About Us
It took just one trip for us to fall in love with Green Slovenia and decide to find a location for Lipizzaner Lodge.
We then spent several years visiting and selecting our perfect spot. One day, driving through the village of Landol, we just had to pull over and stop when we saw the stunning view of Nanos mountain from an overgrown plot of land with a derelict farmhouse. We had found our dream location and had space for a guest house and horses!
Landol is surrounded by beautiful countryside and leafy lanes, but is so close to so many places to visit, including Slovenia's biggest tourist attractions and many smaller ones you might not yet know about. Why not check out some of the amazing secret places we have found on our Secret Places to Visit page!
Even we can't quite believe our luck in how we found the very best location here for you to use as a base camp to discover Green Slovenia, Italy and Croatia.. please also check out our Secret Places to Visit Treasure Map to see how well positioned we really are.
You might be pleasantly surprised to know, for example, that you can easily have a full day out in Venice, a return trip down to the Croatian coast , or a round trip over the Vrsic Pass to the lakes from Lipizzaner Lodge! There are nearby gorges, disappearing lakes, caves, waterfalls, secret tracks, rivers, coast, castles and mountains just waiting for you to explore!
We think we identified a really big gap in the Slovenian market for an international standard B&B, more like an hotel than a tourist farm, but in the countryside and offering all the comforts you would expect on holiday.
Our central logistical position in Slovenia and perfect location close to the main motorways and hundreds of options for day activities, makes Lipizzaner Lodge the ideal place from which to really get to know this beautiful little country, right in the centre of Europe.
We have also noticed from our many trips here before as visitors just like you and now actually living here, that it can be very difficult for a tourist to really discover Slovenia's best kept secrets.
So we are dedicated to help you to do this with as little or as much help as you want! We can assist with planning your own daytrips and if you prefer, we can put you in the safe hands of a friendly local guide, who will take delight in helping you enjoy and discover so much more nature and uncover secrets you could never find by yourselves!
We know from our own world travels that people like a blend of doing active "stuff", visiting new places, trying out new activities, but also need good options to relax and enjoy the holiday downtime, so "Relaxtivity" is a central theme for Lipizzaner Lodge.
If you are interested, a little bit more About Us
Chris is Welsh and Hanna is Finnish, we met last century close to London working for the large US corporation 3M in the Finance Department. But neither of us wanted to spend our whole lives sat behind a desk and we had a dream to travel and someday to have a guest house and cafe somewhere lovely in the world.
During 2005 -2006 we took a year off from our jobs in the UK and travelled around the world, (see the 2 pictures of familiar places below). We visited 21 different countries during that time and got some really good ideas about what we wanted to do in our own small hotel.
We remembered the small homely things that we really liked from staying in a new place every couple of days during that year. For example, a few places we stayed at had a cinema room and we loved the idea that you could have a great day out and then in the evening just chill watching a film of your choice in a cinema environment.
We knew we would do this hotel project at some time, so when we saw something unusual or pretty during our year travelling, we put it in a box and sent it home.. we did pay for the item first!
We have decorated the guest rooms at Lipizzaner Lodge with some things we sent back from our favoutite places, so we have rooms with themes from Guatemala, Thailand, Bolivia, Finland and Australia.
This is also how we accumulated our collection of over 30 chess sets from around the world. We noticed in Guatemala that the local chess board was very different to the standard British set, with Mayan Indians against Spanish Conquestadores, horses against Llamas.
So in each country we visited, we found a local chess set and sent it home to make a collection you can now see at Lipizzaner Lodge.
Probably like you, we knew next to nothing about Green Slovenia. By chance we met a couple of lovely Slovenian girls in Australia who told us how beautiful this country was and how much there was to do here.
So when we returned from travelling, we took a long weekend trip to Slovenia and just like so many other first timers to the most beautiful country in Europe, we visited the coast, Lipica, Ljubljana and the Postojna caves, but that was enough to realise that this was exactly the right place in the world for us.
