so many people on the move and around the place, making the most of the 3-day weekend to get away.

We drove south from Ljubljana, avoiding the autostrade as we needed some kind of e-tag that lasts 6 months and cost EU35. Probably good value for 6 months, but not for us for just one day and less than 100kms of driving. The roads we drove on were good and we visited a couple of points of interest on the way south – Predjama Castle was built into a cave, and looks totally impregnable. Building commenced in 1202, and much of what remains is from the 17th century. It has all the good stuff – a dungeon, a 16th century chest full of treasure, and holes in the ceiling of the entrance tower for pouring boiling oil on intruders.

Then on to the beautiful seaside town of Piran, which is like a smaller, less touristy version of Venice without the canals. Vehicular access is very limited, which adds to the charm of the place. We parked at the Fornace parking station about a km from the town and walked along the ‘beach’, then through narrow alleyways to the town square. There were lots of people enjoying the fine weather, swimming, sunbaking, sitting at outdoor cafes. Piran was under Venetian rule for 500 years from the late 13th century, and was a major supplier of salt.

And further along the road to Croatia and the Istrian Peninsula. We were aiming for a campgound on the coast just out of the historic town of Labin, but it was completely full. so we backtracked to Labin, to another much smaller campground, Kamp Romantic. Not sure where it got its name (and there has been at least one crying child here most of the time, so not very romantic …), but it is very well-set up with a pool, good-sized sites and a very friendly host who showed us around last night, invited us to help ourselves to vegetables from his garden and shared some of his own white wine with us. A nice drop – he grows enough grapes for 1000L, and buys more so he can make a total of 2000L per year. He and his neighbours share ownership of a grape crusher and other large agricultural machinery, and he presses his olives for oil. Last year was a bad year, he only got 8L – usual yield is around 30L.

We’re spending a couple of nights here, it’s such a nice place. Also, we’re having to rethink our plans – it’s peak season on the Croatian coast and everything is booked out. The downside of travelling the way we do, but we’ll figure out alternatives.

The Dragons guarding the bridge into Ljubljana

Camped in Labin Croatai — Camped in Labin Croatia

We were heading to Trieste yesterday, but just a few kms after we got on to the autostrade out of Venice, it looked more like a parking lot than a highway, with 3 lanes of stationary vehicles. We were lucky that we were near an exit, so we drove off and worked out what to do next. We have the Lonely Planet Slovenia guide in our travelling library, so we figured we might as well head north and have a look. Every photo I’ve seen of Slovenia has been beautiful, and it’s actually like that in real life too. Mountainous, green, picture-postcard stuff.

Triglav National Park is in the north-western corner, with a couple of lakes that have campgrounds, so we headed towards Lake Bohinj, which is a bit south of Lake Bled. The guide book says it’s slightly less glamourous and ‘touristy’ than Lake Bled, but when we went through them today, they were both packed full of people making the most of the gorgeous summer Sunday, with more and more traffic heading towards them.

We hit a couple of road closures on the way to Bohinj, and at the second one I hopped out to ask the man putting up the barriers if there was a way through … yes, further north. A camion truck had broken down or turned over or something and blocked the road from the south. So we drove on …. along very winding, very narrow roads built into the sides of mountains. Through little villages where every house seemed to have window boxes growing geraniums at every window, and a flourishing vegetable garden growing summer vegies – corn, beans, tomatoes, zucchini. It’s all so green here, a shade of green we never, ever see at home.

About 20km from Bohinj, we noticed a scattering of tents and RVs in a field. No official signs that it was actually a campground, but we went to the nearby cafe and asked – ‘yes, you can camp there, and it’s free’. Excellent! They even had wifi and gave Greg the code. We found a space for the car and tent and settled in. There were another dozen or so families spending the night there. There’s a chair lift near the cafe that goes up to a ski run in winter, and in summer walkers and mountain bikers use it to access a network of paths. It was lovely. Much nicer than the campground at Bohinj, where the tent sites all seemed to be on sloping bits of land – ie, the parts that caravans and RVs don’t want because they all want level ground.

We have spent the last week trying to find ice and having no luck at all. I got talking to some people this morning when I noticed they had an esky, and asked them how they keep stuff cold. Ice bricks. It’s not possible to buy bags of ice in Slovenia, and apparently not in Italy or Germany either. So that mystery is solved. We’ll just work around it.

Tonight we’re in Ljubljana, the Slovenian capital, population 280,000. We’re staying in a hostel that seems to be set up for students – our room has 3 of everything … beds, desks, shelves, cupboards. Apparently there’s a student population of around 50,000 in Ljubljana, but it’s summer holidays at the moment. We’re near the centre of town, and we can see the castle from our window at the hostel.

All the photos taken so far are on our photo album page here