June 30, 2026
Slovenia Day Six: Seven Alpine Wonders Tour
Today’s Route
- Radovna River (drive through)
- Peričnik Waterfall
- Zgornjesavska Valley
- Zelenci Nature Reserve
- Lago del Predil (Italy!)
- Soča Valley
- Vršič Pass
- Lake Jasna
- Return to Bled around 8:00–9:00 pm
Tour Group
Guide: Veronika ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Seriously one of the best guides I’ve ever had.
Our group:
- Me
- Adrienne (Québec, French teacher)
- Two French girls, one named Vanessa
- Woman from Barcelona, Carlota
- Woman from Sicily
- British couple (Sophie & Danny)
Immediately good vibes!!
Things I Learned
Triglav National Park
- Covers about 4% of Slovenia
- Supplies Bled’s drinking water
- Originally established during Yugoslavia
- Three levels of environmental protection
- Shepherds still bring cattle into mountain meadows every summer.
Wildlife
- Golden eagles
- Eagle owls
- Bears
- Wolves
- Ibex
- Wild boar
- Lynx (reintroduced with Romania!)
- Carniolan honey bees
Fun Facts
- Slovenia even pays hunters to reduce wild boar populations.
- Slovenia looks like a chicken: the Julian Alps are the tail, and the Karst region is the legs.
- Slovenia has around 40 dialects.
- Slovenian is one of the oldest written Slavic languages.
- Slovenia isn’t considered part of the Balkans.
- Their national anthem wishes peace upon all nations, not just Slovenia. That honestly feels very fitting after meeting so many Slovenians.
Favorite Stops
Peričnik Waterfall
WOW. Peričnik Waterfall is our first stop, and it’s gorgeous. We saw a little rainbow! Veronika shares with us the story of witch and boy. The boy would watch the young witch changing and dressing after washing her clothes in a small pond. She caught him, and as punishment, turned him into a waterfall!She cursed him to forever be forced to wash others, and so now this waterfall washes away the negative emotions and energy of those that pass through the fall. We put our negative into the waterfall, and I genuinely felt so much better!
Mountain Village: Gozd Martuljek
Gozd Martuljek is a little mountain village we stopped in to get gas. Just the views alone were incredible!
Zelenci Nature Reserve
The Zelenci Nature Reserve was so fascinating! We stopped to grab coffees (I got a Cockta- like an herbal version of coca-cola, made when the country was in Yuogslavia!) and go to the bathroom here.
I can’t get over the strikingly emerald-green spring-fed lake, which Veronika told us is also the source of Slovenia’s longest river, the Sava, which eventually joins the Danube in Belgrade. You can’t swim here as it’s a reserve, and there are snakes about, so we kept an eye out! Veronika said she’s been here plenty of times and never saw any snakes, though.
There are also “mini volcanoes” here! The porous chalk bottom of the lake permits a constant up-welling of groundwater in tiny jets, an occurrence unique in Slovenia I guess! WOW! First the olms, which are unique to Slovenia, then these volcanoes, and later on you’ll see the special type of bee is also only unique to Slovenia! Slovenia has so much that is just their own that makes the country to special.
Lago del Predil (Italy!!)
Veronika says the history runs deep: an Austro-Hungarian fortress was built on its shore between 1885 and 1887 to defend the road and reinforce the empire’s southern border, later damaged in WWI fighting.
Lago del Predil was icy gold from the glaciers it fed from, but man was it refreshing. I probably wouldn’t have gone if not at the encouragement of my fellow travelers. Once I dove in, shivering and swimming madly to warm up, they shouted “let’s go, California!” The English gal, Sophie, had a rough time in the cold waters, but her husband Danny took to it like a duck to water. We heated up eventually (or got used to the cold) and it was great! Adrienne, from Quebec, said this was no big deal and that she used to do polar plunges that were actually cold. I trust her judgement. We hung out for a bit before drying off on the rocky shore, out of breath but laughing and refreshed.
I love Veronika’s timing! Everything seemed adapted to what we wanted to do, and how long we spent. I felt like a child tagging along with her parents again on a vacation, or a student on a field trip. She took care of everything- driving, parking fees, directions, all of it. I could sit back and just relax. I so appreciate all that she does for us. I cannot thank her enough.
The Italian and Spanish ladies were so so nice! The Spanish one chatted with me as we walked back to the car, kind of duck legged from our slightly still damp suits in the sunshine.
Winding Road and Rewarded Generosity
I will warn you- the roads here on out get super winding. Definitely take Drammamine if you get even a little car sick.
