Southwest coast Slovenia + Bled in 2 days

Hello/Zdravo,

One month ago I was traveling around in Slovenia by car. My boyfriend and Slovenian friends of his showed me the southwest coast of Slovenia. The first day we went to Ankaran, Izola, Strunjan, Portorož and Koper. The second day we visited Piran and Bled.

We rented a car in Ljubljana and it took a bit more than an hour to get to our first stop: Ankaran.
In Ankaran we had our first view from Slovenia of the Adriatic Sea. We walked through the camping called "Camping Adria Ankaran".

A lot of people stay in these camping places for the whole summer, most of them come from cities and make holidays within Slovenia this way.

The Adriatic Sea next to the camping...

After walking around there, we took the car to visit Izola. Our Slovenian friends were going to run half a marathon the day after, so we had to pick up their (run)numbers. Izola looked like a very cosy place to live.

I really liked the way this house/apartment looked. The lady was sitting right in the middle with a view on the mountains and streets of Izola.

This man was cleaning a boat.

There was some kind of old train way behind a fence which (I guess) was being worked on.

On the day we visited Izola, a city festival for water was going on. There were some activities for children, there were stands with free food to try out, there was a child boy band singing rock songs... It was very beautiful and we had a lot of fun walking around there.

Izola has it's own little port.

Next destination was Strunjan, which has a beautiful view over the Adriatic Sea. It is true that this was a view we should not have missed!

The Slovenian friend who lives very close to Strunjan, told me that he went swimming in this bay sometimes. This place looked so quiet and beautiful!

Even our Slovenian friends had to take pictures of this beautiful view.

After this small stop in Strunjan we went on to Portorož. There we ate amazing ice cream in "Cacao", that is a café where you can have an amazing breakfast, eat great ice cream and much more (I went to another "Cacao" bar in Prague a couple of months ago for breakfast. I swear that it was one of those breakfast that I will never forget! And super healthy!)

This is the seaside of Portorož.

A little bridge next to the place where we parked our car.

The next and final stop of our first day was Koper. That is were the Slovenian guy lived and where we could stay over. The next morning I woke up from birds whistling. It was both very nice to wake up with this sound, but they also started to whistle way to early in the morning. This love-hate-relationship made me go out of the bed and go see the birds. I made a video, but sadly I cannot upload it here.

Here a picture with the view that I wake up to, just imagine yourself a lot of birds whistling on the background and flying around.

After taking our breakfast our Slovenian friends went running their part of a marathon and we took the car to see Piran. To me, this city felt like walking through an old castle, because of all the small streets made out of stones, the hills and the different small roads we could take to end up next to the sea.

The first thing we saw in Piran, was the graveyard close to where we had parked our car. It was full with flowers and plants. This was one of the only times that I saw a graveyard which was so colourful and full with nature. I thought it was very beautiful.

In the center of Piran there were people dressed in traditional clothing and dancing. The atmosphere was very nice and supporting for the marathon that also went through the city of Piran.

Overall, Piran was a city next to the Adriatic Sea with a lot of small streets and beautiful views.

After seeing Piran, we had a lot of impressions of the southwest coast of Slovenia. One more destination would be Bled, in the Northwest of Slovenia. By car it took us almost 2 hours to get there, but is was definitely worth it.

Bled has a very beautiful lake, around which we walked all afternoon. The view we had on the mountains was really nice.
In Bled I bought 1 kilo of salt that had been picked by hand. The kilo of salt costed me 8 euros (later I found the same salt for 7 euros in a super market). For me, buying something like salt is the perfect souvenir, surely if it is an artisanal good from the region.

In the later afternoon we went home to Ljubljana again. These two days were very beautiful and full of different impressions. Being back in Ljubljana brought a little bit of rest in our heads.

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed! If you have any further questions, please ask me and I will answer as soon as possible!
Have a good day!

Clara
PS: if you liked my pictures, be sure to follow me on my Instagram account for photography: clarafrancken_photography