Snow-Capped Alps to Cerulean Seas: Your Guide to Slovenia and Istria
underground caves, lemon meringue pie gelato, and truffles galore
Welcome to the Caravaner’s Companion, a series of down-to-earth (and around the earth) travel guides full of recommendations, cautionary tales, and vibe checks from your over-caffeinated, donut-obsessed sherpa. Today we’re off to Slovenia and Croatia. Check out the archive for paid subscriber guides to Egypt, Norway, Italy, Mexico City, and more.
If you are reading this guide as an email, it may be truncated. You can click the “view in browser” link in the top right to see the rest. Na zdrave! 🍻
The curse of wanderlust is wanting to see absolutely everything and knowing it isn’t possible. This happens to me every time I plan a trip. Oh, but Naples is only a couple hours from Rome! And what about a short little stop in Capri? Maybe we can squeeze Pompeii in, too?
I felt this longing even more acutely than usual as Nick and I planned the road trip that would follow my friend’s wedding in Bulgaria. I had never been to the Balkans before, and I wanted to see as much of the region as possible. In my mind, we would drive all the way from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, watching the land bleed slowly from east into west, harsh mountains and plains smoothing into gentle coastline.
But the Balkans are expansive, and that plan turned out to be too ambitious (unless we were willing to spend most of our time driving, and what would be the sense in that?). Putting on our horse blinders, we settled on seeing Bulgaria—more on that part of the itinerary in a future guide—before flying to Vienna and driving south through Slovenia to Croatia’s Istrian Peninsula.
With coffee and cookies stuffed in the drink holders of our rental car, we saw everything from the snow-capped Julian Alps to the cerulean waters of Croatia, listening to podcasts and chatting along the way. Much as we would have loved to have seen more, it was a delicious taste of what the Balkans have to offer.
A couple logistical notes on this trip: we spread it over nine days in early October. Fall was a great time to see Slovenia, but if I were to go back to Croatia, I’d do it when it’s warmer and spend more time at the beach. Perhaps due to the season, I found Croatia to be a tad overrated, while I thought Slovenia was underrated. If I were to do this trip over, I wouldn’t go further south than Motovun, Croatia. I would add a stop in Trieste, Italy and spend more time in central Slovenia.
Because this was a road trip with lots of stops, I’ve organized this guide by place, giving you my impressions and recommendations for each. I put the stops in the order we visited them, starting and ending in Slovenia with Croatia in the middle. This is a part of the world I definitely recommend seeing by car; much of it would be inaccessible otherwise, and plus, it’s easy, scenic driving.
One day, we’ll return to the Balkans to cover what we missed. But for now, this little trip was a wonderful introduction. So with that: idemo (that’s “let’s go” in Croatian)!