Glorious Slovenia In Autumn: Part II Triglav National Park and Lake Bled

"There are reasons we congregate in those hot spots - to worship beauty and to feel its effects light up the electrolytes in the bloodstream" - Frances Mayes

The beautiful mild weather continued as we drove from one end of Slovenia to almost the other end, nearly to the Austrian boarder. As this is such a small country and the roads are very good we did this in an hour and a half.

It was time for something to eat and so we decided to stop off at Lake Bled on the way to our next base in Mojstrana in the Triglav National Park. Before we arrived in Bled we had heard how beautiful it is, but a photograph, no matter how good could never do justice to just how beautiful this part of the world is.

As we had spent the morning exploring the Cave at Skocjanska we decided to leave exploration of Bled until another day and went to find our new home away from home. Once we arrived the kids wanted to stay put and just enjoy the beauty of the Radovna Valley within Triglav National Park. Of course we loved  the wonderful autumn colours, but this was simply the icing on the cake when we found ourselves staying in a serene meadow with views of forest and mountains.

Pericnik Slap

The morning after we arrived the kids dug their heals in and said they weren't leaving, according to them nothing could be nicer than Psnak so they wanted to stay all day. And so we came to a compromise.

 Thanks to Julian remarkably feeling hungry some time after breakfast we agreed we would drive into Mojstrana for lunch supplies and to hire bikes but we would also have a visit to Pericnik Slap a waterfall only a few minutes down the road.

It turned out to be a wonderful plan as a visit to Pericnik Slap involved a lovely walk through the forest. You can get a terrific view from the carpark but with a little effort you can reach the falls and even walk behind them.

We lost track of the path at one point and found ourselves climbing a fairly steep hill, on hands and knees like the intrepid explorers that we are. At least this wild route gave us a good view of the path we missed so we slipped and slid our way back onto the track.

It amazes me how being out in mother nature gives you added energy and increases your bravery. Rob seemed a little surprised that I wanted to hike up to the waterfall with the kids and walk behind it but I was so enthusiastic about he good naturedly gave way and off we went.

 I was really proud of the kids as it wasn't the easiest walk but they did incredibly well and perhaps a little fear adds spice to the adventure.

 Back at our home base we enjoyed our lunch outside and then the kids took off for a biking adventure with Rob. I spent the afternoon blogging as I was so far behind, as usual, but out in the fresh air in the peace and quiet I wasn't complaining.

Vintgar Gorge

Hardly imagining that anything could be more beautiful the Pericnik Slap we were amazed the next morning to discover that Vintgar Gorge was equally spectacular and on a far greater scale.

Having read that the Gorge was 1.6km long I somehow forgot that this would mean a 3.2km round trip. But though the walk through the gorge took us a great deal of time we found the return journey to be far quicker, as we were not stopping to look at every frog, fish, interesting rock and spiders web that delighted us on the outward journey.

 The whole walk is along a series of wooden walkways and paths that are easy enough in sensible shoes. And while we had Pericnik to ourselves the day before, we found Vintgar to be packed with tourist bus loads of people.

But to quote the old adage, the road more travelled is more travelled for a reason, I wouldn't have wanted to miss it and we didn't mind sharing. Also we were in off season so I can only imagine how busy it is during the summer.

We couldn't believe our luck with the weather, here we were in October with even our host warning us that it wasn't the best time to visit and worrying for us that the weather wouldn't be good, and we had sunny blue skies.

Setting out from home that morning, taking an amazing scenic route through the valley floor travelling from Radnova to Vintgar we had planned to see Vintgar, Bled and Bohinj that day. Funny how we always plan three things and do one.

Having taken all morning with Vintgar we ate a quick lunch in the car and reassessed our plans. I put the plans on the table and offered Bohinj which I am sure would have meant more walking or a drive over to Skofja Loca for afternoon tea and a visit to a shop in Kranj where I knew there was a shop selling Waldorf school craft supplies and toys.

Afternoon tea and a toy shop was the winner and while this means we missed Bohinj it gives us a reason to return, if we didn't have enough of one already.

Skofja Loka

Most of our holiday up until reaching Croatia on 20 August had be carefully researched and planned. As my mother in law's health had given us quite a scare we left Australia without return tickets so we had the flexibility to come back at any time.

