Chocolate
Green Slovenia is such a chocolate box of a little central European country that it is seems perfectly understandable to demand some decent choccy on your adventures here!
Well, if you know where to look you can find some really decent hand made choccy here and also capture the incredible imagination, spirit and flair of those talented local people who make it..
But you DO need to know where to look, as the choccy does not grow on trees here in the third most forested country in Europe!
We are so lucky to have found the most beautiful small Green country in Europe, built a Lodge between the mountains & the sea and now spend our time helping visitors find the best Green bits, whilst exploring extensively ourselves too!
We are quite tenacious in finding new secret places and this will bring you huge results in a country packed from tip to toe in Green places.. If you go the extra mile or explore a little further around the corner here, you will almost always find something green & groovy!
A Brief History of Chocolate..
But we have to tell you that ten years ago when we opened the first Lodge in Slovenia, we had almost given up completely on finding any decent choccy in a country packed with medieval towers, castles and bee hives, making the best honey you can find!
We tried.. We found a very underwhelming factory shop in one of the traditional chocolate makers here and this dull experience was exactly where we pretty much gave up on ever having a Chocolate section on this website!
But the rule is, never give up in Green Slovenia.. Keep exploring and you will find something unexpected.. (in the case of chocolate.. expected).. as we would absolutely expect to find chocolate makers here in Green Paradise!
You might have heard of tourist hotspots like Bled, Piran or Postojna, but the catalyst for the Slovenian Choccy revolution came in a stunning little medieval town just down the road from Bled called RADOVLICA.. (but we will call it RADOLCA, like the locals do, from now on)!
We have witnessed first hand over the years how the wonderful people at the Radolca TIC (Tourist Info Centre) and the local people have really made their Old Town welcoming and accessible to visitors.. a place us tourists can find a little bit of that medieval magic that we dream about before and absolutely expect to find when we come here to Green Slovenia!
In Radolca old town centre there is a restaurant with a cellar producing gingerbread, a micro museum of Alchemy, several new gift shops selling local products and wait for it, Boys & Girls, Ladies & Gentlemen.. a proper Chocolate factory!!
These kind of innovations might seem obvious to you for encouraging tourism in your own country, but believe us, Radolca is quite exceptional in Slovenia and deserves all the credit they can get.. and please, at least a visit from you on your hollibubbles here!!
The lady who opened the chocolate factory was also instrumental in setting up the fantastically successful Slovenian Chocolate Festival, which takes place every April in the main park next to the Medieval High Street..
The whole town is buzzing from top to bottom with chocoholics and talented chocolate makers from all over Slovenia..
So we are happy to announce that the future of chocolate in Green Slovenia is safe and blossoming!
Where to Find the Choccy Makers in Green Slovenia..
So now we will open the Slovenian chocolate box of delights and help you find some of these amazing choclatiers scattered around the place..
Make a note where they are, cos if you are doing what you should be to get the best out of Green Slovenia, then you will travelling around the Green bits from Waterfall to Mountain to Lake to Coast and so you can pop in to visit a chocolate maker along the way and buy some choccies!
Radolca (Radovlica).. Radolska Cokolada
Of course, we have to start in the capital of Slovenian chocolate!
And the best way by far to get the biggest choccy hit of all is to rock up in April at the Radolca Chocolate Festival and let all the producers come to you!
You would need to check the Radolca TIC website to find out the exact weekend date each year for the festival, usually in April, but just imagine a huge tent full of chocolate and you will not be too far from the truth!
For the rest of the year, just go to the start of the pedestrianised high street, by the roundabout with a chocolate sofa in the middle and the Chocolate shop/factory is there in the corner!
The shop is called Radolska Cokolada and you can see chocolate being made there and buy it too. There are sadly no oompah loompahs, as far as we could see, but otherwise you will get the full choccy experience here!
Please note they are closed on Mondays, so don't be disappointed!
Radovlica is just under an hour from the Lodge and the old town is so nice we always hotly tip it to our guests who are spending the day in Bled or Lake Bohinj to just pop over to visit Radolca old town afterwards for maybe a bite to eat, a nice stroll around.. and now some chocolate.. or gingerbread on the way home!
Adjective (Ajdovscina).. Erilo Coffee Shop
You can see why we simplify the name of the largest town in the Vipava Wine Valley to Adjective as the real Slovenian name is close to impossible for visitors to say!
We actually stumbled upon the Erilo cafe one time, actually just going in for a coffee and were totally amazed and shocked to see the fantastic array of choccy creations made here!
It is safe to say that Adjective is not the prettiest town in Green Slovenia, when viewed from the motorway with lots of ugly industrial units on the edge, but do not be put off by this as there is a Roman heritage to the old town, with a very large (for Slovenia) renovated square, some Roman towers, a castle and if you follow the road up the main river Huberlj you can find a secret oasis where you can swim!
