Everything We Learned About Cycling in Slovenia

In September of 2023, my daughters and I headed out on a short cycling adventure through the beautiful country of Slovenia. This video summarizes our entire trip, discussing country in general, the route we took, the tour operator we used, and the highlights. If you have ever considered riding through Slovenia, this video can really help you get started.Happy trails!

Somewhere smack dead between eastern and western Europe lies a country that is absolutely perfect for bicycling in September of 2023 my daughters and I took off on a self-guided bicycle trip through the Republic of Slovenia in this video I’m going to talk about what our experience was like what our route was

Like the highlights the low lights things that you might be able to expect and also we used a tour operator this time and that was a little different I’ve never done that before and so I’d like to talk about some of the advantages and disadvantages of deciding

To go with a tour operator instead of creating our own self-contained route but first if you do like this video or if you like any of the other videos that we’ve done and you haven’t done so already do us a solid and go ahead and Crush that subscriber button or like or

Comment we would really appreciate it thanks okay let’s get on with it cycling in Slovenia starting with the topown view of the country itself slania is a small country in Central Europe at just under 8,000 square miles it’s about the size of New Jersey but something like a quarter of

The population its geographical position in the world means it has been the crossroads of Roman German and Slava cultures it’s bordered by Italy Croatia Hungary Austria and the Adriatic Sea Slovenia is a Slavic country and sloven is the official language but by some metrics slovenians are more likely to

Speak multiple languages than probably any other country in all of Europe we certainly found that speaking English was never a problem everybody seemed to be very very fluent the culture has been part of and has been shaped by the Roman Empire the byzantines the carolingians the Holy Roman Empire the Republic of

Venice the Napoleonic Empire the austr hungarians the Nazis in World War II Yugoslavia and finally finally in 1991 it became a free state as recently as World War II over 91% of slovenians considered themselves Catholic but it’s now much more secularized still remnants of slovenia’s religious background ground are

Everywhere in the country geographically it’s where four regions meet the Alps the dinner rides which is the mountain range reaching down the Adriatic coast of the Balan Peninsula the Hungarian plain to the East and the Mediterranean in case you are wondering what gives the country so much Variety

In such a relatively small space next to Finland and Sweden it’s the most densely forested nation in Europe our cycling route took us on a Meandering path through this amazing diverse geography we flew into lublana airport which is really closer to the town of Kon and from there we took a bus

To Lake bled quite possibly the most recognized tourist site in the country and for good reason from there our tour operator had us take a shuttle up to a pass in the Ulan Alps from which we rode through the spectacular triglav National Park a region not only of incredible

Scenery but also of Old World culture after a night in bohim Beka we rode on through the village of sorica and then down to the medieval village of scofa Loca the two days we spent riding through this region was an absolute highlight of our entire Journey with spectacular Alpine scenery at every

Turn leaving scof Loa we headed to nearby lublana slovenia’s capital but with less than 300,000 people one of Europe’s smallest we explored the lovely city center before heading west across the Luana Marsh an ancient Lake Bed and home to a treasure Trove of prehistoric human artifacts including the world’s oldest discovered wooden

Wheel we explored a canyon known as ishi vinar and Then followed a serpentine path through verica pooa across a finger of the denite Alps through the lovely towns of branik and devacha across a region known as the K plateau and down to the Adriatic Sea and into the sunny

Mediterranean climate the only night in Italy we spent was in the town of mua from there we followed the coastline Southward our route along the Adriatic was absolutely exceptional and along a beautiful and exceptionally well-maintained rail trail with amazing views of the sea at the end of our journey was the

Lovely Village of piran a spectacular end of the trip a relatively shorter cycling tour this route was without a doubt Exquisite mountains Plains forests ocean from sweeping Mountain Meadows to elegant and energetic City Vibes is toact a lot into nine short days of riding 9 days and 250

Mi no doubt cycling is huge here in Slovenia but those of you who are used to the excellent cycling infrastructure in Western Europe might be disappointed to find few off-road cycling paths and to be honest not that many roads with good shoulders however we found the drivers

To be very courteous and the conditions consistently safe in the higher Alps the roads were an extremely rough shape which kept our speed down rough road here all the way down actually but with scenery like this who wouldn’t want to slow down at least a little Of course we all brought home something different from this trip on our last afternoon the day before we flew home we asked each other what we got out of the trip so back when I was guiding for a Wilderness therapy company I was guiding backpacking trips and we’d finish up

Each day talking to the participants about the highlights and the challenges of the day and we had this cheesy little game that we’ called Rose Bud Thorn so you’d go around and share the rose bud and the thorn and the rose is like your highlight of the day and your Thorn is

Your challenge of the day or bud is something that you’re looking forward to like growing from out of that yeah that’s Rose Bud Thorn so what’s your rose of the whole lania trip I really liked spiking through like the alpen areas that was really cool and I also really enjoyed piran

That was really beautiful and I think just St put for a couple days felt really nice MH yeah that was nice what’s your Thorn oh um biking into Lana kind of sucked and then there was like 10 minutes of high wind biking on a busy highway getting into mugia muia yeah and

That sucked yeah I didn’t enjoy that yeah and then my bud bud um I’m excited to do more bike trip back at home in California when I get back yeah yeah now that I’m in semide decent shape how about you Bailey I would say my rose is in summary the clear water everywhere

