Catch up #1: Slovenia

Good evening! Sarah here, communicating from a farmyard somewhere in Provence. Really! Tonight our van finds itself at Camping le moulin de cost, where we are pitched next to a pretty stream and currently in the campsite restaurant - which is the yard directly next to the farmhouse, ie the farmyard! Rural living at its best.

Anyway, more about that later. This is the first in a series of catch-up posts filling you in on our journey over the last 10 days or so. It's been, well, pretty great to be honest, so to sum it all up will take a long time, therefore we'll just do a few highlights of each. First up, Slovenia!

After coming down from the Grossglockner we went through the Karawanke tunnel into Slovenia and pitched up for the night at Bled, right on the shores of the lake. No bleeding in sight but just beautiful, clear, blue lake water which we used for swimming, boating and lakeside strolling. That was a very HOT and sticky day and we were very hungry after our arrival, so we went straight to the pizzeria recommended to us by the campsite's receptionist and had a very yummy dinner. Our first experience of Slovenian Grapefruit Beer was absolutely delicious and we were hooked!

Next day was spent lolling by the lake and we extended our stay a night longer than planned as it was so beautiful. Anthony rowed me around the lake in a boat which was fab, and we continued our Magnum Survey by eating some on the lake shore. Note: if only we knew then what we know now about the increase in Magnum prices as you head west across Europe! That night we probably cooked at camp (can't remember) and readied ourselves for a move across the country in the morning.

From Bled we headed to Camping Menina with an afternoon's rafting on the Savinja river planned. However, on arrival we were informed that since it hadn't rained for 2 weeks, the rivers were dry and there was no rafting to be had. Anthony was quite upset about this so to make up for it we hired bikes and got some exercise another way: cycling through pretty local villages until an ENORMOUS storm hit, including rain, hail, strong winds and some very impressive lightning. After a sodden and freezing cycle ride home we jumped straight into hot showers and by the time we got out of them, the storm had passed and it was sunny again! That was the last time we had the internet till now and so we wrote our Grossglockner update that evening.

Next day we had a city-fix in Ljubljana, Slovenia's capital. A really pleasant city on the river, Ljubljana served us well as it was hot and sunny, easy to navigate and had an excellent laundry where we did a ton of washing! It was great to be in a city again and we had some breakfast at a market square cafe while waiting for the laundry, and after that we hiked up to the castle and looked around there. Highly recommended for the views and the castle itself, if you are ever in Ljubljana. We stocked up on market veg for our planned dinner of couscous and stuffed peppers, and then planned our afternoon drive to Italy, via Slovenia's most famous caves at Skocjan, which were WELL worth the visit. If you like caves, this is the place to go! They have 20km of caves under there but just 2km are open to visitors, and we took an underground train deep into that part of caves and then had an hour's walking tour. It was really excellent, so much to see and such beautiful formations. Well worth the stop.

Finally we made it to Italy where we pitched up and listened to our first sounds of cicadas, this is a sound which has accompanied us on our journey ever since then. Our campsite was San Barcoleo or something like that, right out on the little part of Italy just next to Slovenia and before Trieste. It was a most strange campsite with people who seemed like they'd lived their whole lives there, Anthony commented it was like the setting for a horror movie! Luckily we did nothing more scary than muck out the van, and have a brief chat to our late-arriving German neighbours just before the next storm hit. 

I will hand over to Anthony for his description of the 'mad dash' across Italy. Keep an eye out for the next of our catch-up series!


EXTRA EXTRA EXTRA - Videos! Below is a video of our arrival at the Italian Campsite. We have just booked in and are retuning to our van to find out camping spot. Enjoy.