Today we saw what feats of creation both man and nature can achieve.
Our morning walk was around the grounds of Marimare Castle, which has a spectacular cliff edge setting with views of Slovenia to the left and views of Italy to the right.
After a false start getting stuck in a tight, steep one way system we escaped onto the main roads and made our way back to the calmer Slovenian roads.
We had been torn whether to visit Skocjan Caves or the better known Postojna Cave. Ultimately we chose the latter as the tour time suited our schedule better, but both are meant to be spectacular. We bought a paired ticket to also visit Predjama Castle which was just 15 minutes up the road (€70 for two).
Postojna Cave
While I was initially a bit sceptical of the touristy nature: large queues even in off season and a little train into the cave… I hands up confess it is an amazing sight.
It’s a 5km trip underground, 4 of which is one the train and the other 1km a gentle walk through several chambers which highlight the different colours and types of drip stones. I loved the cave curtains and that two pillars side by side were different colours due to their composition (grey = magnesium / white = pure calcite). We even saw a human fish…one of the 110 species found to live in these caves.
Predjama Castle
After a quick lunch stop it was off to see Predjama Castle. Built into the rock face it’s hard to see where nature ends and manmade building starts, especially once inside!
With its warren of secret tunnels behind the castle and caves underneath, it’s the largest cave castle in Europe. 14 different types of bat hibernate there over winter so you can only do the cave tours in the warmer months.
While the view from the loo is very pretty, the audio tour repeatedly stated how hard and uncomfortable it would be to live here. It was cold and damp, with a few nice but basic rooms for the families that lived there. I certainly couldn’t have coped, and as torture chambers go it’s got to be one of the worst.
While certainly one of our more expensive days outings, I’d recommend both, as they were each fascinating in their own ways.
Before driving up to Ljubljana we walked the pups again, Mabel rolled in a cow pat 🙈 and after cleaning her up I brewed up more coffee.
In the evening we spent far too much time trying to work out the legal requirements for winter tyres/snow chains in Italy. Its compulsory to have one or the other…but the laws can be changed by each province and we can’t for the life of us find the province rules, so we will invest in snow chains and pray there is no snow or change of laws.
After that I felt the need to just veg out watching daft dog videos and rubbish on YouTube…my to do list can wait.
SofaWolves 