So you just need to get past the modern bit of the town to the old square with a stunning 1,000m high mountains backdrop and find the choccy cafe!
Erilo is actually the closest chocolate maker to the Lodge, just around the corner in the Green Vipava Valley, which has so much Green nature to see, there is a very strong chance you will be visiting there during your time here in any case!
In our humble opinion, the Vipava Valley is the very best place in all Green Slovenia to eat out and enjoy a glass of wine and that is saying something..
The main business is the cafe, so usually open, but go inside for a cuppucino and you will find glass cabinets full of a mind boggling collection of different creations!
There are honeycomb chocolate bars, lollipops, specialist chocolate boxes and a bizarre collection of chocolate tools that look exactly like the real thing!
The lady who makes these wonderful creations also made us some handmade Easter Eggs and we just cannot speak highly enough of how talented she is!
Velenje.. Lucifer
It would be a wonderful challenge to have to decide your favourite chocolate producer in Green Slovenia and it would take a lot to beat a glass jar full of the mango or honey flavoured chocolate balls from Lucifer!
In those desolate days of the chocolate desert, (read carefully here not dessert, but the yellow sandy thing), where we just couldn't find any decent chocolate makers, one of our very first rays of hope came from finding Lucifer.
They actually sell their chocolate all over Slovenia, but often in the most unexpected places, but if you do see it on sale on your adventures, just scoop it up!
We first found those amazing chocolate balls and a box of Lucifer honey chocolates in a local gift shop and were really delighted to find out these were made in Slovenia!
So much so.. (we did say we really tried to find chocolate makers), we did a special adventure to Velenje, an ex socialist looking mining new town with a really fab castle, fantastic coal mine tour and surprisingly good lake area for watersports and swimming, (reclaimed from heavy industry when part of the mine was closed and flooded.).
So of course we made sure we visited those special places too, but the main part of our mission was to find the cafe that Lucifer called HQ and see what other stuff they make!
If you also wanted to see with your own eyes and stroll around a really socialist looking town from old Yugoslavia then we would say Velenje and Nova Gorica are good ones to have a nose around.
Velenje in particular is one of those concrete block Socialist creations built after WW2 to house a lot of mine workers, with grand open squares and wide spaces..
To find Lucifers, you need to get into the town shopping centre and ask about 5 different people until one of them sends you the correct way to a very pleasant cafe that also serves mighty fine cakes!
Inside you will find all the Lucifer creations, so if you fancy doing a castle, a mine, a swim and some chocolate in one amazing day, then Velenje might be the alternative choice for a very different, but fabulous day out in Green Slovenia!
Velenje might also be the closest place you will get to oompah lumpas in Slovenia as crazily, there is a huge basement exhibition of African Pigmy shields at the castle!
Podcetrtek.. Cokoladnica Olimje.. also in Piran, Celje, Kranj & Maribor..
This is another unique Slovenian chocolate producer that we kinda found by mistake when we were exploring the eastern Wine region that makes Blue Frankinja wine.
The local town is called Podcetrtek, which is more of a mouthful than a chocolate truffle, but actually only means Thursday village! You will be pleased to know that Wednesday village, Podsreda, is also close by, so the names are something to do with market day or tax collection day!
One of the main reasons to visit around here is the famous spa at Olimje..
We have to tell you that on this website, we only mention the really amazing stuff that we think is better or really different to what you may have to do & see at home.. So it is a no brainer to fill our pages with Green Slovenian waterfalls, lakes, mountains, rivers, caves, castles and all the rest of it..
But look and you will NOT find a section on Slovenian spas on our website, cos frankly we are not yet convinced they are any better here than what you have at home, so we are not gonna tip stuff like that just for the sake of it, cos it would be bad advice in our humble opinion!
We sincerely hope we are wrong and we can tell you local people rave about the spas here, but we have been to a few and when you see past the hot bubbles, we were underwhelmed at what is on offer..
We are keeping an eye on the situation and our guests have told us about a couple of amazing spas that we do need to try out, but they go onto our long list to do, with all the other new castles, caves and river springs that we still want to find and tell you about!
Chocolate certainly deserves it's place in our Daytrips section and Podcetrtek is a lovely little town right on the border with Croatia.. There are even some vineyards here half in Slovenia and half in Croatia!
They have a particular kind of wine cellar here too, carved from the wet sandstone, so the cellar walls are soft and damp even dripping a bit and very different to the other wine regions in Green Slovenia, but very special indeed.
We have a good French friend who visited with us and he told us these cellars specifically reminded him of a French wine region, but we forget the name.. maybe you will know?
But our biggest surprise in this mini region was to find a whole house full of chocolate at the very end of a very pretty road with bike paths and hiking all over the place..
Cokoladnica Olimje make their own choccy and their cottage factory is like an Aladdins cave of chocolate treasures.. So go rub the lamp and see what you can find there!
