My RTW Good-Spots-To-Go Discoveries
Sunday, July 20th, 2008I spent all weekend proofing and correcting my manuscript and now have sent it back to my editor for finalizing, so I am fresh from a read-through of the hard copy. I’ll share with you a few of the destinations that I found very refreshing and not so crowded. Some of them are a bit off the beaten path:
SLOVENIA –
Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, is a really darling place. It seems quite small because the best part of it is focused on the little river/canal going right through the Old Town. Shops and cafes cluster beside the water and it’s just pleasant to be there. It’s a university town, so has a younger atmosphere. I stayed in the Fluxus Hostel, which is relatively new, and right downtown, for around $26 for a coed bunk. (30 beds, 1 bathroom, lots of stairs to climb to the entry, hard-to-follow directions to get there, but overall good). This city makes a good jumping off place for all of Slovenia, which has mountains (skiing in the winter) and gorgeous coastline.
Piran, Slovenia – On the coast right at the top of the Istrian Peninsula is a wonderful medieval town on the order of some found along the Dalmation coastline in Croatia. It is great for water sports, boating, swimming, biking. A housing accommodations office rents rooms and apartments for reasonable rates. Laid back, great food, and a different beach vacation.
Dreznica – (Drez-nitza) is a very small village in the mountains of Slovenia, very near Trieste on the Italian border. The closest small town is Kobarid, Slovenia. Any War Buffs – 1st and 2nd World Wars – will love this area because lots happened here and they have preserved the history very well in museums. Ernest Hemingway mentions Kobarid (Cappareto) in his Farewell To Arms.
The high massifs that encircle Dreznica were scenes of some of the fighting and a million bones are still up there. Villagers have collected so many artifacts that one of them has an attic museum to display them. An earthquake caused most houses to need rebuilding, so now, they are quite nice and new and many have added rental accommodations, so rooms are plentiful and cheap and really nice. There’s hiking, paragliding and mountain-biking in a country, farm atmosphere. Glorious pastoral mountain views.
Right within the little village are houses cheek by jowl with their barns, tractors parked up close, chicken houses and a vegetable or flower garden, all on one building lot. Higgledy-piggledly lanes and buildings sitting every which way, just like they sprang up in the old days before city planning. A waterfall to hike to, a huge mountain to climb. Hayfields glowing green in the setting sun. A church on a hill centerpiece in a photo-op village. The most loved and tended-to cemetary in the entire world, right next door….the cuddled dearly-departed. Ten dollar four-course dinners in the place’s only restaurant. Michelin Guide eating in Kobarid. Italy eight miles away. It doesn’t get much better than this!
You don’t need a car. Your host will meet you at the bus in Kobarid and you can get around by hitch-hiking if you don’t want to hoof it. I learned of this village through the hostel listings on BootsnAll.
Anyway, I highly recommend all of Slovenia. It’s just a beautiful, spectacular, outdoors country.
More on other good places that linger on in memory on future posts.
lindajbrown