To Slovenia

We departed Venice and headed North East. We’ve been using a book about driving the back roads of Italy, and have been incorporating as much of the drives in the book as we can were it fits in with our itinerary. We hadn’t realised that we were travelling on 2^nd June, Republic day in Italy and a public holiday, so everything was shut but we took the suggested route. Our destination for the day was Gemona Del Fruilli, a town nestled below the Julian Alps about 60 km from the Slovenian/Austrian border. The town was almost destroyed by an earthquake in 1972 and was rebuilt after the devastation. The quake memorial museum was open, so after cycling from the campsite into town, we visited it. The only thing memorable about the campsite at Gemona (apart from noisy Austrians arriving with dogs barking at midnight) was the price of a round of drinks – a glass of prosecco Euro @ 1.60 and 0.4litre of beer @ Euro 4.00!! If you had a glass of local white wine, which was perfectly acceptable, it was only 90 cents!!

We left the campsite early and drove to Bled in Slovenia. On the way we stopped at Tarvisio, just short of the Austrian/Slovenia to try and find a non existent food market – a guide book I had sad there was a market every day but all we could find was leather jackets and handbags!!  Never mind, we were treated when we stopped later at Laghi di Fusine, where 2 glacial lakes meet in lovely surroundings. We would have walked the lakes but the weather was not kind, so we had a somewhat restricted walk, given that we would have had to sit in the van with wet clothes on. If you like the mountains, as we do, you have to accept the weather that goes with them.

We arrived at Bled in Slovenia at midday, checked into the campsite and stuck our storage tent on a pitch. Good camping pitches are like sunbeds, you have to make it impossible for others to boot you off! So, we have a storage tent just for the purpose. We erect it, put the chairs and wheel chocks in it, and then we can bugger off in the van without worrying that someone will have stolen our spot. We went off to explore the area, find our bearings, a supermarket  for some provisions and a restaurant for lunch. We achieved all that, came back, actually changed our pitch! (we’re here for at least 4 days so it has to be right!) and set the van up. Then we went down to the lakeside and had a glass of wine.