Intro
While most people plan a relaxing honeymoon, sitting on the beach with a cocktail in hand, Andrew and I knew we wanted something a little different. I’m happiest when I’m doing something active and while Andrew may claim he’s great at relaxing (and he is better than me), I’ve definitely rubbed off on him – he thrives during a super hard hike, until he gets blisters 🙂
Usually I plan trips super far ahead of time, mostly because I’m constantly day-dreaming while at work or running or biking about our next destination. However, since we planned to take our honeymoon immediately following our wedding, the time I usually spend planning a trip ended up going to planning the wedding. Going into wedding planning, I thought it would be straight-forward – I figured it was as simple as finding a venue, food, drinks, and a DJ and we’d be good. I totally underestimated how much time that takes, though looking back I still find it hard to describe why planning a wedding takes so much time.
Anyway, we ended up starting to plan our honeymoon later than we typically would for another trip. As we started researching potential options, we quickly realized that some that came to our minds, like Tour du Mont Blanc, had been booked up for months. While I was initially disappointed and annoyed at myself for not planning further ahead, it ended up being a blessing in disguise because we found the perfect trip that was a bit more off-the-beaten path that we loved! After much back and forth brainstorming and throwing out all sorts of destinations (including Andrew mistakenly proposing a clothing optional hotel), we landed on doing a portion of the Alpe Adria in the Julian Alps, with our hike mostly being in Slovenia.
What is the Alpe Adria?
The Alpe Adria Trail is a 750km hike through Austria, Slovenia, and Italy. There are 43 stages, each around 20km. While some people take on the entire trail, others take on a portion.
Andrew and I decided to do 7 days of the trail. We did the full Slovenian section, along with one day in Austria and 1.5 days in Italy.
At a Glance (Our Section):
- Duration: 7 days (+1 off day to explore Lake Bled)
- Distance: 96 miles
- Difficulty Level: Medium / Hard
- Start Location: Klagenfurt, Austria
- End Location: Cividale, Italy
- Total Elevation Gain:
- Season: Summer / early Fall
- Planning Resources: Alpe Adria Trail
Getting There:
We flew into Vienna, Austria. The next day we took a train to Klagenfurt, where we spent the night. We then took a taxi to the start of the hike. Alternatively, you can fly into Venice and take the train to the start of the hike. If you
Highlights:
- Exploring the cute town of Kranjska Gora – it’s a hub for outdoor activities like biking and hiking in the summer and skiing in the winter.
- Eating lunch (here) at the top of a mountain mid-way through our days hike.
- Finishing a crusher of a hike at our farmstay / hotel Pri Plajerju and having an incredible, three-course dinner under the stairs where all the food was from the farm.
- Crossing the Slovenia / Italy border on foot without realizing it, only to realize when we stopped for lunch (here) close to the border and all of a sudden everyone was speaking Italian.
- Swimming in Lake Bled!
- Cutting our last hike short by hopping on a bus that we randomly found on Google Maps 🙂 I’ll blame Andrew’s blisters but honestly, we were both exhausted!
Day by Day Tips:
Day 1: Baumgartnerhof > Kranjska Gora
- Today we started in Austria and hiked into Slovenia – hiking over borders never ceases to entertain me! To get to the start, we asked our hotel to help us get a taxi and we showed the taxi driver on Google Maps a random spot along the road to stop and drop us off – it worked wonderfully!
- This was a BIG elevation gain day – a shock to the system on the first day of the trek! However, it was all worth it to get to Kranjska Gora and we knew we had a rest day the next day.
Day 2: Exploring Lake Bled
- Lake Bled is one of those places that pops up in travel pictures all the time with the church on the island in the middle of the lake. When I realized how close it would be to the hike, I knew I wanted to go! We hopped on a ~20-30 minute bus in the morning to get to the lake and then spent the day exploring. The town felt so festive in the summer! We walked around the lake and jumped in at various points. Our one miss in planning was not realizing this was the type of place where you need a dinner reservation. We went to a few different spots and they all told us we could come back in a few days… we pivoted and found an outdoor market that had food stalls. As an American, I have a soft spot for grilled cheese so when I saw that on the menu, I made the call to order it! Little did I know, it was literal cheese that was grilled, no bread in sight! I mean it was tasty, but not exactly what I expected.
Day 3: Kranjska Gora to Trenta
- When I was planning this day, I found Pri Plajerju as an option to stay but knew it would add a few miles to the hike after a long day. After much internal debate (and Andrew saying he was fine with whatever I thought was best), I pulled the trigger and booked it.
- When we got to the first place we could have (but didn’t book), our feet were not happy we had to continue walking… but once we got to Pri Plajerju, it was all worth it! This was our favorite place to stay of the hike. It is a functioning farm that has various housing options on the property. We were in a cute little apartment. The best part of the stay was the dinner that came with the booking. All the guests were served a set menu and the food all came from the farm. It was delicious! Not to mention it was incredible to eat under the stars with the mountains in the background.
