I sat here eating my dinner a little baffled. We were going to a basketball game. Even more baffling was her request for a two-hour get ready time frame in our dodgy hotel room. Couldn’t we spend that afternoon finding a San Francisco bakery and a good flat white instead?

No. This was the dream.

We were visiting San Francisco after five days on the Majestic Mountain Loop, legs still heavy from the Sierra Nevada. As San Francisco was not new to us, this visit was purely about the basketball.

Savannah is s a die-hard WNBA fan, Paige Bueckers is her idol, and the Wings were in town to play the Golden State Valkyries. Everything else on our trip was a bonus wrapped around this night.

So, I gave up the flat white, went back to our tiny hotel room, and waited the better part of 90 minutes while she got herself ready. Jersey on. Nerves buzzing.

Getting to the Chase Center

The Chase Center sits in Mission Bay, and it’s an easy one to reach. Buses and the Metro both run there, and here’s the part that made me happy: if you’ve got a ticket to the game, your transit is free the whole day. Have your ticket ready to show when boarding. We took advantage of that while exploring San Francisco during the day!

We caught the bus in and took the train home. Somewhere on the way back it ran above ground, then dipped below without warning, which had us both looking at each other like, where are we going? We could walk from the station (Union Square) back to our hotel, and walk to the bus on the way out, so we never touched a car all night.

Where to eat before the game

Right on the complex, Thrive City has outdoor space, shops, and somewhere to eat before tip-off. We found a burger joint, Gott’s Roadside, that had me at gluten-free buns. You order at the counter, then grab a spot at the long community tables inside or out.

The burgers were delicious and reasonably priced (get the Texas Avocado), and they had a gluten-free beer on tap, plus Pliny the Elder, which is a rare thing to spot. It’s a Russian River beer that people will line up for hours to get on release day, so I was not going to walk past it. Well since I’m gluten free, I kinda did, but not without first ordering it and drinking it in my mind. (I have tried it before and loved it)

Other places to eat at Thrive City include Fikscue Craft Barbecue, Dumpling time, Che Fico Pizzeria, Burma Love, Senor Sisig, and Cupcakin’ Bake Shop. there’s also Golden State Cider, Pilz Coffee, and Harmonic Brewing to quench your thirst.

A ten-minute walk away is Spark Social, a food truck park and beer garden with a happy hour bar. We went there first, then decided it wasn’t the vibe we wanted before the game and doubled back to be near the arena. Both work. It depends how much time you’ve got.

The moment that made the whole trip

We got there early, on purpose, to watch the Wings warm up.

Down in the bottom corner of our section, you could stand right above the tunnel where the players come off the court to the locker room. Savannah spotted Paige Bueckers signing autographs as we walked in, and by the time we got to the corner she’d moved on. Missed her by a minute. I could see the disappointment settle in.

So I did what any Australian mother would do. I decided we’d use our accent.

Alanna Smith plays for the Wings, and she’s one of ours. Born in Hobart, raised through Melbourne, a reigning Defensive Player of the Year and an Olympian. Savannah was mortified. She could see exactly what I was about to do and wanted the ground to swallow her.

I waited at the corner while Alanna signed her way down the line. As she came past, I leaned over and yelled, “Aussie Oi!”

She looked straight up, beaming, and we had ourselves a little conversation across the barrier. We talked Tasmania and Melbourne and how much she’s loving it over here. I told her we’re Aussies too, living in North Carolina, and we’d come because my girl is a big fan. And there was Savannah, who’d been dying of embarrassment thirty seconds earlier, sidling up beside me with the biggest grin, brave enough now to catch Alanna’s eye and get one back.

That’s the thing I keep coming back to. Your uniqueness is an advantage if you’ll use it. A yelled “Aussie Oi” from a mum who didn’t care about looking silly got her daughter a moment she’ll have forever.

Then another player came past, one who used to run for the NC State Wolfpack, right near where we live. Aziaha James. So, I called out “Wolfpack” and threw up the sign. She caught it just as she reached the tunnel, turned, beamed, and gave it right back.

Two moments, before the game had even started, and Savannah was already floating.

The Wings vs Vakyries game itself

I did not expect to be entertained the way I was.

The women on the court were brilliant, and so was everything happening around them. Dance routines and giveaways through every timeout, glitter and color across the crowd, the energy climbing all night. The locals were loud behind their Valkyries, and there was a healthy scattering of Wings jerseys in the mix too. Savannah wore her Bueckers jersey. I wore a shirt that said “I’m in my Dallas Wings era.” We were all in.

She got to watch Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd play, her two favorite players, on the same floor. That alone had her buzzing.

The Wings didn’t get the win. They hung in for a while, then the Valkyries pulled away for a 91-80 final. Savannah didn’t care one bit. She was high the entire night, and when it was over she told me it was the best night of her life.

What one game did

She hasn’t come back down.

A month later, Craig took her to see the Wings play the Liberty in Brooklyn, and you can read about their game night here. Between the two of us, we’ve now taken her to WNBA games on both coasts, and she’s already plotting the next one.

She’s talking about a career in the league now. Working in it somehow, off the court. She’s researching what those jobs look like and eyeing the North Carolina Courage, the women’s pro soccer team ten minutes from our house, for somewhere to start young. The Courage play soccer, and it’s women’s pro sport right on her doorstep. I told her what I believe. It all starts small.

I’d said yes to that game as a favor to my teen. It turned out to be the best thing we did, and I’m so glad I didn’t talk her out of a single second of it.

How to see a WNBA game at the Chase Center

Here’s what I’d tell you if you’re planning to take your own teen.

Getting tickets

Buy through Ticketmaster as that’s the official ticket seller. OR resale through a reputable resale site like SeatGeek or Gametime. The Valkyries have sold out most of their games since they launched in 2025, so the marquee opponents and weekend games get pricey and go early. Buy ahead for those. Midweek games against lower-profile teams are your cheaper window, sometimes from around $30 to $60 in the upper bowl, though prices move with demand, so check the day you book.

One thing that saved us money: we’d bought the few remaining non-resale seats that were in the nosebleeds. We then upgraded once we were inside the arena, which came in cheaper than buying those closer seats through resale would have. Worth asking about upgrades when you arrive.

Our upgraded tickets landed us in the Ultra Club section, which I had no idea about until we arrived in it. This was more of a private area with its own bar and eatery. The bar tender was telling me how it’s the only two-story bar at the Chase Centre. So, if you want more of a private experience like this the following sections offer them:

• Sections 126-129: Cache Creek Club
• Sections 101 – 106: United Globe Club
• Sections 113 – 118: Ult4ra Club

Note: I’m taking an educated guess, that since Paige Beuckers and Azzi Fudd are two of the WNBA’s highest profile players, seeing the Dalas Wings play in San Francisco meant higher priced tickets.

Getting there and parking

Take transit. The arena sits in Mission Bay, and the Muni Metro T Third line stops at the UCSF/Chase Center station right at the south entrance. Your game ticket doubles as a free Muni ride for the whole day, so there’s no reason to pay for anything extra. You can also come by BART with a transfer to Muni, or by ferry.

If you must drive, know that on-site parking is limited and expensive, usually $30 to $60 or more, and it sells out. Prepay through Ticketmaster or the Chase Center parking page rather than rolling up and hoping. Street parking around Mission Bay is permit-only with aggressive towing on game nights. Leave the car.

The T metro line serves Chase Center, and additional S trains run on event days. The 78X bus also runs between Chase Center and 16th St Mission BART Station 2.5 hours before and 1 hour after events.

What to bring

Chase Center doesn’t allow backpacks of any kind, even small or clear ones, so bring a small purse or clutch instead. Bags get searched, and a clear one moves you through faster. There’s a bag valet on site if you turn up with something that won’t pass. Bag sizes and prohibited items change, so check the official Chase Center site before you go. Reusable water bottles are not permitted. This was a boo hoo for me. So bad for the environment. Water fountains are in the arena, which will also save you money! If you have to buy one water bottle then refill it.

When to arrive

Get there early. Doors usually open about 90 minutes before tip-off, and that pre-game window, when the players are loose and close to the stands, is where our whole night turned. Give yourself time to eat, and to catch the warm-ups. Thrive City is worth a wander too. If you’ve got a younger fan with you, ask guest services about a first-game certificate.

Where to eat

Thrive City on the complex has plenty of choices, including the burger spot we loved, and Spark Social is a short walk away for food trucks and a beer garden. Eat before you head in, since arena concessions run steep.

We did not experience eating inside the Chase Center, but they have a wide variety of eateries that serve fresh, from-scratch local favorites and dishes representing the diverse culinary experience of the Bay Area. Expect your usual venue food – burgers, hot dogs, BBQ, Mexican, and pizza but since it’s California focused, they’ll all probably be good. They’ve also got you covered with bars pouring expensive drinks! You know it!

