So it begins

Would you like a receipt with that?

Published Date : October 16, 2004

Boy do they love their receipts here.  They give you receipts for everything in this country: for a bus trip, a stick of gum, entry into tourist sites, I even got a receipt to say that I got my receipt at one place ��  By the end of each day I have a stack of papers an inch thick. 

 I was up early this morning to catch the 0930 train to Divaca.  It cost 1876SIT for a return ticket and took about an hour and a half to make the 80km journey.  My final destination was the ŠkocjanCaves.  There are a couple of popular caves in the Karst region, Postojna and Škocjan are the major ones, Škocjan is the smaller and slightly more difficult to get to.  It was about a half hour hike to the caves from the Divaca train station, but it’s usually recommended that you give yourself 45 minutes to make the trek.  The journey is very well signed and takes you through tiny Slovenian villages and woodlands, a great intro to the countryside.  Unfortunately, the weather didn’t co-operate for me.  It was pouring when I left the hostel, but it had cleared up while I was on the train.  I thought I would be safe, but not five minutes into the walk from Divaca, the heavens opened up.  I’m kind of glad it stormed though – walking around a mist filled sinkhole in the midst of a thunderstorm is a rather unique experience.

A two-hour guided tour of the caves cost 1300SIT (student price).  Being the off-season, there are only 3 tours a day in October, but it was still very busy with tour groups and school classes.  There was a bit of confusion at the start of the tour, mostly because they made the announcement in Slovene, so myself and three Aussie guys were left standing around wondering if we were supposed to be joining everyone else.  We eventually realised that yes that was our group that just left, so after running to catch up, we settled in to enjoy the tour which was conducted in English.  I’m trying to think of the best way to describe the caves, but nothing will really do them justice.  Spectacular. Superb.  Stunning.  We weren’t allowed to take any photos in the caves, but that wasn’t about to stop us.  I ended up with several blurry images, but photos wouldn’t have been able to do the caves justice anyway.  They just can’t capture the scale of the place.  Definitely worth the visit.

After the tour, the Aussie guys and I headed to a nearby viewpoint to see a church precariously placed on the edge of the sinkhole.  With the sun just peaking through the clouds, it was a fantastic view.  The guys had to get going, but I wanted to hike the 2km trail around the sinkhole so we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways.  I didn’t realise at the start that the trail was only 2km, I just had the brochure that recommended taking 2 hours to do the walk.   It took me just over a half hour, meaning I had just missed the earlier 1545 train back to Ljubljana and now had to wait until 1800 for the next one.  The skies opened up again on my way back to the train station, but it cleared up once I got there, so I had some nice weather to wait in.  With time to kill, I went on a bit of a stroll around Divaca, but there’s really nothing there, so I spent most of the time soaking up some rays at the train station.

The train finally arrived, another hour and half trip back to Ljubljana and a sucessful day draws to a close.

These boots were made for walking

Published Date : October 17, 2004

A bit of a sleep-in today – relatively speaking.  I was up at about 9am, to catch the 10am bus to Bled in the Julian Alps.  It’s about 40km from Ljubljana and took just under an hour and a half.  It cost me 2800SIT return.  There’s a train there as well, but it stops in Lesce which is about 6km away, so the bus suited me just fine!

Anyway, Bled.  It’s a pretty awesome little village on a lake with a 1000-year old castle on a hill and a monastery on an island in the middle of the lake.  The castle was founded in 1004 and it’s the oldest in Slovenia.  It was about a 15-minute hike up to the castle and it cost 1000SIT to get in.  The views are fantastic!  The weather co-operated by clearing up just as we pulled into the bus station.  So when I reached the castle I was rewarded with beautiful blue skies and snow-capped peaks against the magnificent reds, oranges, and golds of early Autumn.  Fabulous!   There’s also a museum and a restaurant in the castle, so you could spend quite a while up there if you wanted.  I only spent about half an hour there though – I had hiking to do!

My next objective was to walk around Lake Bled.  It’s a really well marked and very popular path that took me about an hour with plenty of photo stops along the way.  I made a quick stop in at Tourist Info to find out how to get to Vintgar Gorge.  Apparently there’s a bus, but I decided to make the 10km roundtrip on foot instead.  The start of the gorge is 4km NW of Bled and it’s another very well-signed walk.  Bad news:  it’s uphill the entire way, except for the last 200m or so.  To reward myself for the effort of getting there I stopped for a bit of lunch at Restavracija Vintgar where I had the best spaghetti in the world.  Seriously, it was the best spaghetti I’ve ever tasted.  Yummy.

On to the start of the gorge and it was a 500SIT student entry fee.  The gorge is 1.6km of boardwalks built onto the cliffs.  Good news:  the gorge is all downhill.  With all the rain lately, the water levels were ridiculously high, but the water was still a gorgeous emerald green which looked fantastic among all the gold/red of the turning trees.  It was a perfect day for the walk.

Reaching the end of the gorge, there’s the option of continuing downstream, but I opted for common sense and turned off at the huge sign reading BLED ->  The walk back to Bled involved about 1km of uphill, then 3km of downhill through the towns of Zatsip and Podhom.  There is another route back that goes through St Catharine’s, but some of the road signs were missing/damaged and I didn’t want to chance getting lost.

I’ve got to mention the altars.  All over Bled and the surrounding area, there are Roman Catholic altars everwhere.  In the middle of streets, popping out of nowhere in Vintgar gorge, in the middle of a cow pasture…they’re everywhere.  Definitely adds to the character of the area.

I got back into Bled with about an hour to kill before the bus back to Ljubljana, so I made the most of the natural setting and just sat on a bench on the edge of the lake watching the ducks and fisherman.  Great way to end the day