Well seeing as I'm grounded in the US due to a knee injury (from dancing and having too much fun at my friend's wedding) I might as well get caught up on the blog.
My parents flew over to Austria with me in September so that we could have a nice beginning-of-fall vacation in Slovenia. Plus, they've been to Europe in the winter, spring and summer, so it was about time for a fall visit. It was also great to have the extra hands with luggage and excess baggage fees weren't an issue! After a day of recovery from traveling we headed down to Ljubljana to start our trip.
Ljubljana is the capitol of Slovenia, so we figured it would be a must-see, and while it's a beautiful city and full of museums, it wasn't anything out of the ordinary. It's quite similar to many Austrian cities, which isn't too surprising, considering it was built by the Habsburg's. It does have some Italian (Venitian) flares in the bridges and the streets lining the river, but it also has a big hill in the middle of town with a castle on top (Salzburg anyone?) and tons of red tiled roofs (just like Graz). After a day of wandering the city and testing out all my fancy new camera settings we were ready to move on. The next day we went up into the park on the other side of town from the old city and spent the day hiking around the hills and towns above Ljubljana. We saw yet another similarity between Slovenia and Austria while hiking- on top of every hill there's a restaurant to stop for a drink, a snack or a large hearty meal. We were able to refuel before our walk down with a typical Slovenian barley soup and some tasty desserts. The soup was so thick and filling that both mom and I couldn't finish it, but it certainly hit the spot for the brisk fall day! Before we walked back into the city we went to the zoo, which also had some very steep hiking paths.
The next day we got our rental car and headed out of the city towards the coast. On our way down to the coast we stopped at a regional park and took a tour of some very cool caves. The cave tour took quite a while because it's in an extensive cave system carved out by and underground river. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures in the caves (just at the very end), and unlike some other Americans on the tour I chose to follow the rules and just admire the beautiful rock formations. At the end of the cave tour there was a steep set of stairs to get out of the canyon and back up to the starting point, so despite being a travel day we did get some walking in.
I say it was a travel day, but from Ljubljana to Piran, on the coast, was maybe 100 km. Our Renault wagon was pretty comfortable, dad had a good time driving 130 kph on the highway, the GPS was working (the only day on the trip), and the scenery was great despite the clouds. Piran is a rather small old town on Slovenia's tiny 30 km coastline, and there's extremely limited parking. I had booked a vacation apartment there with a large terrace, and it said there was free parking. Once we had met our landlady (who spoke Slovenian, Italian and German, but no English), and dropped our luggage at the apartment we discovered that the free parking was at her friend's house on top of the bluff outside the city walls. We all piled in the car, drove up to the very top of the hill, parked and then walked on a very old cobblestone road back to the apartment. The apartment was in a very old building, it was all crooked walls and slanting floors, but it was recently remodeled, very clean, and we had 2 terraces. One small terrace was on the same level as the apartment, and the second was on the rooftop with a large covered lounge area, or a spot to soak up some sun. Our sea view was a bit of a joke- we could see a narrow strip of water between two taller buildings, and when it was sunny we could even see Croatia. Still, it was a very nice comfortable apartment, and conveniently located for EVERYTHING in Piran. Although, as it's a small town on a peninsula there really wouldn't be an inconvenient place.
Being a small town there's not a lot to Piran, but what there is is beautiful. It was built by Italians, which is clear from the architecture and feel of the town, and since it's right on the Adriatic there's a big sea salt and fishing trade going on, along with all the tourism dollars. We didn't eat at any of the seafood restaurants right on the sea, because they're all for the tourists and have pretty high prices, so we looked elsewhere for restaurants. The first night there we went to a little place down the street from our apartment, and funnily enough we met 4 Austrians who live near Baden. They were really chatty, but my poor parents don't speak German, so all the time that we were talking they were just sitting there smiling. My dinner that night was the most massive pile of Cevapacici (sausage type things) and potato croquettes I've ever seen... we laughed when the waiter brought it out, and I considered feeding the leftovers to a stray cat who was hanging around the restaurant.
The next day we basically gave ourselves a walking tour of Piran, aided by a map from the tourist office that marked all the "must see" spots. I took tons of pictures, and they're all posted, but have yet to be captioned. That afternoon we went swimming in the Adriatic. The temperature was good, but I could not handle the waves. It was really choppy, and the waves were coming/going in 3 directions, which made it really hard to swim much at all, and there was no wading because the bottom was rocks covered in muscles. That evening we had delicious, simple dinner up on our terrace and watched a big thunder storm roll in to the coast.
I had some work to do for school (lessons to plan and emails to send), so I spent the next morning working on the roof terrace while my parents walked up the shore to the next town. I also got some sunbathing in, and when they got back we went for a swim and then did some window shopping before dinner.