Why it’s a great teen night

A WNBA game is warm and family-friendly, often more affordable than the men’s Golden State basketball game, with an atmosphere that pulls everyone in. Women’s sport is having its moment, and your teen will want to be in the building for it.

Where to stay near the Chase Center

We stayed across town this trip, so I can’t tell you I’ve slept in these. What I can tell you is where I’d book if the game were the point. On a sold-out night, Terry Francois Boulevard backs up for blocks and rideshares surge, so a hotel you can walk back to after the final buzzer is worth a lot.

Closest to the arena

LUMA Hotel San Francisco is the closest hotel to the Chase Center, about a 6-to-10-minute walk from the door. It’s a modern build in Mission Bay with a rooftop bar, and it sits right by the Mission Rock subway station if you want to shoot up to Union Square or Chinatown during the day. This is the one I’d book first for a game.

Hotel VIA is a short walk the other way, across from Oracle Park, with a rooftop bar that looks over the ballpark and the bay. Handy if you’re pairing your WNBA night with a Giants game.

A flat walk or one stop away

The San Francisco Marriott Marquis sits in SoMa, roughly a 15-to-20-minute flat walk to the arena, or one quick stop on the T Third line. Now I have stayed here before and loved it. It’s the one with the iconic View Lounge on the top floor, and the views over the city are worth the elevator ride. A solid pick if you want a bigger hotel with more on site.

Rent an apartment

If you’re traveling as a family and want a kitchen and some room to spread out, look at Airbnb or Vrbo in Mission Bay, Dogpatch, or Potrero Hill. Several sit within a 5-to-15-minute walk of the arena, and you’ll often get more space for your money than a downtown hotel room. Search stays near the Chase Center here

One honest note: you don’t have to stay near the arena at all. Your game ticket makes Muni free for the whole day, so anywhere on a Muni line gets you there and back easily. Staying close just saves you the shuffle on a packed night. For options across the rest of the city, see our full guide to where to stay in San Francisco.

FAQs about seeing a WNBA game at the Chase Center

What else we did with our 3 days in San Francisco

The game was the anchor, and we built a full trip of teen-friendly days around it:

• Walked from Fisherman’s Wharf to the Golden Gate Bridge
• Rode in a driverless Waymo
• Photographed the Painted Ladies
• Lost a few hours in the California Academy of Sciences
• Wandered Haight-Ashbury and Golden Gate Park
• Found a secret hill with an epic view.
• Also found a coffee shop with the best view of the bridge.

For the full run-down, prices, and where we ate, see our complete guide to things to do in San Francisco with teens. Included are additional ideas we did not do on this trip, but have on previous trips so can personally vouch they are worth your time.

Final thoughts

I’ll be watching more WNBA with Savannah, whether I planned to or not. That’s what these trips do at this age. You say yes to their thing, the thing you didn’t quite get, and you end up standing in a corner above a tunnel yelling “Aussie Oi” and watching your kid light up.

Take them to the game. Say the embarrassing thing. It might be the night they remember most. If you’re planning a WNBA trip with your teen and have a question, comment below, I’d love to help.

More San Francisco Travel Tips

Need more inspiration for your trip to San Francisco? Here are some other helpful guides…

• Where to stay in San Francisco
• Things To Do in The Presidio of San Francisco [More Than Just A Park]
• What Shouldn’t You Miss In San Francisco? Must-Do Tourist Attractions
• Things To Know Before You Go To San Francisco
• Fun Things To Do in San Francisco With Kids
• San Francisco in a Day: How To Spend 24 Hours

No. This was Savannah’s dream.

When I first surprised her with tickets, she screamed, dropped to the floor, and rolled around in tears at our dining room table. So I gave up the coffee idea, went back to our shabby little hotel room, and waited the better part of an hour while she got herself ready for a WNBA game at the Chase Center.

14-year-old Savannah and I rolled into the city that day off five days on the Majestic Mountain Loop, legs still tired from the Sierra Nevada. San Francisco after all that granite and pine felt loud and bright and full of people. This is not our first time visiting San Francisco. It’s the fourth time for me and Savannah visited for five days when she was seven. We’ve now experienced San Francisco as a solo traveler, couples’ travelers, with younger kids, and now with teens. I can confirm that it’s a pretty great city to take a teen. 

Every place on this list is somewhere we’ve been with our own teen, or somewhere I’d happily send yours. I’ve kept it to what actually lands with this age group, the stuff Savannah cared about and the things Kalyra loved back when she was a teen too. Some we did on this trip. Some we’ve done on the many visits before it. I’ll tell you which is which as we go.

1. Catch a WNBA game at the Chase Center

A WNBA game at the Chase Center was the reason we were in San Francisco. Savannah is a die-hard WNBA fan, and the Dallas Wings were playing the Golden State Valkyries at the Chase Center in Mission Bay. The women on the court were brilliant, but so was everything around them.

Dancers and games and giveaways through every timeout, glitter and color in the crowd, the local crowd roaring for the Valkyries and a fair scattering of Wings jerseys dotted through it. Savannah wore her player jersey. I wore a shirt that said, “I’m in my Dallas Wings era.” We committed.

Getting there is easy. Buses and the Metro both run to the arena, and with an event ticket the ride is free. Right on the complex, Thrive City has outdoor space and somewhere to eat before tip-off. We found a burger joint with gluten-free buns, reasonable prices, community-style tables, and a gluten-free beer on tap that made me very happy.

A WNBA game is a brilliant teen night out. The tickets can be more affordable than the men’s game, the atmosphere is warm and family-friendly, and women’s sport is having a moment your teen will want to be part of. There’s a whole story behind our night here, from an Aussie player who stopped to talk to us to the seats we upgraded on a whim. I gave it its own post so ready our full guide to seeing a game at the Chase Center.

2. Walk from Fisherman’s Wharf to the Golden Gate Bridge

Because we clearly hadn’t walked enough in the Sierra Nevada (), we decided to walk from Fisherman’s Wharf all the way around to the Golden Gate Bridge. Savannah grumbled at the start. Then the clouds began to clear, the bridge came into focus, and she came around.

We popped into Ghirardelli Square first so she could taste the chocolate at its original home. We grabbed a couple to go. The raspberry dark chocolate is mine.

The path runs along the marina, and we stopped at Equator Coffees to fuel up. Then the Palace of Fine Arts, which was on Savannah’s list after she found it on TikTok, forgetting we’d photographed her there as a kid. It’s a slice of ancient Rome dropped into San Francisco. Get your shots from across the pond, then wander in under the rotunda.

We carried on past Crissy Field, out onto the pier for the bridge views, and up toward the fort. This was the one window on our whole trip where the clouds pulled back and the bridge stood there in full red. We took far too many photos and regretted none of them.

At the end, the Roundhouse Cafe. It’s round, as promised, with windows giving you the full sweep of the bridge. We’d walked about 4.5 miles by then, so we sat with an Equator Coffees and watched the clouds roll back in over the water. The photo I caught of Savannah there, with the bridge out the window, is one of her favorites.

You don’t have to walk back. Buses run from the bridge to wherever you’re headed. And if your teen has more in the tank than mine did, the trail keeps going to Baker Beach and Lands End out to the Sutro Baths. On earlier trips, Craig and I have rented bikes and ridden across the bridge to Sausalito for a picnic, then caught the ferry home. I tried to sell Savannah on it. She said no. Your teen might say yes. I’d rate it as a top thing to do with teens in SF. Here are various bike rentals, including ebikes, which we never had the option for!

3. Explore the Presidio

Right by the bridge is the Presidio, an old army base turned parkland that we’ve loved on past trips. On summer Sundays there are food trucks and community gatherings on the lawn, and it’s a lovely spot to spread out for a picnic.

There’s more here for teens than you’d expect. Tucked into the woods are Andy Goldsworthy’s sculptures, and tracking them down feels like a treasure hunt (Woodline is my favorite). There’s a hidden Yoda statue at the Letterman Digital Arts Center, home to Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic. And for Disney fans, the Walt Disney Family Museum tells the story of how one persistent, creative man built a whole world, through interactive exhibits that pull you right in. I came away moved by how many times he failed before it worked.

I’ve rounded those up along with more of the city’s quieter finds, including colorful mosaic tile steps made for the photos your teen will want in our hidden gems in San Francisco post, and there’s plenty more in our full Presidio guide.

4. See the sea lions and shop at Pier 39

Savannah wanted the sea lions, so we hopped out at Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf for a bit. The seals don’t need long. A few minutes of watching them snooze, slide off into the water, and bark at each other, and you’ve had the experience.

The shops right there are made for teens. I’d braced for tourist-trap prices and was pleasantly surprised. Savannah grabbed a San Francisco hoodie, which we needed more than expected. It was much chillier than we’d realized coming off 90-degree Yosemite. We picked up a t-shirt for Craig too.

