How to Get the Best out of this Website!
Thanks for finding our little website, we hope it can be handy helping you discover and plan your Green Slovenia adventures whizzing around the most beautiful small country in Europe.. one that you had probubbly never heard much about before!!
This site has grown to reflect our love of exploring this pocket rocket of a country, INCLUDING the surrounding bits in nearby Istria (Croatia) & North Italy!
There are TWO main raison d'etres for this site..
Firstly & probubbly most obviously, to tell you all about our Lodge, what we have to offer and why we made sure we found the very best location for Guests to explore all the best bits in Green Slovenia & around from one comfy base camp..
But secondly, we noticed there is such a huge lack of simple, good quality info in English, both on the internet AND on the local signs & local info, to tell you about the MASSIVE choice of secret Green things to do & stuff to see around here..
So we will explain and provide links below to some of the Sections and Pages on this website that are written specifically to help YOU!
There is no shortage of info (good & bad) written by wide eyed visitors who might have only stayed in Green Slovenia for just a few days, but still seem shockingly capable of creating a top five or even a top ten, which almost ALWAYS consist of those SAME world class places you might have even heard about and possibubbly be the reason you switched on your attention to Slovenia in the first place..
BUT take it from a couple lucky enough to have lived & explored here for close to 20 years now, who are from countries and backgrounds EXACTLY like you.. that there is A LOT MORE WORLD CLASS STUFF around here with next to nobody around, stellar places, which in our humble opinion are EVEN BETTER than those best known ones that tend to dominate the tinternet..
And OF COURSE you should go see Lake Bled, (60 mins from the Lodge), Ljubljana, (30 mins), the Postojna Cave (10 mins) and Piran (45 mins).. if you have time.. maybe after checking out this website first!
You see, Green Slovenia is so uniquely small and so uniquely packed with other stunning Green places that if you truely give this country the amount of time it deserves, get your pre planning right and do not waste time messing about hopping from hotel to hotel or town to town, then you can find a way to mix ALL that is wonderful about Europe into your hollibubbles in just one little pretty package.. with a cherry on top!!
We believe there is no better place in Europe to do such a Green holiday, packed with surprises & adventures, history & culture and absolutely GET THE LOT.. lakes, rivers, castles, caves, seaside AND amazing food & wine!!
It is NOT an "EITHER - OR" decision.. it is simply a question of what YOU want to do here and then how you get your logistics right..
You really can have a holiday you might not have thought still possible in Europe with such a mixture of waterfalls, wine regions, mountains and coast in multiple epic daytrips WITHOUT RUSHING AROUND cos this country is really so rinky dinky tiny and the distances between places are so diddly tiddly small!
So we also dedicated this website to helping you navigate and CHOOSE what will work for you.. We know from over a decade of hosting guests from all over the world that everyone is different, but equally, almost everyone is shocked at even how much more beautiful Green Slovenia really is when you get here AND how much of it you can easily see directly from our Lodge, nestled between the mountains and the coast!
We make no apology that there is A LOT OF STUFF to tell you about and now we will explain how we have neatly arranged our tiddly website so you can quickly find what you need or browse the unknown to dig up a few Green nuggets of your own for your trip!
A few final little extra tips to get the best out of this website..
We understand that most people use phones to browse now, but almost all of the photos on this site are real ones taken by us, the rest by our guests, so we recommend you try to use an Ipad or computer to get a taste of the best possible wide view vision of what you can expect to see here..
But even photos cannot do the beauty of this country justice as the panoramas go on and on beyond the camera lens, so the next best option to actually being here is videos..
We decided NOT to put videos on this website cos they can be distracting to the info that you need to know.. we prefer to use an expert site to host hundreds of those videos we have taken over the years from all our adventures all over Green Slovenia and you can find these on TIKTOK (we bypassed Facebook and Instagram a bit), just search for the name GREENSLOVENIAMONKEY.
(Ask your kids to look up GREENSLOVENIAMONKEY and apologies for the mainly 80's and 90's music we added to the vids, but flick around and you will unearth some spectacular and secret panoramas of so many of the Green wonders you can get to see around here)!
We should also mention one very special page you can find in our Daytrips section called SENSE SLOVENIA where we give it a go to encapsulate and explain how ALL your senses will be bombarded and tickled with loveliness when you get here for real, so deffo have a read of that one!
OK, finally to the title of this blog.. How to get the best out this Website.. with clickable links that go directly to the Section or Page you might need..
About the Lodge..
In our HOME, ROOMS and ABOUT US sections you can find out all you need to know about what we have to offer and which room or apartment might be best for you.
Other Sections & Pages that can really help you discover Green Slovenia..
The rest of this website is dedicated to helping you get the best holiday, like we said, one you might not have even realised you could still have in Europe, so please make sure you have a good look around using the toolbar and list of Sections & Pages..
We are NOT trying to overwhelm you, but there really are so very many secret places to tell you about.. The Secret Places to Visit section is our "magazine" for you to leaf through and find a few secret places to visit, to ask about or combine into your schedule.
Every year we are still adding new secret places that we find ourselves or following tip offs from our own army of guests, so the number of places is easily over 150 now with more to come.. We have explored EVERY secret place included here ourselves and they are all reachable from our fantastic Lodge location..
We sometimes get guests who pop to Venice or Austria for the day, but even these are within a 2 hour drive from here and Istria in Croatia is much closer than that too, so we are not "fixated" here on just Green Slovenia secret places.. (it just happens they are the most beautiful)!