Yeah so that would include the clear water at ishy vintgar the Clear Water here uh so many of the places where the water is just so clear and beautiful and that also includes the super clear water in the sea and Pon woke up and went swimming Before Dawn this morning and

See that was amazing so the Clear Water The Thorn would be all of the mosquito bites that I have so this is me taping up all of my mosquito bites so that I don’t itch them so they’ve been insane the last couple days The Thorn is just

The mosquitoes yeah that’s why I brought my tape and anti-itch cream but the bud I would say is that I’m really excited to go around and share the new phrases that I’ve learned in other languages I think I’ve learned a lot of really useful phrases in Slovenian uh first and foremost

Uh which of course means welcome to my ice cream Cave Castle and Kelsey is you know we haven’t been in Jack Republic but Kelsey taught me this one which is uh which means uh stick a finger down your throat and it just happens to be a phrase in check that uh involves no

Vowels so my my bud is learning some new useless phrases in other languages yeah nice okay so the rose what’s the rose for the trip boy there were so many roses so I’m going to default and say the variety you know being able to go from those really cool Huts up in the

Ulian Alps down through the Alps and every day seemed very very different until we reached piran it just seemed like every day had something very very special about it the Thorns um I felt like this being a self-guided tour through a an operator I will probably never do that

Again we had reasons for doing that but I think it would have made probably just as much sense to take our bikes to the bike stores and have them broken down and put on a plane working with the operator was kind of a hassle we kept having issues with that and not having

The freedom of just doing your own thing and working at your own pace and the bud is I hope we can to do a lot more bike tours together as a family even if it’s just little ones like two-day things or something close to where you guys live

Or that kind of thing but it’s so nice to be able to do these little trips uh with everybody I hope this isn’t the last one for a while but I hope we have a whole bunch more I’d love to see that there you go we definitely had some issues with this

Tour and the outfit that put it together for one thing if you’ve watched many of julianas and my bike tours you know that we generally like to ship our bikes put them back together and you know ride our own bikes on these tours but because of

The short time frame on this tour my daughters are working gals after all we felt that a self-guided tour and renting bikes would maximize our time writing and make the most of the short time that we had on this trip and eliminate the time and hassle of choosing our

Accommodations for the night also having our luggage transferred meant we could ride lighter and enjoy our time a little bit more all sounds good right but I particularly had real issues with my rental bike a bike that fits he was crucial to having a great time on a bike

Tour that’s why breaking down and shipping your own bike is worth the trouble but when you just don’t have a lot of time well it’s a lot of time lost I genuinely missed having my own bike but all things considered I think we made the right call on the rental bikes

For what it’s worth I was the only one who was really complaining as far as the route that the tour operator chose it was exceptional it would be hard to build a better route through this country especially side unseen it is true that sometimes they provided some confusing and conflicting

Information but overall we stayed in nice towns mostly in decent hotels and had a lot of good suggestions for EXP excursions like pajama grad and ishki vinar out of the way but outstanding from a routing standpoint the tour operator gets an a having our luggage sagged was a real

Treat for obvious reasons but on a couple of occasions it would have been really nice to have it with us or at least to have it arrive in time for us to get to the hotel sometimes it arrived late I guess that’s a first world problem but it can be kind of stressful

To not know where your stuff is at the end of the day also call me crazy but when I’m touring I like the comfort of having all my stuff with me with all of its advantages having our stuff sagged was not really to my taste the schedule

That they set up for us was reasonable but with a very rainy week we ended up riding in the rain more often than I typically would have the thing about going with this kind of setup is you know you’re riding when they tell you to ride and that’s not always a good thing

Then there is the cost we went with an outfit known as the natural Adventure it’s certainly not one of the more expensive tour operators out there which might explain the ill-fitting bike and the other issues we spent about $1,500 a piece for the bike rental for the bike

Tour for the hotels that’s $150 a day per person which is I think very reasonable by comparison someone like Tre travel they would charge $4500 a piece including a much much better bike rental no doubt but that’s just for5 nights that’s $900 a day per person back

Roads charges $5,500 to $6,000 for a similar tour her that’s $1,200 a day per person wow so for us it was comparatively inexpensive but how is it compared to doing it yourself you have to include in your comparison the cost of putting your bike on a plane for an

11-day Bike Tour and the time to put it all back together and hotels no no doubt we could have found our own hotels along the way and probably saved a little bit of money there so all told 10 nights of hotels and shipping your bike um I’d say that’d probably average

About $1,000 per person is so not a huge savings and obviously a lot less hassle and since it’s a short tour you know the costs just don’t add up that fast a month long tour would make this approach cost prohibitive but on a little trip like this it’s a bit of a bar

Especially if we had just gotten better bikes look in the end it was an incredible time and that’s what it’s all about and if I can ever convince my daughters or anyone else to take one of these short trips with me I’d do it in heartbeat but I would go with the tour

Operator again I would do a lot more due diligence on the bikes but I think I’d go with the tour operator again with a few minor exceptions it was a perfect trip Slovenia was an an absolutely amazing place to ride I can’t begin to tell you how much we enjoyed this amazing

Country and even though we encountered a lot of weather on this trip it was full of incredible memories incredible moments and of course great bonding if you’re thinking about the next place you want to go for a bicycling vacation get Slovenia up there on that list it is

Spectacular and if you want to get a slightly deeper dive into what writing through Slovenia is like check out our series on cycling in Slovenia if you haven’t already it’ll definitely give you a good sense of what to expect and hopefully entertain you along the way until then no VI and stretch No