Ten years ago, for our honeymoon, Lexi and I enjoyed an amazing week of hiking, relaxing, and great seafood in La Gomera. We still talk about that trip and how much we enjoyed it. And we’ve been looking forward to doing another trip like it ever since.

This year the stars aligned for a child-free week so we headed off to explore the Julian Alps in Slovenia. Once again we booked with Macs Adventure to make the trip as easy as possible logistically. They booked all the mountain huts and hotels, and organized transport and luggage transfers for us.

We had a night in Lake Bled before the hitting the trails. It’s a gorgeous, albeit busy, place. Slovenia was under a heat warning the whole week we were there and it was intense (around 90F in Bled).

Day 1: The Pokljuka Plateau

Suitably replete after a delicious rice pudding breakfast, we left Bled behind and headed up into the mountains.

The taxi dropped us and another family from Canada (who became our trail friends for the trip!) at the trailhead.

Time to go hiking! To say we were giddy with excitement was an understatement. This moment encapsulated 10 years of dreaming 🙂

We hiked through beautiful tall pines to the alpine pastures of Javornik, still used by the local shepherds. We bought some of the locally made “pasture cheese” at one of the shepherds huts for later. Happy to report that it was excellent.

We stopped for lunch at the Lipanca hut and sat outside looking out over waves of rolling blue ridgelines, the foothills of the Julian Alps. Lunch was a simple, hearty sausage and bean stew, perfect mountain food.

Perhaps the most memorable thing about this hut though, were the funny signs in the bathrooms:

We climbed up through more pine forests after lunch, enjoying the carpets of magnificent wildflowers. I counted 23 different species (identified using the PictureThis app), probably about 50% of what was there.

Near the day’s high point, the high mountains were revealed in spectacular fashion through a gap in ridge. We paused here to savor the view and contemplate our fate… we were looking at the mountains that we would be climbing tomorrow and the next day.

We stopped for the night in Pokljuka, at the hotel / biathlon center. It was a simple, clean lodging with great food and a terrace overlooking the biathlon training ground.

It was still baking hot though, so we slept with our windows wide open, which worked well. Until it didn’t.

Our room was the top red arrow. Unfortunately we were directly over the entrance and smoking area (other red arrows), and people started coming and going from 3am onwards. Needless to say, we were a little tired the following morning.

Day 2: Into the High Mountains

We got away by 8am, powered by a breakfast of coffee, fruit, and nutella-smothered croissants.

Today was up, up, and up. All day long we climbed into the high mountains. For the first couple of hours we enjoyed the shade of the forest, before emerging into the other-worldly karst (limestone rocks) landscape.

Day 3: Crossing the High Alps

Sixteen snoring roommates do not a rested night make. We set off rather bleary eyed again, but buoyed by the beautiful early morning light. The scenery and the mountains were spectacular.

Our main objective for the day was to cross the Hribarice pass and gain access to the next valley system. We watched a group of six hikers inching their way up the path towards the pass. They looked like tiny ants from this distance.

The pull up to the pass was hard work so it was a relief to reach the top. I was starting to come down with a sickness, so wasn’t feeling as chipper as day one. We made it though. Our reward was entry to this otherworldly lunar landscape that made for a fascinating hiking experience.

Lower down, as we left the high mountains behind, we entered the valley of seven lakes. It was beautiful walking and easier going than the high mountains of earlier.

These alpine lakes were true jewels in this landscape. Turquoise gems amongst the grey, rocky landscape.

We reached the wonderful Koča pri Triglavskih Jezerih hut around 4pm, our home for the night. I had sauerkraut and sausages for dinner. Nom, nom, nom!

Day 4: Leaving the mountains and descending to Lake Bohinj

Sadly, I was feeling pretty wrecked by now after another poor night of sleeping. My cough was pretty rough. Unfortunately, Lexi was also under the weather so we were a rather sorry pair as we set off that morning.

Despite that, we still enjoyed a final ten mile hike through gorgeous mountain scenery to end our hike.

We opted against staying in the final mountain hut, preferring instead to push on to reach the hotel at Lake Bohinj, where we could rest properly.

And that’s exactly what we did.

It definitely felt sad to spend two days sleeping and coughing in a hotel room rather than hiking, but what can one do? We can’t control getting sick. After 24 hours of rest, we at least felt well enough to go for a swim in Lake Bonhinj, which was a real treat to finish the trip with. No point being miserable for long!

See this little montage I put together on Instagram too.

All in all, another incredible week together, with memories to last a lifetime.

It was a shame we got sick for the final two days but that’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.

If I could change anything I would have booked dates to avoid hitting the Triglav area over the weekend. The hut was so crowded that it was a bit much. I think arriving midweek would have alleviated the crowding issue. Oh well, hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Onwards. Looking forward to our next adventure my love ❤️