While you’re here, Umbrella Alley is a community art space packed with murals and interactive photo spots, and it’s very much a teen’s kind of stop. We missed it this time. You may also want the famous clam chowder bread bowl from Boudin Bakery.

5. Take a ride in a Waymo

The driverless cars were a novelty when we visited, so I’m putting them on the list as a San Francisco attraction for teens in their own right. You’ll spot them everywhere, white Jaguars with a spinning sensor on the roof. Savannah begged me to get in one. I love trying new things, so I said yes.

It was a lot of fun. Easy to use, priced like an Uber, no tipping. A little unnerving at first to sit in a car with no one driving. We laughed and shrieked our way from the Painted Ladies down to Fisherman’s Wharf, and the car took the turns with ease, stuck to the speed limit, let us pick the music, and didn’t make small talk. At one point it read a car that looked parked, understood it wasn’t, and smoothly went around. Very impressive.

We did it once more because Savannah wanted to ride up front. I’m still not sure how I feel about driverless cars and what they mean for jobs down the line. As a one-off with your teen, it’s a memory. I’d still rather walk or take the bus most of the time.

6. Photograph the Painted Ladies

Savannah is a Full House kid, so the Painted Ladies were non-negotiable. We walked there from our hotel, through a few different neighborhoods, and stopped at Ritual Coffee on the way for a cup in their little outdoor seating area.

There isn’t much to do at the Painted Ladies beyond photograph that famous row of townhomes, and that’s fine. Go early and you’ll have them to yourself. We’ve been here around lunchtime before, when the park across from them fills up with people picnicking, which is lovely in its own right.

7. Explore the California Academy of Sciences

I’d assumed a 14-year-old would be over science museums. Savannah asked to go. I’m so glad she did, because I loved it, and it’s a museum that works for any age.

It’s split into the earth’s different environments, and the rainforest section feels like an actual rainforest, high humidity, parrots overhead, butterflies drifting past your head as you climb the canopy. The aquarium has stingrays, coral, and every kind of fish. We’d been hoping to see the Pacific octopus, especially after reading Remarkably Bright Creatures and watching the film together, but it was tucked away that day. The penguin feeding is a highlight, and I loved the connection to the conservation work the Academy does with penguins in South Africa, a beach I’ve actually sat on.

Savannah’s favorite was Vivid, a new exhibit we walked into with no idea what it was. You step into rooms where the walls and ceilings become ecosystems, ultra high-definition projections, soundscapes, even scents. It’s sensory and beautiful, and it stopped her in her tracks.

Prices are steep, so it’s worth it if your teen is the kind who’ll happily sink a few hours in. The Go City tourist pass takes the sting off admission. There’s a planetarium too. We couldn’t line up a show time, but I’d build one in if you can. When you’re done, walk across the parking lot to the de Young Museum and ride up to the viewing room. It’s free, a little hazy through the glass, and the view over the park and the city is worth the elevator.

You can buy your ticket in advance here, which is a lot cheaper than what we paid upon arrival!!

8. Spend time in Golden Gate Park (bike it even)

You’re already in Golden Gate Park at the Academy, so give it some time. It’s big, with sculptures and botanical gardens threaded through it, and on an earlier trip we rented bikes to cover more of it (see here for bike rentals). You can even spot the resident bison.

Craig and I have done the Japanese Tea Garden here, and the afternoon tea is exactly the kind of thing my teens would love. There’s an entry fee, so weigh the interest against the budget. If a picnic is more your speed, the park is made for it.

9. Wander Haight-Ashbury

We walked through the park to Haight-Ashbury, home of the 60s and 70s hippies, and a place I’ve always liked. It’s where Kalyra bought her first pair of Doc Martens as a teen. If your teen is into thrift stores, vintage racks, colorful buildings, murals, and a slightly alternative feel, this is their corner of the city.

It’s a good lunch stop too. We ate at Hippie Thai, where I had a Pad Thai I’d put up against some of the best Thai I’ve eaten in a long while. San Francisco is a serious food city, and I knew Haight would deliver something authentic.

10. Climb up to Buena Vista Park

A couple of streets from Haight is a quieter find: Buena Vista Park. After five days of hiking, we groaned at how steep the short climb to the top is. It’s worth every step. The views over the city are beautiful, and on a clear day you’ll catch the red of the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance. We got lucky and did.

From there, walk a few blocks to Third Wheel Coffee on the corner. Excellent coffee, and a good place to land after the hill.

11. Wander Union Square and Chinatown after dark

On our first evening, after dinner at a hole-in-the-wall Peruvian spot, we wandered past the hearts in Union Square for a couple of photos, then through the gate into Chinatown. It was quiet at that hour, so Savannah didn’t get the full bustle of it, but it was a lovely walk all the same. We’ve brought both girls here on earlier trips and they’ve always enjoyed it.

In the daytime, there’s more. The Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory in Ross Alley has been making cookies by hand since 1962, and you can watch the fortunes go in, sample a few, and buy a box. Ross Alley itself has real history, from the Tong Wars to scenes in Karate Kid II. Up on Waverly Place, the Tin How Temple is one of the oldest Chinese temples still running in the country.

On the edge of Chinatown, where it meets North Beach, is Jack Kerouac Alley, with murals worth a look and City Lights Booksellers on the Italian side. Savannah is an avid reader, so we went in. It’s the most famous bookstore in the city, tied to Kerouac and the Beat writers who used to drink at Vesuvio Cafe across the alley. If your teen loves books, they’ll love it here.

12. Ride a cable car

This one stayed on Savannah’s list and, somehow, we never checked it off. She loved hanging off the side of one as a kid, and I think riding those hills as a teen would be an even bigger buzz. There are three lines now, the Powell-Mason, the Powell-Hyde, and the California Street line. Do the Powell-Hyde from the wharf up to Union Square for the classic ride.

13. Visit Alcatraz

Savannah wanted to go back to Alcatraz, but we’d done it before and ran out of time this trip. It’s one of the best things to do in San Francisco. Kalyra surprised me by how much she got into it, and both girls came away full of questions, about the two men who escaped and where they might have ended up, about the fact that the guards’ children lived on the island and loved it. Walking into those cells and feeling what the prisoners felt is unnerving, and Savannah was a little freaked out. A good, quiet lesson in staying on the right side of the law. Book well ahead, it sells out.

Book your Alcatraz tickets in advance. Here are options. I love the look of the night tour. Adding it for next San Fransico trip!

14. Take in the view from Coit Tower

I really wanted to get Savannah up Coit Tower, and she was keen, but by the end of the trip she was spent. It has one of the prettiest panoramas in the city, a full 360 that had me thinking of Greece the last time I stood up there. It’s $10 to ride to the top, and worth it for views that reach the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge, Alcatraz, and Angel Island. Don’t skip the murals downstairs, painted during the Depression. It sits on the edge of the North Beach Italian quarter, so pair it with lunch there.

15. Snap fun photos at the 3D Museum of Illusions

Walking through Fisherman’s Wharf, we passed the 3D Museum of Illusions and both got a hit of memory from doing it years ago. Savannah lit up talking about it and wanted to go again. Put it on the list. Your teen gets a stack of fun photos and some clever art in the same stop.

16. Zip around in a GoCar

Savannah brought up the GoCars more than once, and I kicked myself for not planning them in. They’re the little yellow two-seaters that scoot around the city on a guided route you can follow or ignore. It’s a fun way to see the sights, and teens love them. If time allows, hire one for longer and take the routes out through the Presidio and Golden Gate Park.

Check whether your car or travel insurance covers excess for a motorbike, which is how GoCars are classed. It can be an included attraction on the Go City tourist pass. OR rent them in advance here.

17. Take a day trip to Muir Woods

If your teen hasn’t stood among redwoods before and you’ve got the time, drive out to Muir Woods National Monument. It’s a green world under the tallest trees you’ll see, and you can take it all in on an easy 2-mile loop in a couple of hours. Book your parking slot online before you go, you can’t get in without one, and an America the Beautiful national parks pass covers your entry. If you don’t have a car, it is probably easier to join one of these tours.

18. Chase street art in the Mission District

If your schedule stretches, the Mission District is a fun one for teens. It’s an outdoor gallery of murals with Latino roots and a creative streak, great food, and exactly the kind of backdrops they want for their feed. Walk Clarion Alley, between 17th and 18th, and Mission and Valencia. More than 700 murals have gone up there since 1992, many carrying messages about the community. Balmy Alley has more.

While you’re here, Mission Dolores Park is a good gathering spot with fine city views, and two of the best ice cream places in town are close: Smitten and Bi-Rite Creamery. If your teen loves a pastry, Tartine Bakery is here too. They also bake bread San Franciscans are obsessed with. Here is a food and history walking tour of the Mission District which takes in the murals.

