It will come as no surprise to the lucky travelers who have already discovered us that Green Slovenia has been given yet another accolade, ths time being listed 5th in Lonely Planet's TOP 10 countries in the entire world to visit for 2022..

This is a very big deal.. the only other European country to even make the world Top 10 is, quite rightly, Norway at number 2..

But with all that we know about this amazing little green country, positioned right in the centre of Europe, we would put Green Slovenia even higher in this list and fully expect that to happen in coming years as more people discover the Green secrets hidden away here..

Kamen castle, an absolute beauty.. totally undiscovered and just minutes from lake Bled..

So if you want to have an amazing European holiday and maybe mix the magic of Norway with everything else that is amazing about Europe.. vineyards, Mediterranean coastline, Alpine lakes and fairytale castles.. (and don't forget the sensational local cuisine & wines here too).. then Green Slovenia could well be the choice for you and has once again been tipped by the experts at Lonely Planet!

For us, per square KM, Green Slovenia is the number one Green destination in Europe and the really exciting thing for you is that so many of the numerous best secret bits are still only being discovered and mysteriously completely empty of visitors most of the time.. 

there are thousands of Baby Dragons hidden in this amazing showcave..

Since we travelled the world for a whole year back in 2006, the cosmos of travel advice has changed dramatically, with money, Blah Blah & somebody elses opinion seeming to control where people go nowadays, rather than good honest traveler advice. 

It is all about "book here" or "click here" on smartphones, with little planning, thinking or effort and with as few clicks as possible!

If you do minimal research, then you will get exactly the same limited Slovenian experience as Joe Public.. but even then it will still be a great holiday..

..the real shame about this is that actually even a very basic trip here to visit Lake Bled, Ljubljana, Postojna cave, Predjama castle and Piran will absolutely blow you away..

.. but you need to know (and Lonely Planet are now also shouting it from the rooftops).. that there is A hell of a LOT more to discover here in Green Slovenia!

you can spend day after day after day just exploring next to flowing fresh water..

Even here at the Lodge,  we still get a few lovely guests who have somehow missed our website and turn up like robots, glued to their phones, telling us they are going to visit "the cave".. so we take great delight in asking them "which cave" and informing them that Green Slovenia, the European capital of caves, has over 15,000 discovered caves!!

You should see the look of pleasant shock turning to mild panic and finally a look of "kids in a sweetshop" on their faces as they realise what a green party they have walked in on!

But this is just one tiny example of one of the biggest mistakes new visitors to Slovenia make.. to assume that cos Slovenia is so tiddly small, that there can only be a few places worth seeing and these are so well publicised by the other robots who did very little research and only gave 3 days to see it all.. so that it is assumed to be the way to "do" Slovenia..

It is not.. not on your nelly mate! 

the all seeing eye was computer generated in Lord of the Rings, here in Green Slovenia this natural eye is made from millions of years old rock..

For us, Lonely Planet is fabulously still a beacon of trust for real travelers wanting to experience the delights of this amazing world and that is why we were particularly pleased with the new world number 5 listing, sorry to mention it again, but really, we would put the most beautiful country in Europe even higher up the list! 

And Slovenia should feel extra honoured that Lonely Planet chose a stunning photo of Piran overlooking the sea to go onto the front cover of the 2022 book.. (after all, they do need a great photo on the front to help sell their books)!

we even have a Jeruzalem, in another of Green Slovenia's wine regions..

But we don't need to sell books at the Lodge and we know so many other amazing Green secret Slovenian treasures which are hardly mentioned or undiscovered even by Lonely Planet or just hidden away in the smallprint..

So we decided to fill this BLOG with our own secret photos of some of the amazing places here that you almost certainly do not know about..these are the secret locations that will help propel Green Slovenia to the top of the world list one day soon.. we are sure!

Most visitors at least do now expect to find a beautiful country when they arrive here, but guests continually tell us how they are just blown away by how beautiful Slovenia really is and are so surprised by the massive variety of Green nature and different micro climates here. 

The big man or woman upstairs is said to have had a little bit of everything left after creating the world, so he/she put it all into Green Slovenia!

a massive secret crater that you can walk around the entire rim and even descend down onto the forest floor.. check out the village almost on top of it to get an idea of the incredible scale of it..

In Green Slovenia, you really do need to be well informed and organised with your logistics & planning, or you will definetely miss some amazing things that you could have easily seen.

Of course we do not waste time telling the smartphone warriors, who don't need any more help to find the very well known world class locations dotted within a short drive of Lipizzaner Lodge, such as lake Bled, Piran, Ljubblyjubblylana and the Postojna cave..