Hanna loves horses and our dream was to have a stables and horses, so we were very excited to find that the main stud for Lipizzaner horses in the world is located here in Lipica, south west Slovenia. Having seen these beautiful animals perform for the Spanish Riding School we knew they were a special breed.
We noticed there was not much quality accomodation for people wanting to see Lipizzaners, so it was also logical we should locate somewhere close to Lipica.
And so we returned again and again to Slovenia to research and find our perfect location... Quite simply, an old farmhouse with a bit of land.
We started looking near the coast, but soon realised that this area is dedicated towards wine production, which is great, but made it very easy to find an old farmhouse, but not with some land attached.
As said, we wanted to be very close to Lipica, so we moved our search slightly inland towards Postojna and realised immediately that this location was perfect for us.
This part of Slovenia has more farmland and is perfect for horses and better stiill, because it is 30 minutes further up from the coast, it means the rest of Green Slovenia is perfectly accessible, so our guests could have even more choice of places to visit easily for a daytrip during their stay.
So we decided we would be between the mountains and the Coast!
And after a lot of searching we found the ideal spot in the quiet village of Landol. An old farmhouse with some land and the most amazing view of the start of the Dinarics mountain range and Mt Nanos.
We also discovered lots of local stone tracks leading from the village into the countryside and one even leading just 40 minutes directly to one of Slovenia's top tourist attractions, Predjama castle! We really had found the perfect spot!
To cut a long story short, over the next few years, we made lots of local contacts, were very lucky to make some very good friends and also applied for a European grant to help fund the project, we got it and started to build Lipizzaner Lodge!
We originally wanted to save the old farmhouse, but it was in such bad condition and derelict, so we had no choice but to design and build a new bigger building.
We kept the traditional shape and features of the old house and added some extra features that were important to us. In fact some people don't believe this is a new house when we tell them how new it is!
We put solar panels on the roof to soak up the very sunny days we get here, even in Winter. We wanted the rooms to be spacious and warm so we chose underfloor heating with no radiators getting in your way.
For the showers. we wanted very large walk in glass cabinets with space to wash yourself and a flat stone floor, so there is nothing to hit your toe on!
We built a big car park with flat wide spaces to make it easy for you to park your hire car. We included a cinema room, and of course, with Hanna being Finnish, we had to have a Finnish sauna next to our massage room!
We chose balconies and terraces to soak up the sun that we knew would flow through our south facing windows, (because we had seen this feature in the old farmhouse).
In the meantime, we continued our careers in the UK to help fund the project and also took qualifications in massage, web design and cooking to prepare ourselves to look after you!
We opened officially end August 2013 and have been absolutely delighted with the interest and lots of lovely people from all over the world who have stayed with us already. In fact it feels a bit like we are travelling again!.
As more people discover the magic and secrets of Slovenia, we are starting to get the message out there that this is an amazing place to explore and where better to base yourself than here at the Lodge!
We are really enjoying our new life here helping to introduce people who love Green nature to the Green Nuggets in this amazing little country.
And we still keep finding amazing new Secret Green Places to find all over the place!
TIMELINE of what stuff we have done at the Lodge..
Our first phase was building the hotel, opened end 2013, with six rooms, being 4 large en-suite guest rooms, 1 family suite, a spacious self-catering apartment and an all day cafe, sauna, massage and cinema room with choice of loads of films & books to borrow. Phase 2 was the completion of a large stables building opposite, (on land that had housed horses many years ago), finished in 2014.
We opened 2 new terraces in our garden in 2015.. We also started our beloved hand made wooden guest library on the middle floor, stuffed full of jolly good holiday reads for you to enjoy!