Where to eat in San Francisco with teens

I’ll be honest, our food ran hot and cold this trip. Savannah’s a fussy eater and our tastes pull in different directions, so I couldn’t camp out in Thai and Vietnamese spots the way I wanted to, and we grabbed a lot of bits and pieces on the run.

The wins were worth it though.

The best meal we had was at Barbara in North Beach, the Italian quarter. Italian is the cuisine you can trust almost anywhere, and Barbara is a lively Roman spot on a light-filled corner, with a little table tucked into the window nook. Rome is one of our favorite cities, and this felt like it.

I had a gluten-free rigatoni with sausage and mushroom, an Aperol spritz, and a glass of Italian red. Savannah had a lasagna she loved. The prices were kind for that neighborhood, which isn’t easy to find. Skip dessert there and walk down to Victoria Pastry Company for tiramisu instead.

My favorite breakfast came from Reveille Coffee in a beautiful flatiron building across from Vesuvio. Clean design, excellent coffee, and a plantain bowl I’m still thinking about.

A few we couldn’t fit but would happily chase next time: Arsicault Bakery, whose chocolate croissant has been named the best in the country (I’m gluten-free and stole a bite when we visited years ago, no regrets), Butter & Crumble near Coit Tower for laminated pastries and crumble cakes (get there before they sell out around midday), and Foreign Cinema in the Mission, where they screen films while you eat. On an earlier visit we also loved the Ferry Building, a landmark since 1898 with a farmers market on Saturdays, bay views, and a whole store dedicated to gluten-free pastries that had my name on it.

A few more we’d add next time

Since we’ve covered so much of the city over the years, these are the ones I’d fold in on a future trip.

• A bay cruise. Savannah wanted one. I’m cautious given how often San Francisco sits under cloud and cold, and I’d hate to pay for a cruise and see nothing while we shiver. A sunset sailing might be the sweet spot.
• A ghost tour. A favorite way to get to know any city, as long as your teen is fine with a bit of spook. Mine would be.
• A food tour. We do a lot of these, and even fussy Savannah tries more when she’s on one. In a food city like this, pick a neighborhood whose cuisine you love, Chinatown or North Beach, and go.

Where to stay in San Francisco with a teen

I’m not going to send you where Savannah and I stayed, because it isn’t worth sending you to. We were there during the soccer World Cup in peak summer, hotel rooms were averaging $600 a night, and there was almost nothing left. We dug deep and landed in a hostel-style room with a shared bathroom. Savannah got a taste of the not-so-privileged life she’s been living and was mortified. I’ve done plenty of hostels and shared bathrooms in my time, so it was fine for me. And I was happy she was having a toughen up buttercup moment. She would not recommend it, and neither would I, because I want your teen to have a better first impression of this city than that. And it wasn’t in the best area either; I think we saw a few deals go down. 

Where you stay depends on what you’re doing, but I’d point you to Fisherman’s Wharf or Union Square. On past trips we’ve loved Hotel Zoe near the waterfront, two blocks from the water with a good seafood restaurant on site. The Beacon Grand in Union Square gave our family of four two interconnecting rooms, a free wine hour with city views, and transport at the door.

And the Marriott Marquis has the View Lounge up top that Savannah was gutted to miss once she heard I’d been. It’s totally worth adding to your San Francisco teen itinerary even if you don’t stay there!  Rooms were large here and the hotel nice.

For the full run-down, see our where to stay in San Francisco guide and see options for Airbnb rentals, which we have not done.

Getting around and getting from the airport

San Francisco is one of the easiest cities to get around. From the airport, grab a cab or take the train downtown, which ran us about 30 minutes and cost very little. I love the public transport here. Tap your credit or debit card on and off, on the trains and the buses both.

Two things worth knowing. If you’re holding a ticket to a concert or a sporting event, the buses are free for the entire day. And anyone under 19 rides free, all the time. For a family with a teen, that adds up fast. Buses come all the time. I just used google to plan out my routes and see when the buses were coming. 

FAQs about visiting San Francisco with teens

Is San Francisco good for teens?

Yes. The city is a patchwork of neighborhoods with their own personalities, so there’s sure to be one that clicks with your teen. The food scene is among the best in the country, there are photo spots everywhere they’ll want them, and the museums, galleries, and attractions cover just about any interest. It’s easy to get around, and your teen won’t be bored.

Is San Francisco safe for teens to walk around?

In a lot of areas, yes, especially around Fisherman’s Wharf and the more visited neighborhoods. Some pockets aren’t as safe, so do your research on where you’re staying and where you’re wandering. Around our hotel, I wouldn’t have let Savannah walk alone, and definitely not after dark.

How many days do you need in San Francisco?

Three days is a good amount. There’s enough here to fill more if you want to. Two days or one still works, you’ll just be moving fast, and teens don’t always love being rushed.

What is there to do in San Francisco with teens at night?

Look for an event like a WNBA game, or a concert if one lines up. A relaxed dinner somewhere good goes a long way with this age group. And a wander around Fisherman’s Wharf to see what’s happening is an easy way to end a day. And of course, one of those ghost tours! 

Final thoughts

San Francisco surprised me with a teen. I expected the eye-rolls and got a kid who wanted the science museum, the Painted Ladies, the bookstore, the sea lions, and above all, her team on the court. She said it was the best night of her life, and she hasn’t stopped planning the next one. Which she got just a few weeks later watching the Dallas Wings play the NY Liberty in New York City. Craig took her to NYC for three days while I was in Slovenia. Of course she came home begging to go to the DC game, but we denied that one! 

That’s the thing about traveling with them at this age. You get these windows where they let you back in, and you see who they’re becoming. Take the walk. Say yes to the driverless car. Help them pursue their dreams. That’s what the teen years are built for. Savannah is now researching potential careers in the WNBA! That makes the investment into travel so worth it. 

If you’ve got a San Francisco question I haven’t answered here, drop a comment below. I’d love to help you plan it. Here are some things to know before visiting San Francisco!

Thank goodness for small phone slip miracles and stunning nature to prove her point. Her mesmerizing beauty trumps all pokes, dings, and disappearing messages. A Majestic Mountain Loop road trip is always a great idea.

Visit California’s Majestic Mountain Loop connects Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and Sequoia in a single circuit starting and ending near Fresno. The total driving distance is around 200 miles.

Three national parks in six days sounds like a lot. And it is, if you rush it. But we flew into Fresno, which puts you right in the middle of all three, and the route falls into a natural loop. No backtracking. No brutal long-haul driving days. Just a very good road trip through the Sierra Nevada with two base towns that people underestimate. Here’s how my teenager and i did it on this amazing mother daughter road trip (all inspired by her travel dreams).

The route

Fresno (fly in) → Bass Lake/Oakhurst → Yosemite (2 days) → Kings Canyon → Visalia → Sequoia → Fresno (fly out)

We actually drove to San Francisco for three days and flew out of there. Totally doable as its 3 hours from Visalia; it’s also 3 hours from LA, so you have great options.

One rental car. One loop. About 1 hour of driving on your first day, and 1 – 2.5 hours on the days you shift south and move between destinations.

Staying near the southern gate of Yosemite is what makes most sense for this Majestic Mountain Loop road trip. Otherwise, it will add a lot of extra driving time when you move from Yosemite to Kings Canyon.

Day 1: Arrive in Fresno, drive to Bass Lake

Fresno airport is blessedly small. You’re through baggage claim and into a rental car in under 20 minutes. Head northeast on Highway 41 and in about an hour you’re in the Sierra Nevada foothills, which feel nothing like the California most people picture.

Bass Lake is a reservoir community that sits 15 miles below the Yosemite south entrance. It’s calm, scenic, and completely unbothered by its proximity to one of the most visited national parks on earth. People come here to boat, swim, and paddle, to eat on the water, and to watch the light go gold across the lake in the evening. It’s the chill to the Yosemite intensity you need.

Arrive in the afternoon and spend time relaxing in your cabin or swimming at the lake. We picked up lunch from Miller’s Landing Resort where we were staying before taking a swim.

Then for dinner we drove 30 minutes to the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad Moonlight Special for a three-hour evening logger steam train ride through the Sierra Nevada. Enjoy dinner, a narrow-gauge logging railroad, and a live singalong around a campfire. Savannah and I enjoyed it more than we thought we would.

This first night is recovery time. Eat well in Oakhurst (the nearest town, 10 minutes away), get to bed early. Everything that matters starts tomorrow.

Where to stay: The Bass Lake area has plenty of lake cabins to rent, Millers Landing Resort and the Pines Resort. Oakhurst has standard hotel options. Either works. Oakhurst is more practical if you want to be near food and coffee in the morning without driving. And for a quicker drive into Yosemite NP. The other option, closer to the park entrance is Tenaya Lodge where I have stayed twice and loved it. It will be further away from Bass Lake, however.

