Slovenia Travel Diary: a 'Hidden' Gem of Europe

Slovenia truly is a gem. That can't be disputed! What could be disputed is whether or not this small European country is a hidden gem or not. When people asked where I was going on holiday to, I was met with a lot of "where's that?" when I said Slovenia. However, Slovenia certainly doesn't feel like a secret for those 'in the know'. From the tourism board, you can see that the bulk of the visitors are from nearby/neighbouring Italy, Austria and Germany but with visitor numbers on the rise in general.

Ljubljana

In this post I will be reliving my trip (lucky me!) through pictures and hopefully giving you a taste of what this wonderful country has to offer. I'll split up the post as I did with our trip, in 3 parts: Mountains (Triglav National Park), Coast (Piran) and City (Ljubljana).

Mountains

This was the longest part of our trip and definitely the part I was most looking forward to. That's just a reflection of my character and personal interests - I love mountains, lakes, rivers arguably more than beaches/coastline. Triglav National Park certainly does the trick for curing any nature cravings with its endless supply of water features, each with stunningly clear water of different shades. In the mornings the air felt fresh but being summer, we also were lucky with long sunny and warm (hot) days!

Perfect turquoise water of Lake Bled

We stayed at Lake Bohinj, just a short walk from the lake shore, which was perfect. I talk more about specific sights to see at and around Lake Bohinj here, as well as the rest of the national park (Triglav) here.

Coast

Slovenia has coastline?! Yes, 46 km of it! We stayed in the small town of Piran and enjoyed the Italian food and cocktails at a few of the many seaside restaurants dotted along this peninsula. Aside from that, we didn't find too much to do here (it is a small town after all) so 2 nights was about right for us. The only other thing I would warn you of is the mosquitos! I didn't get bitten at all in the mountains but 2 nights in Piran was enough to litter my limbs with bites - fab when you are allergic to mosquito bites!

City

Ljubljana (lyoo-BLYAH-nah) is the capital city of Slovenia and one of the harder ones to pronounce! Slovenia has been on my radar for quite a while now so I feel like I've mastered it but it took quite some time! We had 3 nights here to finish off the trip and overall impressions were that it was just a super cute capital city. Just as an example, on our last evening we went for a stroll after dinner and stumbled across a wine festival where it was 1 euro for a glass of wine from one of the stands - each representing a different winery from the country.

To be honest, it is so small that there aren't a huge number of actual sights and being on a budget limited the length of time we could spend in the cute riverside cafes eating and drinking so if you're the same then I don't think you need more than 1 or 2 days here. This meant that we actually ended up doing a few day trips with our time...

Day Trips

In between the coast and Ljubljana is the Postojna caves and Predjama castle. Caves aren't really my thing (expensive and they make me feel a bit claustrophobic) but we checked out the castle which was really cool and a popular sight for tourists!

On our last day we had a late flight so a full day to explore a new area of the country. I had been planning on checking out Ptuj (p-too-ee) in the east but didn't really fancy the 3 hour round trip so instead we ventured to Kamnik and the Kamniska Bistrica region. I think I had just been craving nature again so was happy to get back to this before flying home!

All in all I'm happy with the structure of our 10 day trip, but I will be doing a post with more logistic information and itineraries for different lengths of time so if this has inspired you then do keep an eye out for that one!

As always, check out my Instagram for (many) more pictures. I couldn't help myself with Slovenia! I also storied the trip which is saved on my highlights.