Longing for a Return to Summer and Traveling

While summer has long past, if it ever really arrived in London, the talk of snow later this week made it seem like a good time to revisit our summer holiday to Slovenia. For a second straight year we spent our primary summer break in the former Yugoslavia. While Slovenia has more of a western European feel than many of its Balkan neighbors, it retains the charms of a country still largely undiscovered by the average holiday maker. Add to this a geography that is often, and rightfully so in our opinion, described as Europe in miniature. What makes it even more impressive is that such diverse landscape and culture is packed into a country roughly the size of New Jersey with a population barely breaking two million.

Our eight days/seven nights consisted of stays at two tourist farms separated by all of a 2 1/2 hours but in completely different settings. Our first four nights were spent on a farm in Triglav National Park, which is nestled within the Julian Alps in the northwest of the country. From this base we visited Lake Bled and Lake Bohinj, hiked to several waterfalls and walked along the amazing Vintgar Gorge just outside Bled.

Vintgar Gorge

Lake Bohinj

Our final three nights were in the Karst region in the southwest staying on a farm/vineyard. We spent a day exploring the Primorska wine region, including an excellent tour/tasting at Simcic, another day relaxing along the Adriatic in picturesque Piran and our final day at the Skocjan caves. On top of all this we found the time to meet a number of really friendly people, eat excessively and drink plenty of wine. Hopefully the pictures can do the trip and this fantastic little country some justice.

Piran

While it isn't possible to pick favorites between the huge variety of place we've visited over the past 2+ years, Slovenia is definitely somewhere we hope to return to one day and is definitely near the top of the list of our favorite trips.

- Jason