Day 2: Yosemite Valley and the Mist Trail

Get up early. Get yourself through the south entrance and down into the Valley by 8am if you can manage it. Honestly, I say 7am if you’re doing the Mist Trail, or any of the longer hikes.The crowds build fast. By 10 the parking is complicated and by noon the valley floor has the energy of a theme park.

Start with the Mist Trail while you have fresh legs. It’s 3 miles round-trip to Vernal Falls, 7 if you push to Nevada Falls. The last quarter mile to Vernal Falls gets soaked in spray from the waterfall as you climb the stone steps. On a sunny morning you walk straight through a rainbow. Savannah said it was her favorite Yosemite memory.

After the hike, the rest of the valley is a slow wander. A short trail to Yosemite Falls El Capitan meadow, lying on the grass watching climbers that you can barely see. Tubing down the river. The valley floor views of Half Dome. Lunch at Curry Village (or pack a picnic). None of it feels like effort. The scale of the place does the work.

Head back to Bass Lake by mid-afternoon. Be sure to stop at Tunnel View on the way out for one of the best Yosemite views. You can also do it in the morning, but lighting is better in the afternoon.

Drive time from Bass Lake to the Valley floor: about 90 minutes each way.

Day 3: Glacier Point (and options if you have energy)

The Glacier Point Road is one of the better drives in California and most people don’t take it until they’ve already spent a day staring at Half Dome from below. Coming to Glacier Point after the valley is a different experience. You’re now at 7,200 feet, looking directly across at Half Dome, the valley spread below you. If you hiked the Mist Trail yesterday, you can probably see where you were standing.

Get there before 9am. By 10 the parking fills and the viewing area gets crowded in a way that undercuts the whole experience.

If time allows after Glacier Point, Taft Point is 2 miles away on a flat trail that ends at a granite ledge over a 3,000-foot drop with no guardrails. It’s a different kind of dizzying. Worth it if your legs are willing.

On your way back toward Oakhurst, the Mariposa Grove is a worthwhile stop: Yosemite’s grove of giant sequoias, with a 2-mile walk to the Grizzly Giant. It’s a natural bridge into what comes later in the trip when you encounter sequoias again in Sequoia National Park. The trees in Mariposa are old and enormous, and the grove is often quieter than you’d expect given the park traffic.

Alternatively, if you only wanted one day in Yosemite, you could move Glacier Point to the afternoon of the first day, and leave this day to relax at Bass Lake, or Tenaya Lodge if you choose to stay there. You can read our Bass Lake & Yosemite guide to see other options for things to do and places to eat.

Have an early night as tomorrow will be an early start.

Read More: This was my fourth visit to Yosemite National Park. Here are some more guides to help you -plan: amazing things to do in Yosemite with kids (or not), 3 day Yosemite NP itinerary, and the Half Dome Plan B.

Day 4: Kings Canyon then Visalia

Drive 2 hours from Bass Lake to the entrance of Kings Canyon National Park. It’s smaller and lessor visited than the other two parks but well worth a day of your time.

Begin with General Grant, the world’s third largest sequoia at the Grant Grove, another sequoia cluster inside the Kings Canyon section of the park. Then the road tips you into the Kings Canyon Scenic Byway and the whole character of the landscape changes.

The descent is 4,000 feet and the canyon walls close in on both sides as you drop. It’s narrow and dramatic in a way that California’s mountain driving often isn’t. At the bottom, Cedar Grove opens up into a wide, flat meadow with the Kings River running through it, turquoise from glacier melt, cold even in summer.

Enjoy seven miles of hiking along the South Fork Kings River. The trail starts at Roads End (the same trail that takes you to Mist Falls) and follows the river to Zumwalt Meadow. (see All Trails Map) Enjoy Roaring River Falls and Junction View on your drive back out (better with the afternoon light).

It will take about 2.5 hours to drive from the valley floor to Visalia. The Kings Canyon Scenic Byway takes about an hour.

Visalia gets overlooked by most people planning this route, and that’s their loss. It is the gateway town to Kings Canyon and Sequoia so makes sense to base yourself there for the next two nights.

It has a proper downtown with good restaurants. Not tourist restaurants. The kind of restaurants that exist because a city of 140,000 people needs somewhere to eat on a Saturday night. This area is also one of the biggest agricultural areas in the country, so you can expect food made from fresh, local produce. We had one of our best meals of the trip here, the carne en su jugo at El Tarasco.

Where to stay: The city also has reasonably priced hotels that haven’t decided they can charge national park rates just because they’re within driving distance. We stayed at the Comfort Suites Visalia – Convention Center in Downtown and liked it. I have penciled in the boutique Darling Hotel for my next stay!

Day 5: Sequoia National Park

Start early again – you really want to beat those crowds – and head straight to Moro Rock It’s a 350-step climb up a granite dome to a 360-degree view of the Great Western Divide. Because of its narrowness just one shuttle bus load will feel like a ride line at Disney. This is the view people don’t anticipate. They come for the trees, and they leave talking about this. The mountains go further than you can see.

From there, head to the next busiest attraction. We escaped the middle of the day crowds, but it was slowly building. Even then we skipped waiting in the line for the General Sherman tree photo next to the sign. I can only imagine how painful that would have been by the afternoon.

The most important thing to know about General Sherman is that the number (52,508 cubic feet of volume, making it the world’s largest living tree) means nothing until you’re standing next to it.

It’s a half mile walk down from the trailhead parking. The tree doesn’t try to impress you. It just exists at a scale that takes a moment to process. We stood there longer than I expected to.

If you have afternoon energy left: the Congress Trail loops through a dense collection of sequoias from the Sherman Tree trailhead. Mostly flat, under 2 miles. The sequoias here come at you in groups. The names are all slightly absurd (The Senate, The House) but the trees themselves earn it. We share other hike ideas in our guide to Visalia, Kings Canyon & Sequoia NP.

Return to Visalia for the night. It’s about a 90-minute drive. The scenic road from the entrance gates up to the main part of Sequoia is quite stunning (winding so go slow).

Wrap up an amazing Sierra Nevada road trip with sunset views looking back over it from Elderwood Restaurant, the rooftop restaurant at the Darling Hotel. Cheers to six days of adventures through three spectacular California national parks.

Practical notes: Sequoia and Kings Canyon are one connected park, managed together. Your entry fee or America the Beautiful pass covers both. Some people attempt to do the two parks in one day. I don’t recommend it. Visalia operates the Sequoia Shuttle, which takes you from most Visalia hotels to the Giant Forest Museum, Sequoia NP. From there, use the free internal shuttle It operates from Memorial Day to Labor Day. $15 round-trip. 

Day 6: One last morning, then goodbye

What you do on your last morning is dependent on your departure time. As we were driving to San Francisco, we had more flexibility and chose to have a slow morning in Visalia.

That meant a hot Pilates class at Space Yoga (so great for hiking recovery), a delicious healthy breakfast at Component Coffee, a little bit of shopping and coffee to go at Mission Coffee.

it took us just over three hours to get to San Francisco. (a post on that trip coming soon. Subscribe to our newsletter so you don’t miss it.)

The drive back to Fresno from Visalia is about 50 minutes and Fresno airport is quick to navigate.

Watch the Majestic ‘Mountain Loop road trip highlights in the video

What to sort before you leave home

America the Beautiful Pass: $80, covers entry to all national parks. It pays for itself on this trip. Buy it at your first park entrance or online before you go. I love that any other national parks in the US we now want to do for the remainder of the year are covered!

Rental car: You need one. There’s no practical alternative for this route. Public transit options exist for parts of Yosemite Valley but not for the rest of the trip. We always rent from DiscoverCars.com Check rates and availability here.

Best time to go: Late May through early October. Glacier Point Road in Yosemite and the Kings Canyon Scenic Byway can both be affected by snow before Memorial Day. August and early September are the busiest months. Late September and early October are often the sweet spot: smaller crowds, turning leaves in places, still fully accessible. There is just not as much water in the waterfalls!

Where to stay:

• Bass Lake/Oakhurst: 3 nights. Closer to the park than staying in Fresno, and a nicer base than you’d expect.
  • The Bass Lake area has plenty of lake cabins to rent, Millers Landing Resort and the Pines Resort.
  • Oakhurst has standard hotel options.
  • Tenaya Lodge if you want to be closer to the southern gates, have a more elevated resort-like stay with great amenities and onsite activities.
• Visalia: 2 nights. The right call. Better food, better prices, and a downtown that offers more for you to do outside of park hours. Consider:
  • Comfort Suites Visalia – Convention Center in Downtown for convenience and comfort at a modet price
  • The boutique Darling Hotel. Art deco style in an historic building, It oozes character. And just a few steps from your room to that rooftop restaurant with a view

A note on the driving

People ask whether the driving is too much. It isn’t. The mid-trip repositioning from Oakhurst to Kings Canyon valley floor (3 hours) is the longest day on the road. Every other day, the park entrance is under an 90 minutes from your base.