So here we were in October in Slovenia, Nada's health no longer such a concern and wherever we visited I found I had no idea of the history of the place, the people who lived there or the important sites to see. And so we found ourselves in Skofja Loka, just as we had in Split, Zagreb and Sibernik and a number of other places after, with no idea what to look for. And so we just wandered about and enjoyed ourselves.

Skofja Loka is a lovely medieval town, unsurprisingly with a castle on a hill which provided lovely views over the town and the surrounding hills and countryside. There was also a cobbled stone street of renovated houses that leads to a central square that look like many other lovely towns of its era across Europe.

Where Skofja Loka differs from these tourist towns is that if you walk off the main street it is more like a trip back in time to the back streets of a medieval town rather than the fancy face they like to show the public. In other words tourism hasn't totally taken over here, there is no Walt Disney feel to the place and you can see plenty of local people going about their daily lives with only the odd tourist in the street. It was quite refreshing.

The highlight of our visit was the view of the mid-fourteenth century Capuchin Bridge, which we could see from a little footbridge of a square with the towns church. I was interested to read later that this is the oldest bridge in central Europe.

Needless to say that the kids were thrilled with their visit to the toy shop and stocked up for their month long visit to family village in Croatia with craft supplies and a lovely wooden toy. I cant say we saw enough of Kranj to say much more than we found it very pretty.

Lesce Bled

How would any visit to Slovenia be complete without a visit to Lake Bled. We had a day left and decided to take it very easy and so devoted the whole day to our visit.

We firstly stopped at the Bled Castle to take in the view over the lake. As castles and museums were not on our agenda this day, we had row boats and ice creams in mind, we left as soon as we discovered that if you don't pay to go into the castle you can't see the view. We offered to buy a coffee in their café but it was not on so we were off, after a sneak peek over the wall.

The drive around the lake was even better on a sunny day than it had been a few days earlier on an overcast one. We decided not to stop at the first boat hire place but rather to continue around the lake to see what we could see first. And boy were we glad that we did.

On the far side of the lake we found fairy tale row boats shaped like swans and we couldn't ask for better. So we hired our boat and boatman Rob was soon cutting his way across the water towards the island with a brace of ducks paddling along madly behind. It seemed that they were asking "are you my mother" but it was more likely "are you silly tourists with bread to feed us?".

I took far too many photos on the journey, but there is nothing new in that, I have over 12000 now from this holiday and imagine my full time job in 2015 will be reducing them to a manageable number.

Arriving at the island we tied and the boat and crossed our fingers the kids didn't fall in, accidently on purpose perhaps, though they had life jackets on which made me very happy, and there were no mishaps.

At the base of the set of stair, we counted but I can'.t remember how many their were but it was a lot, I threw out loud hits to Rob that it is traditional for a groom to carry his bride up these steps. He seemed to miss the hint or perhaps after ten years marriage and two children he did not consider me to fit in the bride category and so I climbed the stairs unaided.

To recover from the exertion of the stairs I said that cake and elderflower cordial sounded good whilst the kids yelled "sladoled" (ice cream) and so we each got what sounded good to us and we enjoyed sitting on the terrace looking at the lovely view.

We popped our head into the church, quickly as the had the island practically to ourselves and we could see a boatman bringing a big group over. Here we all had a shot of ringing the church bell and all earned our good luck by getting the bell to ring three times from one pull of the bell rope.

We also climbed the clock tower which is very interesting as you can see all the mechanisms of the clock and their were interesting sayings written on the walls to read on your walk up.

We were on the island much longer than we expected and were pleased our swan boat hadn't swum home without us. We had soon reached the far shore again and head off for home as we knew that dinner was waiting for us.

Fabulous Farm Psnak  

When return to Slovenia it will be to the lovely Tanja and Farm Psnak. I had discovered the idea of staying at Tourist Farms when researching Slovenia and really liked idea of staying on a working farm. Having stayed at a brilliant farm in the Black Forest in Germany earlier in the year we knew the kids would love it and had been proven right with Farm Na Mejl in Pivka.

These tourist farms are so affordable we were able to book our stay at Psnak with breakfast and dinner included for the same price we have been paying for apartments alone for most of our holiday. This allowed us to take our time during the day knowing that when we arrived back home Tanja would have another delicious dinner ready to put on the table.