When I took half a Dramamine from the British gal (Sophie), the Spanish gal up front offered to switch seats with me so I could be by an open window. Danny (British guy, Sophie’s husband) tried fixing my window so it would open (it never did). Everyone is so, so kind. The world feels so safe.
As we sped by trees upon rocky shores of pale white stones, Veronika shared with us her next story about the ruins on the island on the lake Predil: one day, long ago, a woman with child went house to house looking for shelter no one took her in, until she went to the village where the lake now sits. Then that night, a terrible rainstorm wrecked the village. The next morning, the lake appeared, and the island with the ruined house was the only surviving building. That was the building of the family that accepted the woman with child in their home- they were the only ones spared nature’s wrath.
On the Way to Bovec!
Random bits:
- Veronika plays a very slovenian song, love that she shares her culture!
- Strmec is the next down we drive by (it means steep, town basically named steepy, an old shepherding town)
- Folks in the back discussed London cheese chasing- people take it very seriously apparently.
- Carnelian lilies (kranjska lilija) are native to Slovenia, Austria, Northern Italy, and the balkans. Kranjska is the Slovene name for Carniola, a historical region of central Slovenia. Hence the town name Kranjska gora.
- We stop in Bovec– a small town filled entirely with tourists. There aren’t a lot of people per se, but zero of them were speaking Slovenian.
- We stop for 30 mins to go to the bathroom and grab groceries for a picnic! No zipline or raft so we do that! I’m glad we did.
I grabbed a bunch! Protein bars for later, dried apricots, roasted chickpeas, paprika chips (also popular in Romania), black currant juice (interested to see what that tastes like), salami and cheese (Swiss, I think, but less hard. Havarti? It’s got holes), three flat peaches that were AMAZING, elderberry Radler (0%), and yogurt. I humiliated myself by not weighing and adding the sticker to the peaches myself- hate buying fruit in europe lol. I see why packages in plastic pre-labeled and with price tags on em are more popular. I don’t want to waste plastic though. Just something I miss about the states. At the bakery I got a baklava (way too soaked and sweet eugh) and a slice of pizza with arugula and tomato (not as amazing as it sounds- something odd about the bakeries in Bled/Bovec I’ve tried is that everything is slightly old? Like not made fresh? Very strange to me).
- Narnia was filmed in Bovec, Slovenia! The Caspian film. Tour guide played the sound track and asked us to guess, and Sophie guessed it in like 20 seconds! Woah!
- Bovec is famous for cheese and sheep. People used to pay taxes in cheese. People would pay for fishing rights in cheese.
- A mountain we passed used to be called the shiny one, now it is called pigs stack bc the words sound the same.
- One female goat protects the mountain today (not a myth), as she attacks all people who visit. Crazy!
- Its WWI history is heavy: Bovec was on the front line of the brutal Battles of the Isonzo (fought between Austro-Hungarian forces and the Italian Army from June 1915 to November 1917, which devastated the region almost completely). Over 1.7 million soldiers died across the wider Isonzo Front.
- Ernest Hemingway drew on this area for A Farewell to Arms; nearby Kobarid is the Italian “Caporetto” referenced in the book.
- The Soča River itself is nicknamed the “Emerald River” or “Emerald Queen,” famous for a genuinely unedited emerald-green color
Soča Valley and River
At the Soča river, we set up a picnic and watch the water and cross a wobbly bridge and see big gorges where kids leapt into the water. Insane. Very clear blue water though, very nice. We shared food (Veronika let us eat at a fig she bought from a woman in town, like a mini farmer’s market) and swapped childhood stories and favorite shows. A note to self: Look up last one laughing tv show british humor watch richard ayoade is on it.
- I went off on my own for the last fifteen minutes to stop by the gorge.
- There’s a certain magic in the air when it’s about to rain. A stirring. The leaves shimmer. Noises echo off the thick wet cloud in the sky. Thunder rolls, a drumbeat of warning.
- It’s getting cloudy and hot- rain threatening to burst out of the round belly of the sky. We decide to forge ahead.
- Veronika fact: Slovenians can forage anywhere unless it’s a level 1 protection of nature then no foraging (limit per person, around 2 liters of blueberries per person for example but it always changes; must clean mushrooms in the forest to leave seeds in the forest so they grow. There’s a fine if caught foraging more); if you’re a farmer with forests you need to allow people into the forest and you cannot cut any tree you want the ministry of forestry has to mark trees for cutting.
