Slovenia

After a late, swelteringly hot 8-hour train ride some nights ago from Budapest, a very kind couple drove me to the rental car office in Ljubljana, Slovenia's capital. I drove to Skofja Loka, a small town about 25 minutes away. Igor, my strapping host at Hotel Garni Paleta, welcomed with me at 11 p.m. with a smile and "medici," "alcoholic Red Bull," an "energy drink with alcohol that goes straight to your blood, with honey for energy." (Imagine that with a Slavic accent, if you can.)

Breakfast each morning consisted of breads with many topping options and a hard-boiled egg ready at my seat, along with offers of yogurt and muesli. Igor also brought a slice of a different "cake" each morning, "cake" in parentheses because they were not dessert cakes, but swirled sweet cakes with nuts, in one, "potica orehova," and tarragon in the other, "potica pehtranova." After my first breakfast and time with Igor and maps planning my time in Slovenia, he took me on a tour of part of his home. Skofja Loka ("SKOFE-yuh LOKE-a") is a small, old town. 

Igor's home, originally his grandfather's, backs up to the small river. The basement, which is the only part of the house that survived a fire many years ago, is 600 years old, and the rest of the house is 300. Igor took me down to his garden, on a terrace above the river (you can see it below center in the first photo, below), and he picked a couple of tomatoes for me. 

In addition to my delicious energy shot and breakfasts with Igor chatting with me from the small kitchenette, one of my favorite moments in the town was swimming in the river on a hot afternoon, before heading into Ljubljana ("LYOU-blee-YAH-na") for the evening. 

In Ljubljana I enjoyed a hike up to the castle, a handful of distinctive bridges (including the cobbler's bridge, the triple bridge, the butcher's bridge, and the dragon bridge), and the happy vibe of the city. I ended up having dinner with an Italian man, Roberto, who was in town on business, and we picked each other's brains for travel suggestions in Europe and America. Following are a variety of photos--graffiti, bridges, castle, etc.--from Ljubljana.

You know when you're driving almost exclusively in first and second gears you're either in heavy traffic or going somewhere really cool. I've done both on this trip, but one of the highlights of my journey thus far was driving over Vrsic ("vir-SEH-chee," if I've got it right) Pass, 1611 meters high (or more than 50 hairpin turns, however you prefer to measure), in the Julian Alps, and then hiking for a couple of hours to get some stunning views. While on one of the hikes I shared an interesting moment. As I walked around one bend with a majestic, but very close, view, there were five people, spread out a bit, silently staring at the view. I joined them. No one moved, and no one broke the silence for perhaps 10 minutes. Twice I wiped a tear from my eye, taken by the beauty, but also taken by this shared moment. In fact I became as much focused on them as I was on the view--one man broke into a silent sob, and two others also wiped tears. A couple with a babbling child walked around the bend and broke the silence, and finally a couple of us stepped away and moved on.

Notice the people on the path in this next one...

After Vrsic, I drove down through the Soca River Valley. The Soca ("SO-cha") River is a beautiful, very clear, light turquoise (I can't seem to find a straightforward and consistent explanation for the color with a short search). I've read that it is among only a few rivers in the world that holds this color through its journey. (I'm including a photo I found online of the river farther downstream, so you can see the color.) One of the Chronicles of Narnia movies was filmed in this area because of its beauty. I stayed the night in a lovely apartment in Kobarid, a small town toward the base of the mountains with a focus on outdoor sports, particularly whitewater rafting, and ties to Ernest Hemingway, who collected wounded in an ambulance during a 1917 battle between Austro-Hungarians and Italians. Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms is based on that battle. On a much lighter side, I was treated to a delicious dinner by a Danish couple, Niels and Birgitte, who are a photojournalist and a project director at LEGO, respectively. 

It was pouring rain as I got farther down the valley the next morning, but it's worth Googling the Soca River to see photos further on down.

I headed south to Skocjan ("SHKOHTS-yahn") Caves. I opted for the shorter, self-guided tour through the "small" caves. I can't imagine what the big caves are like (which travel writer Rick Steves describes like a sci-fi movie with a "mighty river crashing through the bottom"). 

To give you a sense of scale in the photo below, there are a few people on a trail just below center, whom even with a strain you might not be able to spot.

Then down to Piran ("peer-ON"), a small city on Slovenia's very small patch of coastline between Italy and Croatia, with a view of the Italian city of Trieste on the drive along the coast. I braved narrow wooden stairs up and up to a church tower to get a view of the city. There were quite a few Muslims touring in Piran, women in various types of hijab. It was a bizarre contrast to men walking through the streets in speedos and a woman here and there sunning topless. A hazelnut ice cream cone in Piran tided me over before inching, in first gear, toward the Croatian border.

The rest of the photos were taken in Piran.