The roads are mountain roads. They move at a mountain pace. Don’t rush them. The scenery on the approach to Yosemite via Highway 41, the descent into Kings Canyon, and the ascent to Sequoia NP are part of the trip, not dead time between the good parts.

Want more? Here are some more road trips in the USA to love, some of the best scenic drives in the USA, and some road trip ideas from LA.

Have questions about the route? Drop them in the comments. Happy to help you plan it.

Here are some frequently asked questions

The church of St Nicholas stands right beside it, and its bell rings every quarter hour. There’s a pattern to the tolls, something the farmers once read to know when to come in from the fields. Vesna tried to explain it to me the next day and I still couldn’t line it up. One toll for the quarter.

But then how does three o’clock work, and how did anyone in a vineyard tell the difference? Nobody at that dinner cared. The wine kept coming, the light went soft and gold over the hills, and somewhere around the second course I put my fork down, let out a breath loud enough that the woman beside me laughed, and thought: I could sit here forever.

I want to tell you why that dinner undid me, because the view is only part of it.

Ten days of leaning into fear

By the time we reached wine country, I’d spent some of the trip out of my comfort zone, and sometime a little scared!

That was the design of it. I was in Slovenia on a women’s adventure trip, and the days were built to walk you up to the edge of your fear and ask you to lean in. Cold rivers. High rocks. Cliff edges with a guide counting you down. I spent a lot of those 10 days learning, over and over, how to manage the flutter in my chest and go anyway.

Triglav was the peak of it. I stood at the bottom of the via ferrata, the cabled, exposed stretch that takes you to the summit, and said no because I had reached my maximum capacity. As one of the trip leaders I spent that whole day, and the next, quietly carrying decisions I wasn’t sure I’d gotten right. That day earned a story of its own, and I’ve written it properly here.

By the time we got to the Soča Valley, something had shifted. The fear had turned into something I actually loved. I jumped off a canyon ledge into freezing water and came up grinning. We swam in that impossible turquoise river in our clothes because we hadn’t packed suits and couldn’t bear to miss it. The adrenaline was still there, and it had stopped feeling like a threat.

And then there was Goriška Brda, where nothing was asking anything of me. The hardest thing the region wanted was for me to sit at a table over the vineyards and stay a while. It’s where the whole trip finally let me exhale.

I didn’t plan for that. I don’t think you can. You just drive south out of the Alps, the road flattens, the light changes, and a region hands you exactly the thing you didn’t know you needed.

Where wine country actually is

Goriška Brda sits in the far west of Slovenia, pressed right up against the Italian border. Close enough that we ducked across for gelato one night, which I’ll get to.

It’s the closest thing to Tuscany I’ve found outside of Tuscany, and Slovenians will tell you that themselves. Small stone villages perched on top of little hills. Vineyards rolling away in every direction, undulating down and back up to the next village on the next hilltop. Wine at around €3 a glass that would cost you €12 back home in the States.

The local white is Rebula, and a lot of it here is made with skin contact, which gives it a soft orange color. Light, dry, easy to drink on a hot afternoon. Slovenian wine barely leaves the country. They don’t make enough of it to export, so the only way to drink it is to be here, which is reason enough to come and stay awhile.

You’ll want a car. (Check prices and availability on Discover Cars, who we always use) The region is spread out, and the good bits are the small villages and family wineries scattered through the hills. We got around a fair bit by e-bike too, which turned out to be the best decision of the day.

The e-bike ride through the vineyards

E-biking is how a lot of people get around Brda, because it’s hilly, and because you can. We joined a half-day tour through our accommodation and rode about 17 miles. We started our tour at their agency in the village of Šmartno, the village used to be fortified as an important settlement on the Venetian – Austrian border ad is probably built on Roman foundations.

The name of Šmartno comes from the St. Martin church, the biggest church in Goriška Brda with a bell tower that used to be once a fortification tower.

Our guide was Petra, who also helped cook us a delicious breakfast each morning at our hotel. Our first stop was at Mejnik, a 321-meter hill above the village of Gonjače, where there’s a lookout tower and a monument to the victims of the Second World War. That’s the photograph everyone takes of Brda, the whole patchwork of vineyards and villages laid out below you, and it earns it.

We rode out along the hill roads to get the high views, then came back down through the valley, in among the vines, which was even better. Petra stopped us at spots along the way to look and to tell us about the region. She works for Vesna, who owns both the tour company and the hotel we were staying in, which is how these things tend to work in Brda. Everyone is connected to everyone.

One thing to know before you get on a bike here. The roads through the vineyards are narrow and they wind. One of the women on our trip came off her bike when a car sat too close on her tail through a bend and rattled her. She was fine, grazed and shaken, back on the bike after a rest. Ride single file, and don’t assume every driver will give you room.

We were all so happy when it came time of our rest break. Lunch was the reason to do the whole ride.

Lunch at a winery run by artists

We stopped at Atelier Kramar, a biodynamic winery and bistro in the village of Barbana, and it was a favorite dining experience.

Katja and Matjaž built the place. They were artists first, fell into winemaking, and never really stopped being either. There’s a small gallery of work from around the region, and the plates our food came out on were made by the owners themselves. They work their four and a half hectares of vines with the phases of the moon, no herbicides, and you can taste the care in it.

We sat at a long table outside, under big umbrellas, greenery and vineyard all around us, exactly the shady, unhurried spot you want after a couple of hours on a bike. Mixed cold cuts, homemade salami and pancetta and prosciutto.

Bread so good I kept dipping it in their olive oil, and here’s the thing about Slovenia that I still can’t get over: the gluten free bread is delicious. Every single place. Why can’t America manage that. They made my pasta with rice and it was full of flavor. For dessert, cheese from the Slovenian mountains, cow and sheep, aged in their own cellar. And the wine was fantastic. That Rebula, light and dry and faintly orange.

Every other day of this trip was stacked with hard adventure. Canyoning, rafting, a 12-hour day on Triglav. This day had a bit of adventure in it too, on the bikes. Mostly it was slow. It gave us room to actually taste the food, look at the view, and talk to each other properly while we rode and while we ate. After a week of pushing, that was the medicine.

Where we stayed

We stayed at San Martin in Šmartno. It’s family owned and reads more like a bed and breakfast, rooms and apartments spread across the two floors of the family home. Our group was big enough that we had the whole place to ourselves, though anyone can book it by the room.

Vesna is one of the owners, and she was wonderful. Her name means spring in Slovenian, and it fit. Warm, full of stories and recommendations, and the one who quietly organized half of what made the region sing for us. There was a golden retriever named Brick who met the van the moment we pulled in and stayed close the whole stay, and a cat I went down to say good morning to every day.

The owners cooked breakfast every morning and it was the best breakfast of the trip. Some of the best scrambled eggs and prosciutto I’ve ever eaten. Baked goods, fruit, cheeses, fresh coffee and juice, and the view out over the gardens. They make their own Rebula too, and at €10 a bottle, you say yes.

The dinner I opened with

So. That table on the edge of the hill.

The dinner was at Gostilnica na lepem razgledu in Gornje Cerovo, next to the St Nicholas church with its quarter-hour bells. It was a set four-course menu of seasonal Brda cooking, which we weren’t expecting and which threw everyone’s budget out the window. The setting and the wine made up for it and then some.

Herbal frtalja, a coastal omelette that comes with prosciutto and cheese. Homemade pasta. Pork ribs. My gluten free needs were quietly worked around, though I got ice cream for dessert while everyone else had štruklji, which felt like the one time I drew the short straw. The wine started with something sparkling and moved into the dry Rebula the region is known for. There was a red too that Chris loved and I didn’t get to.

Here’s the part I keep coming back to. I don’t know the name of a single wine we drank that night.

For 16 years my job has been to record everything. Names, prices, how we got there, what was on the plate. On this trip I put the notebook down, and at that dinner I was so far inside the moment that I never picked it back up. The owners just brought out what matched each course, and I trusted it, and I sat back and let the wine and the food and the conversation carry me. I regret the missing names a little, as a writer. As a person at that table, I don’t regret it at all.

Partway through, an Italian friend of the family turned up, the way people do when a village sits this close to a border. He’d brought a bottle of his own dessert wine from the 1990s and poured everyone a glass. It was heavy, and it must have spent years in a bourbon barrel, because you could taste it. His English was limited and our Slovenian and Italian were worse, and the conversation worked anyway. That’s the kind of thing travel keeps handing me. A stranger, kind and generous, and a bottle with a story, and none of the words you’d think you need.

That’s when I felt the mountain leave my shoulders.

I’d carried the whole trip into this valley. The fear I’d leaned into all week, the mountain I’d said no on, the leader’s decisions I was still turning over. Somewhere between the sparkling wine and the ’90s bourbon-barrel dessert wine, with the bells going and the light gone gold, I let myself stop. I hadn’t solved any of it. The valley just made it clear there was nothing left to solve that night, and that I was allowed to be here.