We finally achieved one of our greatest dreams in 2016, finishing 2 stables and a sand covered paddock arena and also organised some fields to welcome our very own Lipizzaners, Gaetana and Gandalf. At last Lipizzaner Lodge was graced with Lipizzaners! (Read more about them in our BLOG )
In 2017 we opened another new suite in our Relax Roof with a luxury double bedroom, private lounge area, uberluxury shower & wet room and sauna! This has proved very popular with romantic couples!
We also built a secret hidden terrace outside in the garden where you might find a giant's bench for a giant view to Nanos, Slovenia's last mountain before Italy and the Mediteranean.
In 2018 we made another secret terrace in the garden and increased our Riding school arena to full size, putting a wooden fence around it all!
Now another dream has been fulfilled and we often see big and little guests having riding lessons on a Lipizzaner, with that stunning mountain in the background! We finished two hillside grandstand benches for you to sit and enjoy watching the horses being trained.
We also switched to having NO plastic bottles available on sale, so all our GLASS bottles could be properly recycled.
In 2019 we created 5 more new terraces hidden all over the garden for you to relax in outside, some sunny, some shady.. now we have more terraces than rooms!
We also opened our brand new exciting air conditioned Stable One self catering apartment.. We built it into our stables building and it offers extra possibilities for guests. Your bedroom is actually in the old stable 1.. downstairs there is a lounge, kitchen, washing machine and bathroom. And the kids have to find a secret spiral staircase hidden behind a secret door and an entire secret room to go up to their secret bedroom in the barn!
Now we could really offer a room choice for everyone at the Lodge! Stable One also has a private terrace outside and another private balcony upstairs!
Also in 2019 and very importantly for us, we covered most our sunny stables roof with 32 solar panels and we also installed a huge 12,000 litre water tank underground to use the rain water from the stable roof! Inside the Lodge, we also completed our library, so some rooms now have the feeling of opening out into a library instead of a hallway!
The environment has always been a big motivation for us and in 2020 we published a new web page called "Go Green" where we give visitors to Slovenia as much info about having as carbon neutral a holiday here as possible, including how to rent an elec car, elec bikes and how to recharge them on your travels!
We also put our money where our mouth is and installed 2 overnight ELEC car rechargers for guests to juice up on the Slovenian sunshine! We are very excited about this and hope more guests will either drive their own E Car here on holiday or rent an E Car when you get here!
In 2021 we finished our "Owlery for retired Owls and aspiring Owlets", which is a big treehouse for kids and big kids! We also built a barbeque under our large Lipizzaner terrace roof, so we can offer a more relaxed food option a couple of times a week.
We also built a new shaded terrace out of wood from our own forest called the "Garden Box" as it is covered on 3 sides and the roof with forest branches, but the front is completely open with a private garden view to mt Nanos!
We also completey covered our stables roof with additional solar panels to ensure we are now over 100% energy efficient, using ONLY the power we create from the plentiful sunshine we get here on the sunny side of the Alps.. something we are very proud of.
Into the Twenties..
We will develop our Rockvelo Hub, a partnership with the top E Bike rental firm in Slovenia, Rockvelo from the nearby Vipava Valley. It means our guests have access to top quality E Bikes and fab local routes to explore a lot further from the Lodge AND without a car!
We have now finished our own purpose built BIKE HUT for the E Bikes and now have 4 on site with access to how ever many more you may need!
We have added lots of hammock spaces around the garden too, so you can hang around in your favourite spot.. our next garden project is simple.. to build a waterfall.. then we will have the only waterfall in Landol!
There is so much demand now from families to come stay at the Lodge, especially in the summer, that we opened a third apartment, the Lipizzaner Loft, to offer another possibility for guests to come enjoy, relax and explore Green Slovenia!
We are absolutely delighted that visitors are getting our messages about the secret Green delights of Slovenia and are staying for longer & longer at the Lodge and at all times during the year too..
This way you will get more chance to see so much more from our comfy little base between the mountains and the sea!
And finally, here are a couple of pictures below of the original house we found and that incredible view that we first fell in love with...