Our passion is to assist those few real travellor publications left, such as Lonely Planet, to help YOU, a potential visitor to Green Slovenia, to discover the hundreds of other truly world class green secret places hidden away here.. ALL perfectly accessible from the Lodge!

Green Slovenia is so green you can just go out and drink it..

Green Slovenia is so riduculously blessed with Green treasures it is almost unfair to the rest of Europe..

So for every lake Bled, there is also a more beautiful lake Bohinj or the biggest disappearing lake in Europe at nearby Cerknica.. for every Postojna cave there is a Planina cave or a Dimnica cave, for every Ljubljana castle, there is a much better Turjak or Bogensperk castle experience and for every Piran there is an Izola.. 

ALL of these Green treasures would appear effortlessly amongst the BEST lake or waterfall or gorge or castle or river or cave in YOUR own country and we think it is mainly cos Slovenia is so tiddly rinkydinky small on a map, that it makes it really hard for you to believe.. (but it is true).. and the only way to really understand it, is to come here and see for yourself!

And you don't have to take our word for it.. as Lonely Planet has begun to recognise this big time, too!!

no train into this cave and about 300 less people.. which option would you prefer!

We try to let people know about the massive selection of Green locations we have here in Slovenia on our website in our ever expanding "Secret Places to Visit" and "Daytrips" sections.. we even did a "Secret Places to visit Treasure Map" to help you with the key logistics and planning travelling around a bit.

Every year we find more fantastic new restaurants, castles and other green wonders that even we didn't know about and we also have our own list as long as a dragon's tail of places we have heard about, but even we haven't gotten to visit yet!

So Slovenia has absolutely everything you might hope to find in Europe in one tiny gift wrapped Green package, but if you also factor in the warmth of local people, the incredible local food and drink options, (often sourced from within a few km of the restaurant) AND the incredible "Green Remoteness" of a county 13 times bigger than Greater London with only 2 million people, then you really should not be surprised why people who know what they are talking about are tipping Green Slovenia.

Rakov Skocjan, you can actually walk here from under the cave at the back..

To recap, we deliberately chose some photos here to show you just some treasures you have probabubbly never heard of AND all are so accessable to Lipizzaner Lodge guests!

We hope you enjoy them and maybe make a note to go visit a few of them in addition to the other world class sites that are relatively easy to find.

And here below is the "alternative" photo that we chose of seaside Piran for you to see, taken just last week, in early November on a warm mediterranean day, just 45 mins drive from the Lodge and a few steps from the highly documented seafront parade.. just exploring a little..

there is so much of Europe to see in this photo, but almost nobody could guess this is little old Piran, Green Slovenia!

For us this photo of Piran encapsulates the real magic of Green Slovenia.. you have that amazing familiarity of being somewhere in Europe everywhere you go and here you might think you would be in Italy or the cote D'Azur.. but you are not.. you are in beautuiful litlle old Green Slovenia and you will get this warm European sensation in every single corner and every single nook and cranny of Green Slovenia you explore.

Many of these photos are breath taking, (if we say so ourselves)! But you really need to come here to see it all with your own eyes.. 

in the heart of the Green Vipava Wine valley, the Lodge is just 20 mins away on the other side of that mountain, connected by a super modern motorway..

And finally, we were yelling and shouting about the incredible beauty and draw of the uberstunning Green Vipava Wine valley long before Lonely Planet chose it as one of the top ten secret places to visit in Europe..

So here is another secret tip for future publications.. again we cannot believe our luck, but incredibly also on Lipizzaner Lodge's doorstep.. it is another of Slovenia's wine regions, known as the KRAS or TERAN region.. and it has taken us 8 years living here and visiting different bits of it over time to realise and fully comprehend it as another complete unit and a secret mini region worth the praise of Lonely Planet..

And after the Kras, there is still even another completely different undiscovered mini region, again on our doorstep called the Brkini (said Burkini).. this region is stuffed full of rolling hills, secret villages and ancient orchards.. when the blossoms are fluttering, we fully expect the lovely people at Lonely Planet to be sharpening their pencils too! 

Lipizzaners were first created by the Austrian emperor 400 years ago and we have a few at the Lodge, just 20 mins from Lipica..

But you don't have to wait for the KRAS and BRKINI regions to be tipped by a major travel publication, as we are proud to let the cat out of the bag.. the Kras region with remote castles, unique blood red wines, ubermassive caves, hill top villages, fantastic food and the world HQ of the Lipizzaner horse AND the uberbeautiful Bikini, (as we call it) are yet more massive Green Slovenian secrets for you to delight in discovering!