- Somehow AllTrails lists this segment (Segment 23) as 13.9 miles but both of our phones/watches clocked it in at ~20 miles. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Day 4: Trenta to Bovec
- Wow, Trenta to Bovec was a beautiful hike! Most of the day was along the Soca which is a beautiful, indescribable blue color. It was so fun to see people on vacation spending the day by the river, hanging out and swimming. It was pretty warm that day and the water was so tempting to jump in. I was convinced I was going to do it and when we took a break and dipped our toes in, I was shocked at how cold it was and couldn’t make the plunge.
- The hike ended in Bovec, which is a smallish town that is geared toward vacationers (mostly Slovenia and German it seemed) looking for outdoor activities – a bit like Kranjska Gora. It was nice and lively in the town in the evening!
Day 5: Bovec to Dreznica
- During our hike today, we chatted with some other hikers (two German guys in their ~40s/50s who were FAST hikers – we tried to keep up and failed, though to give ourselves some credit, we carried out entire packs while they were using a bag transport service) who informed us that there was a downed bridge along part of the trail that made it impossible to pass. Luckily for us, they had done the research and let us know their plan to get around the issue. We followed their lead and hopped on a local bus to get around the broken trail and it worked out! A good reminder to make friends along the trail 🙂
- Once we arrived in Kobarid, we had lunch and relaxed before making our way up the mountain to our guesthouse in Dreznica. At that point in the day, I was really wishing I had booked a hotel in Kobarid, but after our trek up to Dreznica, we were so happy we made it! Dreznica is beautiful – its a small mountain village with a beautiful chuck. Not to mention that our hotel (Jelkin Hram) served us a delicious dinner of some sort of stew followed by a dessert (crepes with nutella)!
Day 6: Dreznica to Tolmin
- This morning, the same German hikers who gave us the heads up about the damaged bridge told us they were getting a ride from our hotel down to Kobarid. The hike up to Dreznica was steep and if we went down, we’d be doing the same path as the day before so we decided to hop in the van as well and cut that portion out for the day. We ended up doing a bit of a different path than the official Alpe Adria today (our path here) but we had a blast. A lot of it was along a river. We ended up stopping at a campsite along the river that had an outdoor cafe where we got some treats (coffee for Andrew and ice cream for me). We made a final push to Tolmin, which is a bigger city than where we’d stayed the past few nights. Bizarrely, there was some sort of punk rock festival happening in Tolmin the day after we were there so it was buzzing with a type of energy I don’t think Tolmin is used to.
Day 7: Tolmin to Tribil di Sopra
- This day had all sorts of fun stops! Along the trail, you hike through the Kolovrat Outdoor Museum, which is a collection of past trenches and lookout spots that the Italian military used during WWI, though now it is in present day Slovenia. You can walk through the trenches for free, which I recommend taking some time to do. We took our time walking through and reading signs. It was an eye opening experience to learn more about WWI in a place which was actually part of the war.
- Soon after the outdoor museum, we crossed into Italy without even realizing it! Within a few minutes, we happened upon Rifugio Solarie. Our first meal in Italy, what did we have? Pasta of course! What a fabulous way to refuel before starting up again.
- Our night on Day 7 was a little bizarre. I couldn’t find a great place to stay so we ended in an apartment. It was fine and clean but there were no restaurants around. Luckily I had realized this the night before and we picked up dried pasta and sauce in Tolmin. It wasn’t an awful experience but it wasn’t our favorite spot. In retrospect,I think I’d recommend staying at Rifugio Solarie and then cutting Day 8 short by hopping on the bus for the last bit of the hike to Cividale.
Day 8: Tribil di Sopra to Cividale
- One of the downsides of staying in an apartment rather than bed and breakfast and staying in a very rural spot, is we had no access to coffee in the morning! Wow, that is always rough but we got started on the hike hoping to find coffee at some point – I mean we were in Italy!
- We didn’t pass any civilization for a long time but 6 miles in we came across Santuario Castelmonte. It is a large, ancient church complex on a hill dedicated to Mary. It is beautiful and looks more like a fort than a church to me. In doing a little reading later on, I found out, it is thought to have originally been a Roman fort before converting into a Church complex. We strolled through the complex (not super pumped there were stairs). Once you enter the wall, it’s a bit like a city. It’s quite cool! There was a restaurant next to it so we bopped over there for sandwiches and coffee.
- At that point, we looked at the map for the rest of the day and it was just along the road, down a hill for another 6 miles to Cividale. Andrew checked Google Maps and found there was a bus that did the whole route that stopped right outside the restaurant. At first, I was stubborn and insisted we should hike and then after some prodding agreed on the bus pretending to only do it because Andrew wanted to (while secretly being excited to stop walking).