Author: simon

The same day!

Lake Bohini

Savica Waterfall

Only 120m climb to see them

Vogel

Only a 1000m climb (luckily in a cable car)

Stunning location, so just lots of pictures.

When your ticket says your entry time is 09.12 it means it – try at 09.11 and no entry. So a bit of confusion at the start.

But then it made total sense as you’re spread out down the one-way walkway.

Bit of (quite a lot of) a climb at the end to a very welcome coffee shop.

And a gentle 30 minute walk back – fantastic.

Off to the world famous, and allegedly super busy Lake Bled. It’s really not far – nothing is in Slovenia. Liked a traffic sign that said go left for Italy and right for Austria.

Stopped off at Lola Castle on the way – diverting enough.

And then to Bled. Busy but not super crazy.

Improved weather and an introductory walking tour made a difference. Nina Regina was our wonderfully named guide. So we got some history, some context and a sense of smallness – Ljubljana is smaller than St Albans!

A couple of days is perfectly adequate, especially staying so central.

According to my adding up, I think Slovenia might be my 46th country visited. No idea what that means. Anyway now in Ljubljana for a couple of days (which is probably enough – it’s pretty small).

Staying in a large apartment slap bang in the middle which is terrific.

Here’s the view from our window

And some wandering about

Up to the castle. Got some sense of a tiny country in the middle of Europe fighting its bigger neighbours (and itself sometimes) – basically it’s got a lot of history!

Heading off to Slovenia, but on the way stopped at this amazing castle built into the cliffs.

You can google it for historical stuff, but did like the anecdote about the 15th-century robber-baron Erazem Lueger who was besieged and, instead of starving, taunted his attackers by sending them gifts of fresh cherries, using secret tunnels to smuggle supplies. The tunnels are still there.

I think there might be just a touch of “jaded traveller” syndrome here. Istria is fine, with a few diverting things to see, but nothing in the ” wowee” category. We’ve probably been here for a couple of days longer than necessary and need to move on.

But some early reflections

Food is generally very high standard – we’ve been to many places where it’s been much worse

No-one outside Croatia speaks Croatian, so the locals are all multilingual, especially English

I think in Croatian Scrabble, j would only be worth 1 point – it gets in everywhere

Paying for parking is widespread – we’ve hardly been anywhere where it’s free

Anyway, mountain towns (with views)

Motovun

And then on Sunday found Vrsar up the coast which was just what we were looking for, ie

• Beautiful coastal walks
• Comfy seats in the shade to sit and read
• Lots of clean loos

What more do you need???

And our final favourite restaurant – and as good a view from dinner as we’ve ever had

Continuing our explorations, tried Pula with its Colosseum – pretty amazing.

That was a great start, but the rest of Pula was a bit so-so with nowhere to walk by the sea. Ended up cutting and running to Fazana Beach with a massive campsite but nice places to sit.

And then decided to give Rovinj another chance which was much better although still very busy.

According to my newspaper, Rovinj is described as being “impossibly picturesque “. Hmmm – it’s ok but that sounds a bit like hyperbole to us.

Always a bad sign …

And yes, it was pretty busy and no standout monuments so we left after a couple of hours and hung out at our local beach.

Day was completely turned around by dinner which I had sort of booked by mistake – website was only in Croatian and I thought I had aborted before the end but I hadn’t which was great.

Enjoyed the fish and the views

For a few days, the weather forecast was for thunderstorms, flooding, travel disruption (and probably raining frogs and pestilence as well!).

So expectations were low – getting out for a brief walk would be regarded as a positive and we even resorted to “fond” memories of previous days when we were confined to barracks. (Granada, Sicily, Tenerife and Madeira came to mind).

But it was much much better than that, although fun in the morning.

But then armed with much wet weather gear we headed out to Porec, about 40 minutes up the coast.

Much of it from the 4th and 5th Centuries so quite old.

Congratulated ourselves on timing lunch during a showery interlude

And being smug thinking we had cracked it when the heavens opened again when we were only 5 minutes from the car park so fond memories of sheltering in the bus station.

Didn’t get wet from above but feet sodden from the floods.

Lovely evening in Valle