Vršič Pass
Hairpin turn time! Ascent of 1,611 meters. We took 50 corners that turn 190 degrees. Sophie was NOT having it but we were all being supportive.
A somber piece of that history sits at hairpin #8: in March 1916, over 300 prisoners and some Austrian guards died in an avalanche on the pass, and in 1917 their surviving comrades built a wooden Russian Orthodox chapel as a memorial to the fallen.
Viewpoint Supca
On the Russian Road, we stop off for a viewpoint. Veronika shares another tale. She leaps up onto a fence and we all smile at her pixie like nature. She tells the tale of how the Soca river came to be. She starts by telling us that trees are gods. One day, long ago, the great giant Soca kept puking water and drowning towns and destroying forests. The forest gods got together and decided to put him upside down and under a rock. This formed the Soca river, by the puking god! Cool!
Veronika finds and hands us all wild thyme to smell. It is called the soul of the mother; you can make tea out of it. Good for lungs (check pharmacy plaque, is this the same info?). I keep it in my phone case for good luck.
We spy on the storm clouds brewing, thunder rolling over us, and each describes what we call these in our cultures:
- Me: Cumulonimbus
- Adreanne: Mammatus
- Italian gal: Sheep sky
Veronika tells us that where lichen grows shows you where the air is fresh. More lichen= also more north.
As I type this, Adreanne says she loves my notes app and how I take note of everything. Feels weird to be noticed- well, out loud. I of course assumed (and was even very self conscious of) that people saw how I was on my phone so much so I always leaned my phone down to clearly show that I was typing notes not like… texting, or whatever they might have assumed. I like to be an active listener when people are talking, so I like to lean in and make eye contact and all that, but it can be difficult to do that while writing down all the info they share. I don’t know how people remember anything without writing it down first. Just something my brain has been doing lately that I’ve learned to adapt to, I guess. If I think of it like a fairy tale, like I got cursed by a witch or particularly miffed gnome or something, it makes it easier.
The smell of rain on the stone is so nice! It’s not actively raining, but we drive through the misty mountains.
The Magical Storm and Story!
Veronika stopped us at a viewpoint of the mountains: this doesn’t have a label in Google Maps, and seems to be a Veronika special. I have it pinned here.
After this, she asks us if we want to hear another story. We of course say yes, and she jumps into the car for a second before jumping down in front of the mountain view and sitting criss cross applesauce. A few of us join in, sitting with her, while others stand and watch attentively as she shares her next tale.
It’s about the golden horned goat!! I was so excited to hear about him.
We joked that Veronika knew the song ahead of time and timed it perfectly, because she did that before to great effect, but no! She just googled fairy music lol and it worked. Even the thunder rolled to her tale. How magical.
Lake Jasna
Our next stop: Jansa lake. This lake is human made to protect the town from the rain. Same with the river nearby which feeds the lake- to protect from the flash floods. Veronika doesn’t like this one as much and I agree, but she hardly lets it show. I admire how she has so much energy. Our whole team was napping and yawning after our picnic stop at Soca river. The rainclouds dropped the temperature by enough that it made me wish I had a jacket (oh, mountain weather. Next time: always pack flip flops, a scarf/blanket/wrap thing, and a light windbreaker that can be rolled up easily. Oh, and Dramamine. Bless Dramamine.)
According to Veronika, Lake Jasna is actually two man-made lakes that blend together so seamlessly you’d never know they weren’t natural.
We found Zlatorog (Goldenhorn)!! A twin statue also exists at Lake Bohinj.
Popular for swimming, canoeing, and paddleboarding in warmer months. The pass itself is only open around 7 months of the year, closing completely in winter due to snow and avalanche risk.
- While waiting for my turn to take pictures (embarrassing part of travel), the Italian gal said I reminded her of Kate Winslet in the movie with Jim Carrey- spotless mind something? Omg she’s so sweet!!! I told her I knew what she was talking about, but upon reflection maybe I don’t. [Google later when I have internet.] It’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind! I haven’t watched it but I’ve heard of it. Adding to my list.
- Try Elderflower pancake w honey! Slovenians take the elderflower, dip it in pancake batter, and fry them. Serve with honey and powdered sugar. Sounds so good!
- Our group made the phrase #goatfirst. Ya had to be there! I love friend groups that always make an inside joke every time we meet. This felt like one.