I exhaled. I could sit here forever, I thought. It reminded me so much of a farm stay Craig and I once had in Tuscany, the same sinking into a slower rhythm, the same family food and family wine and view that goes on forever. Now I am sure my soul will continue to crave a return to Goriška Brda just like it does Tuscany.

The last dinner, and a €4 glass of wine

Our final dinner in Slovenia was in the small village of Medana, at Belica, a restaurant with a courtyard terrace under a big overhanging tree strung with fairy lights.

The menu confused all of us and the food came out slowly, which the women on the set four-course meal felt more than I did. The waitress was patient and walked us through it. I had a flank steak salad that arrived, surprisingly, on a single lettuce leaf, and it was delicious, with a creamy potato dish alongside. Belica cooks from recipes handed down by local grandmothers, seasonal and local, a little modern touch on top.

I had a glass of white and a glass of red, both excellent local wines, and both under €4. That number still makes me happy.

We took the long table and talked through our highlights, our surprises, the lessons each of us was carrying home. Then we went back to San Martin and Drea, Ali and I shared a bottle of the hotel’s own Rebula in our room, debriefing the whole trip, getting ready to say goodbye to everyone in the morning. €10 a bottle. How do you say no to that? When in Goriška Brda you simply don’t.

The gelato run into Italy

I promised I’d come back to this. That night after the vineyard dinner, someone pointed out that gelato in Italy was 15 minutes away. Christina and Drea gave us the it’s-doable nod, and off we went, because when you’re that close to Italy and the whole group wants gelato, you go.

We landed at Il Gelatiere in Gorizia about five minutes before closing. I’m not sure 15 women walking in while they wiped down the counters was the highlight of their evening, but they served us happily and did their best to translate the flavors. I went simple, choc hazelnut and stracciatella.

The next afternoon, short on time after our bike ride, we skipped the Italy run and got gelato in Šmartno instead, at a little place called Mjrka. I liked the Slovenian one better. Is that allowed to say? Conduct your own gelato tasting experiment while in Goriška Brdaand report back which one you liked better!

Don’t you just love Europe? Popping over to another country for a midnight snack! It blows my Australian mind!

What the wine, and the region, actually taught me

I didn’t visit many wineries. I didn’t learn much about Slovenian wine, and I half wish I had. But I loved that I was here to switch off instead of study.

What I noticed, and wasn’t surprised by, was waking up clear-headed the next morning. That rarely happens to me with American wine, even after a glass, which is why I mostly drink European wine now. I’d love to come back and taste properly, sit with those views, go deeper into it.

What struck me most was how it felt. Slow, quiet, no crowds, and made by families rather than corporations. So many wine regions get big and lose a little of their soul along the way. Here it felt like every bottle carried a story and a person who cared. I didn’t need to tour a dozen cellars to feel that. It was in the €10 Rebula at our hotel and the ’90s dessert wine from a stranger and the plates an artist had made by hand.

The mountain taught me when to stop pushing. Brda showed me what stopping is for.

If you want to do this yourself

• Where it is: just under 2 hours west of Ljubljana, right against the Italian border.
• How long: give it at least 3 days. If you love wine, longer. This is a region that wants you to slow down, and it punishes you for rushing it.
• Getting around: you’ll want a car, because it’s spread out and the good bits are small villages and family wineries. E-bikes are a wonderful way to see the vineyards up close, rentals and tours through San Martin in Šmartno.
• When to go: May through October. We were there in July, hot and beautiful, and never fighting crowds.
• The wine to try: Rebula, especially the skin-contact orange versions. And whatever the family in front of you pours you. Trust it.

The trip that put me here

I was in Slovenia for 10 days on a women’s group trip with Your Limitless Adventures, run by my friend Christina McEvoy. I’ve since become a trip leader with them. That wine country day, the exhale at the end of a hard, beautiful, cracked-open 10 days, is a big part of why I said yes.

If you want to know what a trip like that actually does to a person, here’s the honest, whole-trip account, mishaps and all. And if you’ve read this far, the day on the mountain that I finally set down over that dinner is its own story here.

I’m leading three trips, and I would love to be at the dinner table with you at the end of one of them:

• Morocco, October 2026
• Thailand, February 2027
• Vietnam, March 2027

Have you been to Goriška Brda, or is it going on the list. Tell me in the comments. And if you go, drink the Rebula, sit at a table over the vineyards until the bells ring, and don’t you dare take notes.

More Slovenia

• Best places to visit in Slovenia
• The Soča Valley, my favorite part of the whole trip
• Lake Bohinj, and why I’d send you there before Bled
• Lake Bled: the island, the castle, the cake and the 5am hike
• Vintgar Gorge: everything you need to know
• 2 days in Ljubljana -and the bike ride that will bring it to life.
• Adventure activities in Slovenia: how to choose your speed, from canyon jumps to a gentle city ride
• Mount Triglav, Slovenia: the summit I skipped and the three hours that taught me more

I was scared in a way I don’t usually get scared. Angry too, which surprised me more. We’d been scrambling for what felt like a very long time across rock that fell away on both sides, and my body had quietly decided it was finished. One wrong foot and I’d slide, and the slide had somewhere bad to go.

So I held on and gave myself a talking-to. Out loud, probably. Get out of the fear. Get out of the anger. Get back in your body, because if you don’t, you’ll come off this face through nothing but lost focus, and you are not doing that to your girls.

It worked. I got present, I found my feet, I climbed the last bit up to the hut. I have never been so happy to see a small ugly building in my life.

That stretch wasn’t the part of the mountain I’d trained for, or chosen, or even knew was coming. It’s the part I think about most.

On the way to the Triglav Summit

Triglav is the highest peak in Slovenia, 2,864 meters up in the Julian Alps. It’s on the national flag. There’s a saying over there that you’re not a true Slovenian until you’ve stood on top of it. 50,000 to 70,000 mountaineers climbing it each year, it is one of the most popular mountains in Slovenia. So, when I tell you I climbed Triglav and didn’t summit, I know exactly which mountain I turned my back on.

I’m still not sorry. Let me tell you how that happened, because it’s more interesting than the summit would have been.

We were on a 10-day women’s group trip through Slovenia, 15 of us, run by Your Limitless Adventures. I’ve written the long, honest breakdown of the whole trip elsewhere, what it costs and where it broke. Today it’s one day on one mountain.

We left Lake Bled before dawn. The hotel had packed us breakfast the night before, which was lovely of them, except it was too early for anyone to make coffee. So, several of us hiked up a mountain for 12 hours on no coffee at all. Not one cup. I’m quietly proud that I didn’t even get the headache. Small wins.

An hour’s drive, a parking lot, a huddle with our guides Clemens and Urie, hands in the middle, up on three. Off we went. It started as a pretty walk through forest. Then it started going up, and it didn’t really stop.

I’d made a rookie mistake before I ever left home. I’d been frugal and bought my pack at the last minute, and I somehow convinced myself it had a padded, supportive waistband. It had the clip. It did not have the padding. I carried a 3-liter water bladder up that mountain because I was terrified of running out, and nobody had told us there were two natural springs on the trail where we could have filled up. So, I hauled a heavy, badly balanced pack for hours, and it wore me down more than the climb did.

About an hour in, we stopped. Clemens and Urie pulled Christina aside and told her the truth: we hadn’t hit the hard part yet, and after this it got much steeper, with about five hours still to go. A couple of the women took an honest look at it and decided it wasn’t their day. Urie walked them back down and put them in a taxi. They found a hotel with a beautiful pool and had the kind of afternoon that made the rest of us deeply jealous by nightfall. They were disappointed in the moment. By dinner they were the smartest people on the mountain.

The rest of us kept going up. Through alpine forest with the peaks watching us the whole way. Past a herd of cows. Through a meadow where I fully expected a bear to wander out. And because we walked mostly single file at different paces, I kept ending up next to a different woman every hour, which turned a brutal climb into the best conversations of the trip.

Kim ran a lot of that. She’d lob a question down the line and make us all answer it. Three people, alive or dead, you’d have dinner with. Who and why. Even Clemens, who I think first decided we were a strange bunch of women, eventually joined in.

Mine, if you’re curious: my grandfather on my mother’s side, who died before I was born, who my mum speaks of so tenderly that I’ve missed a man I never met. Wayne Dyer, whose books have shaped 30 years of how I think, and who I cried over when he passed. And David Ghiyam, my Kabbalah teacher these last two years, whose teaching lines up with everything I already believed but couldn’t say out loud yet.

That’s what the hard trail gives you. Hours with nothing to do but talk properly.

We took the Krma Triglav route through the Krma Valley to Triglavski dom (Kredarica Hut / lunch hut). It’s approx. 7.3 kilometers \ 5 miles and ascends 1550m. Usually, it takes us around 5 hours to reach the hut. There is water spring halfway up the mountain, so you can start the hike with 1 or 1.5 liter of water and some snacks for the way. We did not know this and carried too much water!

