Day 7 – Caves and Castle

I was right! Today is the day we check out of our hotel in Maribor. Whew!

We were actually up pretty early – 6:30am – as we needed to hit the road fairly early. With my mixup yesterday, Lisa had purchased tickets to an attraction about 45 minutes outside Ljubljana for a 10:30 entrance. But since we were driving from Maribor, and not Ljubljana, it was a two and a bit hour drive. So no sleeping in today.

Today we were visiting Postojna caves and Predjama castle. The drive was mostly along a freeway, so we made good time. Freeway’s here in Slovenia (and Austria) have posted speed limits in some sections, but in other sections, its anything goes. We made a steady 120kmh, but I was passed by many cars doing much faster. We did have a fun 15 minutes of the drive where the heavens opened up and even with the wipers going a full speed, visibility was somewhat limited. I made sure to slow down to 100kmh for that part. 🙂

We arrived at the Postojna caves first. Claire had told us about these caves (she visited both cave and castle when she was in Slovenia) and told us we had to go. And she told us about the train ride in the cave. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect (I had pictured one of those tourist trains of the type that drive around cities) but it turns out that the train – which is electric and travels on small gauge rails – is how you get into the main part of the cave. Its about an 8 minute ride, at a good clip, and goes through many different cave rooms impressive on their own (and according to the audio-guide used to be a one hour or so walk before the train was installed). But its only to get you to the start of your walking journey, which covers the most spectacular parts of the cave. It was by far the largest, longest, and striking cave I had been in. And I’ve been in some caves! Thousands of stalagmites, stalactites, curtains and other forms, along a one hour audio-guided walk. And the 10 degree temperature inside the cave was a nice respite from the heat.

After the caves, we drove the 9.5km up the winding road to the Predjama castle (arriving just in time for another downpour). This is a castle that has been built into the cliff face on the side of a mountain. Impressive and beautiful from the outside, the inside isn’t really much to shake a stick at. And the throng of tourists at this site (both here and the caves were very busy with tourists, unlike our time in Slovenia so far) didn’t really help much in enjoying the ambience. After these sites, we had a short stop in the town of Postojna for a refreshment, and then headed to Ljubljana to find our AirBnB, which will be our home base for the next five days. We’ve got the city to explore and some day trips out of the city planned. And there will probably be another castle or two.