In October 2024 we visited Slovenia for a 10 day holiday. Slovenia occupies a small corner of Europe to the south of Austria, and was previously the most northern state in Yugoslavia. The most interesting area for photographers is the north-western corner bordering Austria to the north and Italy to the west, which is where the Julian Alps are located. Here the scenery and villages have more in common with Austria rather than the other Balkan states to the south.
We flew to Venice airport and picked up a hire car, before driving the 300km to Lake Bled, which was our base for the holiday. Lake Bled is the most famous location in Slovenia and the only one which could be described as ‘touristy’, with a lot of international visitors. Other locations seemed to be visited more by local Slovenians, or by photography tours visiting a few of the photographic ‘hot-spot’s’ which Slovenia has to offer.
We visited in October hoping for good autumn colour and some morning mists. We were certainly not disappointed in the colours, as Slovenia is heavily wooded with a mix of deciduous and conifer forests, which erupt in a blaze of colour in autumn. However the weather was something of a disappointment, with very low and heavy cloud cover for the first half of the holiday, and just two days of clear sunny weather. Of course, on any holiday the weather is never guaranteed.
As we were located at a single base in Slovenia, we visited some locations several times, so the following posts are all location based, rather than a day-by-day account of our holiday.
At the end of our holiday in Slovenia, we returned to Venice and spent two days in the city before the flight home.