In the knowledge that you can reach all of these treasures from the Lodge in shorter or longer daytrips, either by car, bike or foot, the idea is you skim through the Secret Places to Visit boxes and check out the photos and titles for something that might tickle your fancy, then read the article.
There is absolutely NO order to these boxes, although we do tend to leave the newest articles or those secret places we have revisited near the top..
So it is really important for you to know that YOUR SPECIAL SECRET PLACE(S) may be the first, middle or last box, so please do try to have a good look through them top to bottom.. or bottom to top!
Another very helpful section indeed we hope, should be Daytrips..
A massive mistake made by pretty much every publication or reviewer is to try to compartmentalise Slovenia like other larger countries into regions.. where you stay a few days in each region or area and then move on to the next dot..
But that is total nonsense for exploring Slovenia as it is so small & easy to get around that the weather or traffic or what you fancy doing today is a far more important factor in your logistics AND with respect, the regions are just names, many of which you will have trouble saying, let alone memorizing!
So we have organised another set of handy boxes NOT by region, cos you can easily get to ALL of these places directly from the Lodge, but by TYPE of activity or place..
So if you want to know more & have a bit more choice about stuff you might expect to find here like CAVES or CASTLES or LAKES then select that mini section in the knowledge that the WATERFALL or GORGE or SWIMMING you might like to know more about will be reachable as part of your daytrip adventure!
It doesn't matter which castle, cave or vineyard takes your fancy and you want to go visit, cos each one is possible to fit into a daytrip or half daytrip directly from the Lodge and it is also easy to mix in other secret places into each day!
Also expect to find some very unexpected & really exciting Catergories that might interest you.. for example we have noticed that Slovenia has a unique collection of FORTRESS CHURCHES, HILL TOP VILLAGES or TOWERS!
And what about discovering Slovenia's UNIQUE SECRET WW2 HOSPITALS, DISAPPEARING LAKES or knowing cool places to find CHOCOLATE!
Almost every DAYTRIP box will also include a few suggestions that are also reachable from the Lodge over the unmanned borders of Italy or Croatia, so do not make the mistake of complicating & organising your European trip by country either, it is just not necessary, especially if you want to focus mainly on Green Slovenia and have a daytrip or two popping over a paper border to get an extra taste of Istria or Italy into the bargain!
At the foot of every page you can also click on our TREASURE MAP which has EVERY SECRET PLACE to visit organised by geography, so like Captain Jack Sparrow, you can see EXACTLY where they all are!
We call it a treasure map cos it really does feel like you need a Pirates map to help you find all the buried treasure around here and now for another little secret..
You can get an idea of which places we would put in our very own TOP 30 or 40 or 50 by looking for the Golden Eggs, but equally this means nothing, cos ALL the Golden Eggs, Treasure Chests and X Marks the Spots are amazing in their own way and it is up to you to decide which ones you might personally prefer!
Just find a treasure that looks interesting and click on it further to go to that SECRET PLACE to VISIT article.. simples!
You could use our treasure map to help you plan your logistics or just to search out new hidden gems.. One thing is for sure in Green Slovenia, wherever you go, you will not be far from a whole stack of other secret treasures, often buried right under your nose!
You can find stuff on all the other things you could get up to in the rest of our ACTIVITIES section, depending on what you might like to do, whether it be bikng, hiking, horses, drinking wine, etc etc.
Most guests like to do a bit of everything of course, but even keen cyclists might not realise how amazing Slovenia is for biking, especially with E Bikes, so we have our own special E BIKE Section to explain about our E Bikes to rent and all the really amazing bike routes you could do from the Lodge!
You could also easily bike or E bike or hike around here every day for just a few hours a day, every single day of the week or more, directly from the Lodge and STILL get to go out before or after each adventure to explore other secret places in Green Slovenia..
Lots of OTHER STUFF..
The main message of this blog is to convey how much info is available to you in this website.
We love to help guests plan their days and logistics when they arrive, based on what you tell us you like to do and what we might see you might like to do and not yet know about!
But in the meantime we hope our website can help to inform you before you hit Slovenia and find out too late you need way more days & there is a lot more to see than just an idyllic lake, a small pretty city and a big cave with a choo choo train.
Our most recent BLOGS sit on the bottom of the main front page and we have written lots of other blogs on all sorts of general subjects over the years to help get the message across what a COMPLETLEY unique place Green Slovenia is to explore and that every corner of this country has a different mini region that will also give you deja vue for some of the other best countries to visit in Europe.
One day we will do our own Top 10 places, but the problem is there are just SO MANY top tenners here that our our Top ten would need to include at least 50! So for the moment the best clues will be in our Treasure Map..
There will be the odd joke or two and deliberate misspelling to suffer along the way, but hollibubbles are all about having a bit of fun aren't they?
And we have written so many articles now that it is impossible to keep each one completely up to date, we do revisit them, but we try not to write prices for example, but you should know that Green Slovenia is incredibly good value for such high quality Green venues, ambiance and the sensational food & wine you will get..
Indeed, probubbly the only two places actually priced correctly here are the Postojna Cave and Predjama castle, generally, everything else is underpriced compared to your country..
Just imagine how long the queues and how expensive the tickets would be if ANY of these amazing world class Slovenian castles, caves, gorges, lakes, hill top villages, mountains, vineyards, beaches and rivers were in your country and you will truely realise just how ridiculously lucky you are to have them all in one place here!
It is incredibly humbling, joyous and amazing to get calls, mails and feedback from people from all over the world who found our website useful..
And while Green Slovenia continues to be the biggest Green Secret in Europe that many people have still not even heard about.. our mission humbly continues!!
French Connection en Slovenie