5 Olimje hand made Choccy Shops around Slovenia!
And there is more good news about Olimje as they have 5 shops scattered around Green Slovenia for you to get access to their delicious Choccies..
Maybe you won't get out to the East to visit the converted school in Podcetrtek where they make all their choccies, but their are 4 more shops to find on your adventures and this is where they are..
The most likely Olimje shop you will find is in the far corner of Tartini Square in Piran.. so when you walk towards the big Venetian church from the sea..
The signage is a bit dodgy in Piran, but do go inside and you will find the interior is decced out just like the original shop in Podcetrtek.. a huge tresure trove of choccy, with a great choice of hand made choccies..
We recommend you decide on a box size, small medium or large and then you get to choose which chocolates go inside!!
The other Olimje shops are in KRANJ old town, CELJE old town and MARIBOR and you can see by which one of these larger towns has had its own article written about it by us as to which one we would recommend you go to visit!
Hot Chocolate Alert..
Not the pop group, they were really good too! But we wanted to take time out for a little interlude from the chocolate producers to tell you how fantastically good the hot chocolate is here in Green Slovenia!
Local people don't seem to be interested in hot chocolate in the summer, but when winter comes it is like a light switches on and you will see people enjoying a big glass of white or brown hot chocolate with a big dollup of cream on top!
But you can get hot chocolate in most cafes here during the whole year, so don't be shy to order one in summer if you fancy, even if the waiter looks at you a bit odd and do not forget to ask for that big spoonful of cream on top!
If you have been hiking or biking and need the sugar rush then a hot chocolate will certainly do the job at any time of year and once the other cafe customers have got over the shock of seeing a wierd foreigner drinking a hot choccy in the summer, the looks will turn to mild envy as you get the cream on your nose and slurp that choccy down!
Brestanica Castle.. Chocolate Making Monks
There are a lot of fantastic castles all over Green Slovenia in many different shapes, sizes and condition and we need to tell you that most are a much better castle visit experience than just trudging round Ljubljana castle like a robot for the view!
Brestanica castle is totally worth a tour, high up above the Sava river and once owned by a bunch of French monks who guess what.. were really good at making choccy!
So much so, their products were exported all over Europe and you can find out more about them, see the moulds and stuff like that on display in the castle tour..
But even better than that there is a little chocolate shop just across from the massive castle doors!
If you combined a castle visit here with another fantastic castle tour just a bit further upriver at Sevnica where those monks were rather good at making wine and honey, then you have pretty much hit the Green Slovenian jackpot of an unbelievable day out by the river, with castles and unique local Slovenian products galore.. Bingo!
Ljubljana..
The Big Smoke does not need any more help to grab visitors from some of the Greener places, but it is only fair we mention some mighty fine chocolate shops we found in one of the prettiest capital cities in Europe!
We are most interested in drawing your attention to chocolate created in Green Slovenia, so we are not completely sure these shops make the choccy themselves, but if you are walking the carless central city streets and spot one of these fantastic choccy shops, then how could you resist!
Inevitably there are lots of chocolate producers popping up in Green Slovenia all the time and we will add any new ones we find to this page.
We did meet at least three more very talented choclatiers at the last Radolca Chocolate Festival, but they either did not have premises where you, the visitor could go meet them and try their chocolate or they only sold online and in Slovene, so not much cop for us tourists!
Hopefully that situation will change as these guys were dotted in other fantastic strategic locations around Green Slovenia..
the Chocolate Factory in the basement of the Continental hotel, Opatija..
Just one hour 10 mins from the Lodge in Croatian Istria is a fantastic place by the sea with a long walk to work off the choccy you may well eat in the amazing chocolate factory in the basement of a big colourful hotel in the pretty Croatian resort of Opatija!
Yes Ladies and Gentlrmen, Boys and Girls, if you would like to try some Croatian choccy on your Green Slovenian adventures, then how abot popping down to the Croatian seaside for a daytrip and walking along the lovely Lungomare promenade which goes for 12km along the Adriatic seaside between Volosko, Opatija and Lovran!
The main town on this route is Opatija, packed with bright yellow and terracotta hotels looking like something out of a Victorian murder mystery movie..
For the choccy, just find the Continental hotel on the far left side of the seafront and go down into the basement which has a chocolate making factory and all sorts of different choccy goodies for you to choose from!
The Lungomare is an amazing pathway, created by an emperor, all along the coast, often high up above the crystal clear water, dotted with little gates and steps down to concrete beaches built into the rocks..
Anyway, after that little choccy flurry into Croatia, the world is finally back in order and chocolate making is alive and well here in the centre of Europe..
We sincerely hope you get your chocolate fix here, even if it is 30 degrees when you rock up on your hollibubbles, so make sure it doesn't melt!
French Connection en Slovenie
