What

If you happen to follow us on instagram and that is how you are reading this it should be no surprise that we love it in Slovenia. This tiny little country wedged between Austria, Italy, Croatia and Hungary might only have 2 million people but we are convinced that they are all amazing.

After our introduction to Slovenia through Eva Bordon at her family winery was where we left off at the end of week 17. While with Eva, she mentioned a town on the coast that was hosting a wine festival the following weekend so we re-jigged our plans for the week to check it out.

Bled

Driving straight to Lake Bled on our second day instead of Trieste as originally planned, we quickly realised how small Slovenia is. After a mere hour and half we had driven almost to the Austrian border. The lake is as pretty as it looks in photos and the walk around it (with a few side trails) is worth doing. We walked up to the castle but continued on the free public walk instead of paying the crazy entrance. After a day of lakeside activities, Pat tried the traditional kremšnita, a vanilla custard pie, which basically looked like a lactose intolerant’s worst nightmare. Pat confirms that it was rich, but quite good. Not for anyone training for a marathon though.

Skofja Loka and Ljubljana

On Monday we headed to Ljubljana via the beautiful town of Skofja Loka. After checking out the tiny village centre we did a stunning loop trail hike up into the hills called the 3 castles walk. Happy that we had done some ‘nature things’, we headed onwards to Ljubljana. As we often do in cities, we visited specialty cafes and wine bars whilst there. Through this we met some very interesting people including an amazing Colombian cafe owner, a guitarist and wine expert who runs his own wine shop and a couple of high flying art dealers. Just like our very first night at Bordon wines, everyone we encountered was hospitable, warm and generous.

Ljubljana has been our first stop that is really really affordable to eat and drink out. Both of our mothers have been questioning how we are affording all of the wine/food/coffee that we post on instagram. We have to remind them that most of what we eat we aren’t posting. Almost all of our meals we eat are in the van, are wholly derived from ingredients purchased at Lidl where food is super cheap.

So when we do get to a city we try to visit one nice restaurant (Gostilnica 5-6 kg) , one good cafe (črno zrno) and one good wine bar (Wine Bar Šuklje). Nice staff at these places will often offer to write a list of all the other cool places to go around the city. Ljubljana is the first place we could really afford to go and try that list out. We also did the culture things. Saw the castle (view is amazing), checked out a museum and explored the old town, triple bridge, plazas and churches.

When Thursday came around we spent the morning in the old town for one last real coffee before heading back to the coast, and back into Italy for a day. On our way in we took a detour to get a replacement kitchen tap after our trusty plastic handle finally gave in after a few dodgy superglued repairs by us.

Trieste

Someone said to us in Ljubljana that Trieste was ‘an Austrian city by the sea. But they speak Italian.’ That is a pretty fair summation of this port town, both culturally and architecturally. A day was enough for us to get the vibe of the town, not quite Italian, nor Austro-Hungarian with a touch of Venetian to top it off. The impressive wedding-cake-style facades neatly sat in rows and we were free to explore the city in the sunshine.

Izola

Back in Slovenia and on its tiny 43km coastal riviera region, we arrived in Izola to our last stay near the sea for the foreseeable future. A few people had told us that the nearby town Piran had no soul due to over tourism but Izola was a ‘Slovenian secret’. As we walked toward the colourful Venetian style town we could see why. Admittedly it was golden hour so everything was bathed in warm sunset tones but it was atmospheric none the less. All the major food and wine festivals for this side of Slovenia are held in Izola and the annual Refošk festival is what brought us here for the weekend. We were the only one’s parked up at the aire on Friday afternoon but by 10am on Saturday all 15 parks were taken and we counted a further 20 campers along the marina, set up in the sun for the weekend. All Slovenian.

Saturday night at Refuscus Mundi was held in one of the oldest buildings in Izola (1490) which has been beautifully restored into an art and event space. Fittingly, a wine bar occupies the ground floor. What occurred then between the hours of 4pm and (at a guess) 11:30, are told to the best of our fractured recollection here. Suffice to say Sunday was a write off. An absolute write off.

Eastern Slovenia

Monday morning we headed off early to keep an appointment at another winery (we promise we don’t drink this much at home). I’ve written about the day that followed here but to summarise: we drank Heaps Good Wine (that is the name of the winery) from a New Zealand winemaker living in Slovenia, he kindly arranged for us to park up and stay at his neighbours place. His neighbour Aleš, makes high quality hand crafted lights and furniture from used wine barrels. The three of us ended up somehow at another winery hidden in a forest and drinking until late into the night, talking about science, philosophy and humanity over ridiculously good biodynamic wines. In contention for best day of the trip thus far. We’ve written a post about these guys here.

The rest of the week was spent between Maribor and Ptuj, the second largest and oldest cities of Slovenia respectively. We also for some unknown reason have found ourselves a little sick, almost as if our immune systems have been depleted by repeated toxins over a short period. Weird how that happens.

While in Maribor we still managed to do a few hikes, get a day of skiing in and explore the historic parts of town as well as cutting out drinking for the remainder of the week in the hope it would undo the untold damage done to our poor little livers.

Kurentovanje Carnival (Chasing away winter)

Our two weeks in Slovenia wrapped up with the largest cultural festival the country has to offer. The Kurent are something of a national symbol for Slovenians, the ancient figures are demons that go door to door in Ptuj scaring away the winter with throngs of deafening cowbells fastened to their waste. The Kurents don huge garbs of sheepskin and each wears a mask that is usually leather and individually decorated. The Festival is a gathering of all the Kurent in the country along with other traditional ethnographic characters such as fairies, bears and gypsies. Pat has written a whole post about it here but after spending almost 5 hours at, in and around the parade, we can happily say our ears are ringing (possibly deafened?) and Spring is officially on its way.