Fireball by pitbull was a big win. We had a mini dance on a bridge by the lake and sang along to it while some poor Slovenian man we trapped into recording us filmed it all! It was so fun. Veronika’s fun pixie like energy is so infectious. She’s like a golden retriever and has no problem asking others for pictures or offering to take pictures of others. She offered help to other families and groups who seemed like they wanted a picture and that’s so sweet! I try to do that if I notice people wanting a picture. It’s such a small, easy way to do a nice gesture and spread positivity. I love it!
Veronika fact: the hay drying wooden fences we see everywhere are the protected cultural heritage of slovenia so they cannot destroy them, only repair them. Wild! So cool.
Dober vecer means good evening. Veronika was inspired and thankful for our group (no THANK YOU, Veronika!) and we sort of prank called her office and we all said Dober Vecer! The office was so confused but glad we were having a good time.
Danny sang the part “Man I feel like a woman” in that Shania Twain song. ICONIC end to all of our teasing.
Favorite People
Veronika
Joy in human form.
Deeply knowledgeable and clearly loves Slovenia; shares folklore, local legends, music, and foraged wild thyme and wild strawberries with the group along the way. Adapts the day naturally to the group’s pace and interests, handles all logistics (driving, parking, timing) so the group can just relax. Grew up around volunteer firefighting culture through her brother; speaks some Italian; recently visited Mexico. Played guide-selected music throughout (including a Slovenian Eurovision-winning choir song) and let us pick songs later in the day. Told several folklore stories theatrically; left a lasting impression, made the day feel 1000000/10.
Adreanne
French teacher from Québec. Teacher solidarity is real!
She has this casual, unbothered energy: called wild strawberries “no big deal” compared to actual polar plunges she’s done back home. Notices and compliments people (ex my notes-taking habit, which briefly created a moment of self-consciousness). We spotted the “woman in the rocks” formation at the same time during a viewpoint stop, a small synced moment. Love that she can talk with anybody, not just because she speaks several languages. I feel like she has a big family, she can gel with anyone.
Sophie & Danny
Best British couple ever.
Sophie gave me Dramamine.
Danny became the honorary “boy” of Girls Trip™.
At one point he loudly sang: “Man! I feel like a woman!”
What’s better than this?
Vanessa (and friend)
The two French gals! Vanessa sat next to me on the bus ride, and I never got the name of her friend (sadly)! 😭
Kept to themselves, but were a sweet pair and always nice. Vanessa offered me some sweet biscuits at the Soca River picnic before the two went to explore the canyon on their own. Love them!
Carlota (and friend)
Carlota is the one from Barcelona- I never got the name of the gal from Sicily, sadly!!!
Italian gal told me that I reminded her of Kate Winslet’s character in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind because of my hair and that was so small and sweet. Carlotta went out of her way to talk to me at Lago del Predil and ask about me and showed an interest. Italian gal had a shirt on that said something to the effect of no one is illegal- heck yeah, girl.
Favorite Quotes
“Your students are lucky to have you.” — Veronika
HELLLOOOOO?! That one meant a lot. When everyone in the car agreed I almost cried.
Foods & Drinks to Try
From Veronika:
✓ Cockta (preferred it over Coke!)
Try:
- Honey liqueur
- Blueberry liqueur
- Pumpkin seed oil
- Elderflower pancakes
- Štruklji
- Carniolan sausage
- Moji Štruklji
- Bled House
- STO Coffee
- Sailing in Croatia
- Jerica Gorge tour
- Lake Bohinj
Music of the Day
Low
Fireball
Pink Pony Club
Shania Twain
Twilight soundtrack
Slovenian folk songs
Slovenian Eurovision winner
Narnia soundtrack
Italian music
Chappell Roan
The playlist somehow became our group’s soundtrack.
Notes to Future Me
- Tours at the beginning of a trip are worth every penny. The extra info would’ve helped me out earlier!
- Bring Dramamine.
- Bring a light jacket even during heat waves.
- Bring flip-flops.
- Slovenia deserves another visit.
- Next time:
- Lake Bohinj
- Jerica Gorge
- Škocjan Caves
- Croatia sailing
Best Moment
There were honestly too many, but if I had to choose…
Sitting cross-legged on the mountain while thunder rolled overhead as Veronika told the story of Zlatorog!!!
It was like stepping into the legend itself, through the help of a witch.
Overall Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (1000000/10)
One of my favorite travel experiences I’ve ever had.
I used to think tours were for people who didn’t want to plan.
Now I think they’re for people who want to understand a place through someone who loves it.
Thank you, Veronika. I don’t think I’ll ever forget today. 🌿