The day we got the car and headed north toward our next destination- Lake Bled. On the way up there we wanted to drive some of the wine roads of Slovenia, and on one of those roads we actually went through Italy as well. The wine area that we visited is in a range of enormous rolling hills, so the drive was full of incredible views of the surrounding valleys of orchards and vineyards. We stopped in two towns- one to take pictures, and one to buy wine. From the wine region we headed north on progressively curvier narrower higher roads. At one point we had the choice of continuing on the crazy local highway, which went around the National Park and added quite a lot of kilometers to our trip, or take the shortcut more direct mountain road up and over a pass towards Lake Bled. We decided to take the mountain road, which actually turned out to be quite a good choice. There was less traffic, incredible views, and in some spots the road was actually wider and better than the 'highway' had been. I think dad had a good time driving, and we really did quite a bit of driving through the mountains on this trip!
On our way to Bled we noticed that the rivers in northern Slovenia were all a muddy brown color, and they were really roaring through the canyons. As we got close to Bled we stopped to watch two kayakers paddle across the pounding river, get out and scout the rapids they were going to paddle, and then go through the rapids. A few days later we drove past the same spot of river, it was totally flat, a pretty blue/green and it looked so different that dad didn't believe that we had been there before. It turns out this area had rain for the past 3 days, so it was all flowing out of the mountains and down into the rivers. We managed to get around pretty well without the GPS (with maps that we had bought and picked up along the way), but it was a bit of a challenge to find the apartment we'd rented. Once we found it and got in touch with our host she told us that we had been upgraded. She put us in the larger apartment, which had two bedrooms and was probably the most comfortable place we stayed on our trip (the only downside- there was no terrace).
We didn't do much exploring that night, we just went out for a late dinner where I had the hottest soup and risotto of my life (I had blisters on my lip the next day). The next day, despite the constant rain, we went up to the castle overlooking Lake Bled and the town of Bled, and then walked around the lake. Even though it was cloudy and raining it was a really beautiful landscape, so I kept stopping to take pictures. We also hiked up a 'trail' to an overlook. The view was great, but the trail was pretty much a washout point full of fist sized stones, and then to get to the overlook we had to do some bouldering. We decided to head back down the way we'd come up instead of continuing on the trail to the next viewing point, which was even higher. After a hot lunch and finishing our walk around the lake we decided to go walk the Vintgar gorge.
While walking the gorge I thought it was a bit ironic- here we had spent all morning and the early afternoon walking through the rain, and when it stopped raining we went to walk along a gorge and get sprayed by the river and dripped on by the mountains on either side- the theme of the day was certainly wet. Despite the wet the gorge was beautiful, a really incredible work of nature. I couldn't stop taking pictures there either. Due to the rain the water was running higher and faster than normal, and the constant noise made talking impossible. When we got back to town we went down to 'the' place to try Cream Cake- a local delicacy. The place that claims to have originated cream cake (The Hotel Park) is an incredibly kitsch restaurant- everything in it is purple, except for the golden swans. Cream cake is like pastry cream with whipped cream layered on top, sandwiched between a flaky pastry. It was good- but their other desserts looked better- it needed more chocolate or fruit. After dessert we had dinner at the apartment and spent a quiet, dry night in, drinking our wine and having an uno tournament with my mini uno cards.
The next day was sunny, so we decided that we'd go to Bovec and take the 30 min gondola ride to the top of the highest ski area in Slovenia. To get there we drove along the northern edge of the National Park, up into what's probably the highest pass with some of the most incredible views- and also 50 switchback turns (the switchbacks are numbered). On the way down to Bovec we drove along the Soca river, which was an incredible whiteish blue-green color.
I should say that this was a day of almost getting what we wanted. Dad really wanted to get to the top of the mountain, but when we got to Bovec we learned that the guide book was wrong and the gondola wasn't open on Fridays in September. So we got some lunch walked around town, and then decided to drive on down the river. Mom and I really wanted to walk along the Soca river, because it's pretty, and it's also a big rafting/kayaking river so we thought that would be fun to watch - plus walking along a river there wouldn't be too many steep climbs or descents like we'd been doing. We pulled off at a spot where a trail started, and on the map it looked like it went right along the river. It did go along the river, however it was a steady downhill, and the river was a long ways below us in the canyon- we never got to the bottom, we got fed up with the trail surface and not having a view of anything after 45 minutes of going down. Then at dinner that night mom wanted to try buckwheat porridge, which is a specialty of Slovenia, but the restaurant was all out. The one thing that we did accomplish was that we went to one of the Slovenian lace making villages, and mom was able to buy some very pretty hand made lace. We also drove around the entire National Park that day.
On our last day in Slovenia we went to Lake Bohinj (which we pronounced in about 20 different ways), and spent the morning walking one side of the lake. Then we went up the gondola to the top of one of the mountains by the lake- so dad got to take a gondola ride and go hiking on top of a mountain. We went back through another valley, and stopped in a small town for the biggest 'small' pizza I've ever seen. They were really good, but it was way too much to eat at once (except dad somehow managed to eat all of his).
The next day we drove back to Ljubljana to return the car and catch the train back to Austria. I'll write about my first week of school, the trip back to the US for my friend Kate's wedding and injury later.
*I haven't written too much about the food, but there are pictures of it on
Smugmug. Most of the food we had was heavily influenced by Austrian and Italian cuisine, but they've added their own regional flare to it. I haven't gotten around to captioning the pictures yet, that'll probably happen this week too.
