Lovely country, mostly understated tourism unless you count German coach tours.

Try researching the Triglev National Park in the north of the country, Lake Bled, Bled and Bohinj, the Postojna caves, Ljubljana - the capital city but enchanting and intimate, and, moving south the area around Koper, Piran and Portoroz. You can easily pop into Croatia from Portoroz and you will enjoy visiting Porec.

Both the tourist information office for the country, and those for the individual towns, are incredibly helpful. Whilst the locals do speak some English, and some German, Italian is the prinicipal foreign language spoken in the south!

Just a gentle warning, the Slovenes and the Croats do NOT get on, even though they have touching borders!

You can approach Slovenija from Austria and also via the A4 from Italy, bypassing Venice, and then trying to cope with the bypass around Trieste!! Sounds like a lovely holiday you've got planned. Please be aware that Slovenija is a relatively small country and from the Austrian border to Ljubljana you are looking at about 1.5 hours car journey max, and from there to Piran/Portoroz another 2.5 hours. There is a good motorway, but the local roads can get EXTREMELY slippery in damp or wet weather and you will need to take great care. We saw 5 (yes 5) accidents after rain on a main road between the Croatian border and Trieste! (All to do with frictionless asphalt.)

Hi, thanks for those helpful tips, we were wondering how long each place would take to get to, it difficult to estimate from a map so your timings are a big help. I have come across most of the places you mentioned, so will investigate further. Cheers, Lesley

Lesley

We did a two centre holiday last year with the first week in Rovinj Croatia and the second week in Kranjska Gora in Slovenia. We thoroughly enjoyed our second week much much more than the first week. Kranjska Gora was stunning, beautiful scenery, excellent walks, cycling paths and it was so cheap to eat/drink in any of the cafe bars. I would go back tomorrow if it wasn't so difficult to get to from where we live in Aberdeen!

We had always wanted to go after seeing pictures in brochures and on TV. We walked to Podkoren the next village to Kranjska Gora as again we had seen that on TV (A Place in the Sun) and we had the most wonderful lunch at the hotel there.

We hired bikes and cycled over the border to Italy and experienced the most wonderful hospitality from an Italian family who had not long bought a big beautiful house.

One of the best weeks we have ever had.

Hi, thanks for post. I've been doing some further research and Slovenia definitely sounds worth spending some time exploring. I've noted the places you visited and can't wait to see them for myself! Hopefully the weather will be OK in June. Lesley

Just a word to the wise, Lesley! Lake Bled, Bohinj and the Triglev National Park are in the mountains, which have their own ideas of weather. I was there at the end of July/beginning of August, and whilst the morning weather was fine, by the end of the afternoon we often had tremendous thunderstorms, so do at least pack one brolly per person!

It was the same when we were there in May. The mornings were beautiful but by about 2 or 3pm there were the most incredible thunderstorms and torrential rain!!