Recently I read an article in a travel publication that extolled the virtues of Slovenia with the headline Sudden Slovenia. 

I loved it and am adopting it for my theme of this blog post. I think Slovenia’s time has come.  I visited Slovenia  in September 2024. 

Recently I did a blog about the capital, Ljubljana, a city I think is fantastic. It is the perfect European city to visit at a time when many cities in Europe are over touristed. Tourists are finding they aren’t welcome. The sights they came to see have been transformed (and not for the good) by the numbers of people crowded around, camera phones in hand. 

Ljubljana and Slovenia aren’t over touristed yet.   In fact, you may not even know where it is. 

You might be thinking, “What else is there to do and to see?”  Well, let me share. 

Caves and Castles. 

I’m a castle fan since I first started traveling after college. The first one I visited in Slovenia named Predjama castle is an impregnable medieval marvel. It is perched in the middle of a 123-metre-high cliff for more than 800 years. Behind the largest cave castle in the world, there is a network of secret tunnels. 

Let me share.  Here are some photos of the outside. 

I am particularly enamored with the shutters. I’m not sure when they were added but I love the bold stripes.

I’ve included a couple of interior photos to enjoy including a latrine. Not your typical castle photo because you don’t usually see them on castle tours.  The last of the three photos below is a medieval kitchen.

What really interested me was that there is another whole castle built in the mountain for residents to escape to when being attacked. Yep. A cave castle. And a tunnel on the back side that allows the residents to escape, to get supplies and to survive. The next images shows the stairs to get to that secret hideaway.

Postojna Cave

Not too far from the castle  is a huge cave that is well worth your time if you are visiting Slovenia. I’m not particularly a cave fan, but I’ve been to a few and this was by far the most incredible. 

 Postojna Cave has been a tourist destination for 200 years. Attracting 1 million visitors worldwide annually in Postojna Cave Park, the Postojna Cave system is a series of caverns, halls and passages some 24 km long and two million years old.

 Our fun started when standing in line, I spotted a group with the matching hand painted shoes  Nope. Not a t-shirt or matching baseball cap. Shoes. There were about 15 people in the group, all with matching shoes, painted with scenes of the places in Slovenia on their itinerary. One of the people in the group painted them all.

The visit to the cave was memorable combining a 15 minute train ride into the very center and then a walk up and down with a guide. I don’t have a lot of photos. This was a challenging low light situation where we were on the go, but let me share a few and hope you enjoy. Better yet. Go to Slovenia and see for yourself.   

But I’d like to include things that amused me at the end of the tour.  The encouragement to send an old fashioned post card from the only cave post office in the world and the opportunity for a cave burger. I’m sorry we didn’t get to enjoy one.  Looks yummy.   

To read about Ljubljana, click here. Lovely Ljubljana