Two Weeks In The Beautiful Julian Alps Of Slovenia

Dober dan! We are writing to you from Croatia, after having spent two wonderful weeks in the small mountain town of Podbrdo, Slovenia, exploring the area, going on lots of hikes, and discovering more of the amazing natural beauty that Slovenia has to offer.

Podbrdo is a very small town in the Municipality of Tolmin, nestled in between the Slovenian mountains, in the Julian Alps mountain range. It’s totally off the beaten track, and we picked it because we found a nice Airbnb for a good price. It was a beautiful place to explore the mountains. Headed one direction, we were about 30-45 minutes by car to beautiful places like the Soca Valley and Tolmin (the distances were short, but the drives weren’t fast because they were along narrow twisty mountain roads). To get to Lake Bled or Lake Bohinj—which are the main tourist draws of the area—we drove about 100 meters to a train station and onto a car train that took us through Slovenia’s longest tunnel (6.3 kilometers) to the other side of the mountain where we were an easy 10 to 20 minute drive from most of the attractions in the area. That’s right—another car-ferrying-train! The ride was about 10 minutes through the mountain versus driving an hour over the top. (But, despite riding the train a half dozen times and staying in an Airbnb where we could see the train pass right by every hour, we failed to take a picture of it….)

During our two weeks in this part of Slovenia, these are some of the things we did, all of which we would recommend:

• We explored a nearby hiking trail and looked for bugs under rocks and stumps. The kids have really been having fun looking for little critters and they were thrilled to find a bunch of critters, including a scorpion! (Don’t worry, we later learned that Slovenian scorpions aren’t very poisonous!)

• We visited Lake Bled a few times. That was the one place in the area where tour buses rolled in. It’s an absolutely beautiful lake, with transparent greenish turquoise waters, with a little island and church in the middle and a castle on a hill overlooking it all. The water is actually the color you see in the pictures, which is hard to believe until you see it in person. One rainy day there we enjoyed exploring Bled castle and taking in the amazing views from up high, as well as hanging out by the lake where the kids threw some pebbles into the lake and watched lots of baby ducklings. On another (sunny day) we had a great beach day there, and enjoyed swimming in the incredible water. We also later went to a temporary spider exhibit and saw many huge tarantulas (Joe even held one, which Valentina petted). As a side note: While we thought Lake Bled was beautiful, it was also the most touristed and expensive place we visited in the area and we were glad we weren’t actually staying there.

• We did a 4km roundtrip hike to Slap Kozjak, a stunning waterfall inside a cave. The hike started on a grassy meadow and then went through the forest, following a beautiful creek the entire way. At the end, you had to cross the creek a few times on wooden planks and then climb up some steps and rocks to get onto a wooden walkway to see the waterfall from above. It was truly stunning! (Stay tuned for a picture of the waterfall in the Top 10 Images post…)

• We saw a rally car race! We saw some flyers for the event, which was happening near us and coincided with our stay. We wrote the organizers who replied promptly and suggested where and when we could watch the cars. We got to see 54 rally cars from eight countries drive like they had a death wish—whipping over mountain roads, skidding out on gravel near the edge of the road, and sometimes even getting airborne. It was totally insane and fun to watch (even if a little noisy on the ears)!

• Since Hugo is very into castles, we hiked to the Tolmin Castle ruins, which sit at the top of a small (but steep) hill. It was a 2km hike up. They estimate the hike to last 30 minutes but it took us at least an hour—that said, Hugo did the whole thing and Valentina hiked at least half of it. We also stopped to step a few feet into some caves along the way, and saw some pretty interesting critters too. Once we got up, the views of Tolmin town, the Soca Valley and the Julian Alps were simply incredible! And the ruins still included a big external castle wall and you could explore them freely, even stepping into a crumbled/crumbling tower. Definitely a fun hike.

• We visited Lake Bohinj, the less touristy, less crowded lake in the region (and also the biggest lake in Slovenia). Some people, including our Airbnb hosts had told us that they preferred Lake Bohinj to Lake Bled and we could totally see what they meant when we visited. Lake Bohinj is surrounded by mountains and when the water is still, the reflection is like a mirror. It definitely feels wilder and less touristy—we didn’t see any tour buses dumping people there—and is the gateway to a lot of cool alpine hikes that we couldn’t do with toddlers. There was a cool campground there that we’ll have to go back to some day!

• We went to the Tolmin Gorge. This is a well-known hike in the area, which parallels a creek that is an otherworldly aquamarine/turquoise color. The hike crosses several bridges, and has a neat cave called Dante’s Cave because Dante Alighieri visited it and it is said the cave inspired his vision of hell for the Inferno. (The cave itself was carved out by a river and was steep, slippery, almost icy cold, and about four feet tall, so you had to hunch while carefully walking in—the park people said to not go in more than 20 meters without a guide and we definitely heeded that advice.)

• We visited Skofja Loka twice, which was a super fun little medieval town. It has a nice castle on the hill, and really well-preserved buildings from hundreds of years ago. It is a lively little town and was a lot of fun to see. (It’d also be an easy daytrip from Ljubljana for anyone based there.)

• We hiked over 500 steps to Slap Savica, which is one of the main hikes in the area. It’s a beautiful waterfall made famous over the years by several Slovenian poets and authors. It tumbles down in an “A” shape from the middle of a mountainside and the cliffs surrounding the waterfall go much higher than the waterfall itself. It’s a very dramatic place that is hard to capture in pictures!

• We spent a day chilling in Tolmin at the junction of two rivers. We happened to show up on the tail-end of a five-day alternative art/music festival where the partygoers had camped out overnight and were still milling around. So even though it was 9am on a Sunday morning, we were treated to some beats pumping out of speakers and there was a makeshift bar still serving beer on tap. When in Rome… so we each got a big beer while the kids played by the riverside.

Apart from sightseeing (which we generally do in the morning), we visited the playground in Podbrdo pretty much every day. There were some simple playground structures and a big concrete basketball/soccer court. The kids had a blast playing in the playground structures, going fast on their scooters on the courts, and practicing their futbol skills with dad! Also, consistent with our previous observations about Slovenia, people are always outside and there were always other kids in the playground, whether playing soccer, rolling around on rollerskates (very popular in Slovenia, BTW), or just getting fresh air outside.

Once again, we were blessed with very generous neighbors. The family of our Airbnb owners lived on the floors above our apartment and they gave our kids candy, homemade cake, and fresh pancakes with homemade blueberry jam! They also shared a bowl full of freshly picked blueberries with us! What’s even more valuable, they treated our kids very warmly and made us feel very welcomed there!

All in all, the Slovenian Alps are a complete treat. We had booked 14 days there planning on relaxing in the mountains and hoping that it’d be a good place to spend two weeks. We never ran out of things to do (we didn’t even repeat) and every day was unique and amazing. It’s definitely a place we’d recommend visiting!