In the capital
In Ljubljana, you can wander Tivoli Park, meander the Ljubljanica by boat and follow the Plecnik trail. You’ll still have the National Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art and the City Museum to tick off. And theatres, a swathe of churches and Zale, one of Europe’s most outlandish cemeteries.
If you like walking, there is a thirty kilometer path that leads all around the city, Pot spominov that commemorates the WW2 ocupation of Ljubljana, when the city was encircled by Italian troops.
Metelkova is the art centre, in the past the space was used as military headquarters and barracks, it is home to many artist studios and student activists.
Predjama Casta & the Postojna Caves are an hour outside of Lublijana.,
Where to Eat
Ljubljana also does café culture satisfyingly well. Try Yauya Patisserie for Alice in Wonderland type pastries. Kavarna Zvezda and Neks Lounge Bar are also great for coffee. Vrt Beli Volk is perfect for a sunny day, sit with a coffee in the garden.
Lana’s Cafe for a local lunch. Gostilna Sokol is a 400 year old restaurant in the heart of the city. Slovenska Hiša – Figovec is perfect for when you are craving a meal that resembles grandmas homecooking. Veganika is a vegan bistro perfect for high-quality veggie dishes.
Where to stay
Hotel Zlata Ladjica Just outside the capital, you’ll find two particularly good restaurants worth driving to: Belšak (closed Mondays), and restaurant Kuren (they’re only open on weekends).
For lakes & nature, Alpine valley experience
Forty minutes north of Ljublijana, Lake Bled obviously has quite the visual punch and Villa Bled is wonderful. Around 17 miles to the south-west though, Lake Bohinj plays a similar, though much less visited, card, and is near the borders with Italy and Austria. In the vicinity you have an amazing gorge, and cable car to Vogel. Eat at Old Cellar for traditional Slovenia dishes with a lake view.
The last hurrah here is Triglav National Park, whose titular mountain, all 2,864m (9,396ft) of it, is both the country’s highest and the emblem on its flag.
For the Alpine valley experience, check out the Hotel Milka in Kranjska Gora or Villa Planika / Hotel Plesnik.
An hour and a half drive towards the Italian border, the Soca Valley is beautiful and offers serious whitewater thrills in rafts and canoes, but also soul-searing World War One history too. Hemingway was wounded here in 1918 serving as an ambulance man. The preserved trenches and searing Kobarid’s war museum will raise the hairs on your arms.
In the other direction– the 80-mile drive from Ljubljana to Maribor takes 90 minutes, and Slovenia’s second city rewards those who make the effort with a medieval centre almost as picturesque as Ljubljana’s. Its 13th-century cathedral exudes Gothic grandeur, while its 14th-century synagogue, reconvened as a museum in 2001, stands as sentinel of Jewish-Slovenian culture. Maribor can also act as a gateway to some of Slovenia’s – and, indeed, Europe’s – least publicised spaces. Goričko Natural Park encompasses 178 pristine square miles of lakes and hillsides up in the country’s north-easternmost pocket, all but on the Hungarian border; Drava Landscape Park cradles sections of floodplain and dry riverbed directly south-east of the city – and is an oasis for birdlife. Both sites hover within an hour’s drive of downtown Maribor.Seaside & sun:Just over an hour from the capital, Portoroz is the region’s prime place for a sunshine escape; a resort-town whose gilded history is embodied by the Palace Hotel which played host to Austro-Hungarian royalty in the years immediately after its 1910 birth.Portoroz gazes onto the sheltered waters of the Gulf of Piran. The bay shares its name with the town at its tip – an enclave of orange roof-tiles, flagstoned plazas and boats at anchor, every bit as enchanting as some of its more feted cousins in Croatia.
Hotel Piranis very affordable and check out Izola, which snoozes on the tides in a near-identical fashion. Its four-star Hotel Marina peers out through a forest of masts. Pause between Piran and Izola, meanwhile, and you can stroll through Landscape Park Strunjan – a protected zone of soaring seabirds and plunging cliffs.Then there is Koper. While Slovenia’s fifth largest city is as much a pragmatic port as a holiday hotspot, it offers access to a raft of beaches, such as Plaža Žusterna. It has the three-star Hotel Grand Koper.
Wine trip
Slovenia also has a thriving viticultural scene – which extends to more than 28,000 wineries. The Slovenian countryside is a patchwork quilt of vineyards, and enjoying the outcome of their labours – white wines, largely – is generally no more demanding an endeavour than ambling a few miles from your hotel. Notable areas include the Vipava Valley in the south-west (pinela, zelen and klarnica grapes), and its neighbour Goriška Brda (where the rebula grape flourishes).
You could hop on the specially commissioned Wine Train — a five-hour journey providing the opportunity to meet local winemakers in person and stop for tastings and tours along the way. And I wouldn’t miss dining at the Michelin-starred
Gostilna Pri Lojzetu — one of the finest restaurants anywhere in Slovenia, housed in a beautifully restored 17th-century hilltop mansion. the towns of Vipava and Ajdovščina. Vipava is built on the only delta-shaped riverhead in Europe, where the River Vipava gushes out of the ground from multiple karst springs. The town has a stately, tree-lined square, while, in the cemetery, you’ll find a pair of Ancient Egyptian sarcophagi, sent back from North Africa in the 19th century by a Vipava-born Habsburg consul. Ajdovščina was the site of a Roman military fort, built on the Roman road that ran through the valley, and several parts of the old walls and towers remain intact. However, the star of the show in Ajdovščina is the excellent Pilon Gallery, home to an outstanding collection of works by Veno Pilon, the greatest Slovenian artist of the 20th century.