Every morning we were fed a breakfast large enough to get us through the whole day. We enjoyed an enormous spread including honey, meat products, delicious cheese and quark and even lovely cookies from their farm and eggs from their neighbours. Every night we would eagerly sit in the dining room waiting for our dinner, speculating on what each course might be. We were always given soup, salad, a main course with side dishes and a dessert and without exception all were delicious.

We've been seeing sunflowers since June - this was the last for the year

Rob's favourite was a mushroom soup, I really enjoyed the Jota (a sauerkraut , bean and kranski soup) and the delicious turkey fillet in a sour cream sauce. As much as they enjoyed the dinner, the highlight for the kids were the desserts. We had cake, pancakes, big bowls of ice cream and hot homemade pancakes (that Rob's family in Croatia call fritola) luckily not all at once. We had pancakes on the last day, Emma has seen them on a regular menu and hoped they were coming ad was so happy. I really appreciated that Tanji was genuinely happy that she had made the kids happy. 

With the perfect view, wonderful food and an incredibly kind an helpful host we could have been forgiven for staying put and doing nothing for the next three days but then we would have missed such wonderful days out.

But it was time to head back to Croatia and we turned again to our to do list and had a big decision to make. We had not seen Postojana Cave, though the kids had seen the touristy signs for it everywhere and were very keen to go on the little underground cave. On the other hand we were meeting friends from England at Split airport the next afternoon and had a long way to go. And so the decision was handed over to the kids who choose that we would drive back over to Postojana and then have a very long drive in the afternoon, without complaints, to Zadar.

I am pleased to report that we lived up to our side of the bargain and raced to Postojna in time for the 10am tour and the kids lived up to their side of the bargain as we drove all afternoon to get to Zadar in the early evening.

Postojna Cave

And so we made it to Postojna Cave after all and I must say it left me with mixed feelings. I believe as a tourist we have a responsibility to leave no footprint behind us in the places with visit and I fear that Postojna has suffered greatly at the hands of visitors. In fact Skocjan has been given World Heritage status whilst Postojna, while the larger and busier of the two, has been overlooked due to the impact of pollution and tourism. (please excuse the fact the photos don't match the text but left my camera in the car knowing the damage photos can do to caves)

There is something of a Disneyland feel to the place, and is an example of mass tourism at its worst. But the reason people come is because Postojna is one of those special places, one of natures treasures. We really did enjoy racing along underground on the train, Emma said she felt like she was visiting a vault at Gringotts Bank. But once you start seeing the beautiful flowstone formations looking blackened and sickly it puts a real dampener on your enthusiasm.

I  have since discovered that damage to the flowstones in the early caves was as a result of the blowing up of drums of petrol stored there during World War II, but the blackened formations and slimy green algae were not limited to this area alone. I found myself hoping and praying that they were showing us but a small part of a larger system that was left alone in its pristine state, but I couldn't bring myself to ask.

Once you hop off your electric train after a ten minute ride you are met by a guide and in our case a very good guide he was. Rob asked him if the train had been there long as he had visited the cave back in 1983, and couldn't remember the train. The guide good naturedly told Rob that the train has been there a lot longer than that and he had too, he claimed to remember Rob from his last visit and we all had a laugh.

Sadly for me most of my memories of this beautiful place were soured by my frustration at my fellow visitors who seemed hell bent on breaking the rules at every opportunity, touching the formations or taking photographs. The poor guide stopped the tour many times to tell people off. Many people seemed to think that the photo ban was to force you to purchase photos at the gift shop but in such a delicate ecosystem the bright light of a flash will encourage algae growth.

The stalagmites and stalactites in the Spaghetti Hall the Red and White Halls really were breathtaking and I think if you have not seen beautiful caves like these elsewhere it is well worth a visit but I really wish people would think about protecting natures beauty rather than thinking it is their right to photograph or touch something that has taken thousands of years in the making.

And so with a small blight on our otherwise delightful experience we had to get back in the car to head for Zadar in Croatia. I set the Tomtom on Predjama Castle, just for the photo opportunity and was the only one in our family bothered to get out of the car to take a peek, and a lovely peek it was too.

 

And so we left Slovenia, glad that it is so close to Croatia where we know we will be coming back to again and again in the future. I am glad we left some major visits undone, such as Ljubljana and Bohinj so we have excuses to return. We were extraordinarily lucky with the weather, our perfect autumn week could just as easily been rainy and miserable, but because we left our bookings until the last second we were able to plan around the weather and it worked so well for us, in fact it was one of our favourite weeks this year.