Day 33. Sunday 3 May.

A warm day forecast. Agreed plan for today was to visit Vintgar Gorge. D looked it up online and confidently asserted that we’d be able to buy tickets once we got there – no need to book online. Arrived mid-morning to be advised by the lovely attendant at the parking entrance that the next available slots were not until1400, and that it was best to book online. Pulled into a parking spot to mull this over, deciding to defer until tomorrow – and book online. As we conferred, lots of other hopefuls did U turns!

We wanted to avoid the congestion of Bled, which is just down the road, so headed away, towards Skopja Loka, getting us on to the A2 highway. Before we quite got there T said let’s duck into to Brezje, having seen a brown tourist sign offering something. We arrived in this delightful little town towards the end of an open-air Mass. The Mary Help of Christians Basilica here is the Slovenian national monument to Mary. We thought on arrival that a Sunday market was happening but no, clustered around the church were a café and souvenir stalls, selling Catholic paraphernalia.

Our need was for coffee and a ‘first’ was actually ordering at the counter: until now it’s been table service. But they got the coffee, the jug of hot water and the strudel just right.

Mass finished, bells rang, worshippers moved into the church, queueing to offer prayer to Mary (T learned that this was normal Sunday post-mass practice) and then outside,  cars started to pull into a small adjacent parking area where a priest was addressing a crowd, followed by sprinkling holy water on people & cars. Again, T asked what was happening and learned that it was normal practice to seek ‘safe travel’ , blessings on cars, bikes and motorbikes, a regular event because of, apparently, Slovenia’s high accident rate.

On to Kranj, another quiet, neat pretty town. A walk through the old centre took in a visit to a museum/art gallery, with a retrospective of Alenka Kham Picman (1932 – 2025) which was delightful in colour and abstract shapes/lines.

 Inset in the floor of the building were windows into what had been an ancient burial ground – just a bit eerie,

Kranj Parish Church also had great stained glass windows in abstract shapes/lines.

Then a walk through the town and down to the canyon/river. Being a very warm day, kids were in the river whooping & splashing. T engaged with a couple from Manchester, visiting Slovenia for a week (as you do when cheap airfares get you anywhere in Europe in under 2 hours). They commented on how cheap Slovenia is compared with UK but T said that food prices were on a par with OZ and wages here are much lower. We chatted about this & that and the wonderful weather.

Last town for the day was Skopja Loka, with another ancient centre on the river, and a castle/monastery & steep steps to an outdoor museum within its gardens, showing some of the town’s previous agricultural heritage. There was a very welcome beer before wandering around the open-air museum.

The day had passed with terrific quiet ambling in picturesque settings within the surrounding Julian Alps…just lovely and no more than 40 mins from ‘home’.