It just so happened that the day we flew into Slovenia it poured rain all day ... and all night that night. We did, however, manage to have two great meals in Ljubljana on this first day. Really, the restaurant scene in Ljubljana is impressive. There were so many places to choose from, and so many seemed popular. We have to go back just to hit all the restaurants we didn't get to. Anyway, for lunch, we wandered into Julija where we had fresh handmade pasta dishes and really fresh salads and soups for lunch. All the food was excellent, the service was attentive and helpful, and the atmosphere was cozy. Highly recommend. For dinner, I had made reservations at Manna just based on tripadvisor recs. Here we're pretty sure the owner himself waited on us for most of our meal and he was very friendly and informative. The food was all excellent - dad got the pig cheeks! Mostly traditional Slovenian food here, with almost no veggie options though I think you could request something veggie and they'd make something for you. Dessert was also excellent. :)
The next morning we woke up to a cloudy day and so we decided to visit caves and castles that day (Skocjan caves and Predjama castle). The rain also made it perfect to visit the Skocjan caves the following day because the river that flows through the caves was at an impressive height from all the rain.
We hired a private tour guide, George, via www.slovenia-private-tours.com, and that's how we saw most of the sites in Slovenia. He drove us wherever we wanted to go, plus he suggested other places we might enjoy that were nearby to the sites we requested.
Our first stop of the day, the Skocjan caves, are a UNESCO World Heritage site. They contain one of the largest underground canyons in the world and you get to walk far above the Reka River as it flows through the cave. It was atmospheric with only a few lights outlining the walkway and the river raging far below. At one point you walk over a narrow bridge where the river is raging 45 meters below your feet. Unfortunately, pictures are not allowed anywhere in the caves. :( So I don't have anything to show you. But, TRUST ME, this is worthy of a stop if you're ever in Slovenia!
These first few pictures are from a lookout point above Skocjan caves, where the Reka River exits.
Some trees on our walk down to the entrance of the caves:
The two blurry pictures I took at the exit of the cave tour. These caves are enormous.
Dad and I standing outside of the exit of the caves.
After leaving Skocjan, we drove out towards the coast because it looked like the sun was coming out! And we wanted to enjoy some sunshine after having only clouds and rain for the first 24 hours we'd been in the country. First, George drove us to an overlook point where we could view more or less the entire Slovenian coast (all 47km of it), plus some of the Italian coast (the town of Trieste is on the right in the photo, I believe).
We then drove down into the town of Koper, where we had lunch at a winery, Vinakoper (I wanted to taste some Slovenian wines, are you surprised?). Below on the left are two of the wines we tried, both were okay but not spectacular. We then tried two more that we liked better, shown on the right.
The food here was amazing. The menu consisted of maybe 6 different dishes that you could order as starters or main course - they were what had been prepared that day. It was like stopping by a friend's house for a meal with just a few options. I enjoyed some broccoli soup followed by this delicious pasta with shrimp and artichokes with a creamy red sauce. Martin also had some pasta in a cream sauce with truffles and seriously it was one of the best things I've ever eaten. And the portions were huge. The pic below is what dad had - a plate of pork, more or less. Sorry I was so busy eating and enjoying my dishes that I forgot to take pictures... definitely stop here for lunch if you can!
After finishing our big lunch, we wandered around Koper for a bit. This is a picture of one of the narrow streets there, lined with shops. It was really cute.
Next we drove to Predjama castle, which is the castle built into a cave. We grabbed some audio guides and did the tour inside the castle. It was originally built in the 13th century and its famous storyline is that a knight named Erazem lived there in the 15th century. He got into trouble with the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III and had to hole up in the castle for over a year. During this year, he used a passageway through the caves behind the castle to visit a neighboring town to get supplies. The story goes he grabbed a lot of cherries and brought them back to the castle and threw them at the soldiers outside the castle attempting to kill him. Eventually they succeeded in killing him by shooting a cannonball into the toilet when he was in there, which was perched on an outside corner of the castle.
You can see the tunnel that Erazem used through the caves and it is steep and dangerous and requires rock climbing in spots. Impressive that he used it often.
Anyway, here are some pictures of us from outside the castle - the lighting was perfect for photos there.
Here is Martin going down some very steep, very slippery stairs in the castle.
Looking out through the small opening in the top of the cave that's behind the castle. The inhabitants of the castle could live in the caves if they had to, and pull up a drawbridge inside the castle so that nobody could reach the caves, should the castle have been broken into.
After the castle we headed back to our base in Ljubljana. We didn't have any dinner reservations, tried the tapas bar (TaBar) to no avail, and eventually found seats at Zlata Ribica, which was a really good find. Dad had some tuna, I had a caprese salad, and Martin got some salad that only had iceberg lettuce in it - so don't get a salad there! But everything else was really good. The table behind us all ordered huge steaks and they seemed really happy with those too.
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