Saying No to the Triglav Summit

Then it got steep in a way that stops the talking. The trees dropped away, and it was pure alpine and rock and 360-degree views that I kept stopping for, partly to breathe, partly because I wanted to remember it. Above us I could see the via ferrata summit route, and a line of people on it like ants, scaling what didn’t look like a path at all.

My focus narrowed down to one thing: get to the lunch hut, get the pack off, sit down.

And then my heart started doing something it doesn’t do. Palpitations. I get them very rarely, and this was the first real signal from my body that I needed to pay attention. I don’t know why. Maybe dehydrated, maybe I hadn’t eaten enough. It doesn’t matter. What mattered was that I felt them, and I knew in the same breath that I wasn’t going up the via ferrata.

It was the calmest decision I made all trip. I got to Kredarica Hut, what we called the lunch hut with Ali, we found a little bench with a love heart cut into it, took some happy photos, and I turned to her and said it plainly. Heart palpitations. I’m maxed out. I’ve got nothing left in the tank physically or mentally, I’d be slow, I’d hold the group back, and I’m not going to be the reason anyone else’s day gets smaller. She was supportive, maybe a bit shocked. I felt light as air.

I wasn’t sad watching the others gear up and go. I was thrilled for them. They clipped onto their guides in threes, climbed to the top of the highest mountain in the country, took their photos, came back lit up like Christmas. I got to sit in a warm hut and eat a bowl of cabbage soup that filled the tank and helped me feel a return to normal.

(The hut had a deck out front full of enormous men drinking beer. Turned out to be army veterans at their annual gathering, helicopters coming and going all day, live music, the works. How they’d hiked up there to drink beer, I will never understand. I love a beer. That was another level.)

If the trip had gone to plan, I’d have slept at the hut and done the via ferrata the next morning, rested. I probably would have said yes. Storms were forecast, so the guides moved the summit to the same day as the hike, which was absolutely the right call. Nobody wants to be clipped to a bare rock face when lightning’s about. So, the mountain, in its own way, made my decision easier. It maxed me out first, then asked the question.

Kredarica Hut is located at about 2,515 m in Triglav National Park and is the starting point for the Mali Triglav via ferrata to the summit. The season runs late June through September. July–August is busiest while September often brings the finest, quietest weather. Late June and October are shoulder windows where snow and iced cables can make the via ferrata more serious.

The unplanned detour

Here’s the part that never made the photo gallery because we needed all our focus (just a couple of photos were captured)

While the summit group climbed, Clemens took the rest of us toward the sleeping hut and promised it would be easier than what we’d just done. Forty-five minutes, gentle, he said.

It was three hours. One of the women christened it the rock tumbler. I called it the Upside Down world, all Stranger Things, because we went down to go up and lost sight of the hut every time we thought we were close. We spider-crawled across rock. We came to an exposed section with iron rungs and cables bolted into the wall, and unlike the via ferrata, we weren’t clipped to anything. There was a snow patch so slick I was sliding until Clemens climbed up and handed me a pole.

And this is the part I’d point you to if you’re trying to understand why these trips work, and why I said yes to leading them. Fifteen strangers held each other together across that rock. Andy, an experienced climber who lives near the North Cascades back home, carried Erynn’s bag up the final section because Erynn was spent and needed one less thing to think about. Clemens carried Syna’s. My own heavy pack somehow stopped mattering, because fear had crowded out everything except getting off that face alive.

Erynn and I got through it on humor. We laughed at the sheer absurdity of it, cracked jokes every time Clemens called down “50 more meters,” which he said at least ten times. Come on, Erynn. 50 more. We can do this. Focus.

And right at the end came my little rock-face moment. The swearing, the anger, the talking-to.

I want to be clear about what pulled me back, because it’s the whole reason I’m writing this down. Fifteen years of near-daily meditation built one muscle in me that I use more than any other. It notices the second I’ve bolted out of the present moment into fear or fury, and it hauls me back into my body. In and out, in and out, every quiet morning, until the muscle is strong enough to work when it counts. On a rock face with a bad drop under you, foot wrong, heart up, three seconds to choose focus over panic, that muscle is the only reason I got calm.

Every one of those quiet mornings was training for that exact moment. The cushion in the living room was only ever practice for the cliff.

The weight of leading

Somewhere in the tumbler, I learned something about myself as a leader that I’m still sitting with.

Syna had gotten sick on the way up, before the lunch hut, dizzy and nauseous, pushing through it slowly and bravely. When she reached the hut, all of us ran out and made a canopy with our arms, a tunnel for her to walk through while we cheered her in. She wrote about that later on her Instagram, what it meant to have the women there for her.

She’d wanted the helicopter out at that point. We got food and water into her, and I promised I’d stay at the back with her the whole way to the sleeping hut. And partway through the tumbler she turned to me, color back in her face, and said, “Oh, I’m having fun, this is just like rock climbing.” I got to watch the joy come back into someone who’d been ready to quit an hour earlier. That’s a gift.

Then she stepped down off a ledge, her pole slid out from under her, and she fell. She hit her arm on a rock, gashed it below the elbow, and it bled a lot. Clemens and I worked together on the first aid. He decided she needed the helicopter, this time to guard against infection in an open wound up a mountain. I questioned it. I asked whether we could handle it ourselves, right there. He held firm, and he was the professional, so the helicopter came once we reached the sleeping hut and flew her to hospital.

The women down at the hotel drove to meet her so she wouldn’t be alone, and Urie, one of our guides, went and collected them all afterward without being asked. She was fine. A few stitches, a spectacular bruise, back with us soon after.

But I’ve turned that day over more than once since. I encouraged her to keep walking with us instead of pushing harder for the helicopter earlier. Was that the right call? I think so. She found something on that trail she wouldn’t have found in a hospital waiting room. But I felt the weight of it, the responsibility of being partly answerable for another woman’s body on a mountain, and I haven’t fully put it down. It’s made me want to be better at this. First aid training, for a start. That instinct to second-guess myself is just how I’m built, and on that day it was the right instinct to have.

Gratitude Sunsets & Sunrises

Cabbage soup, when you’ve earned it, is transcendent. We ate it at picnic tables looking out at the peaks, debriefing, half-terrified about how we’d get off the mountain the next day. The summit group walked in later from a different direction and told us the section they’d been dreading coming down was scarier than the via ferrata itself, so we hadn’t missed the easy option, we’d done the frightening one without knowing it.

That evening we sat together as the sun went down over the Julian Alps and Triglav and shared what we were grateful for and what the day had cracked open in us. Then a fox trotted around the hut while we got ready for bed. The dormitory started cold, so we wore beanies, then turned into a sauna once 15 bodies warmed it up. I barely slept. Too much adrenaline still moving through me.

I was awake at 5. I heard Drea get up and slip outside, and thought, why lie here sweating. So I went out, and Drea was sitting on the step wrapped in a blanket watching the most beautiful sunrise I’ve seen in years.

Pink and red and orange over the ranges. I sat down next to her and we watched it, just the two of us, and said almost nothing. The clouds rolled in not long after and took the whole view. But we’d had it. That quiet half hour is one of my favorite moments of the entire trip, and I nearly slept through it.

The walk down was gentle and green and easy, cows in the pasture, wildflowers brightening the path, storm clouds building behind us, so we picked up the pace. At the bottom, Erynn and I looked at each other, realized we’d actually made it, threw our arms around each other and laughed. Ali watched us do it and told me later she couldn’t stop laughing at the two of us, the way we fell into that hug like we’d survived a war. Urie had written a message in the dust on the back window of the van. “You did it girls.”

Our sleeping hut was Dom Valentina Staniča pod Triglavom (2332 m). From the hut there is great view towards Triglav, the highest peak in Slovenia and to Triglav north side, including triglav glacier (the last piece of the real glacier).

What the mountain actually showed me

I keep coming back to why I said no on the via ferrata and felt so certain about it.

Part of it is this. I don’t need to chase the extreme anymore. I did that younger, bungee jumping into the Nile and all the rest of it. But 15 years of meditation has settled my baseline into something calm and connected most days, maybe 85% of the time, and I get awe and joy from ordinary things now without having to manufacture the high. I still love an adventure. I jumped off a 6-meter ledge canyoning two days later and would do it again anywhere. I just don’t need to prove anything to a mountain.

And part of it is that I’ve spent my whole adult life outside my comfort zone already. Thirty years of travel. Living in five countries. Running a business that changes under my feet every quarter and has never once given me stability or security. I’m stretched and tested every single day by the life I actually live. Some people take on the extreme because they’ve never had the chance to find their edge. I’ve been living at mine for decades.

I’ll be honest, because the honesty is the only reason to write any of this down. Maybe I’m partly justifying a decision I’d made for simpler reasons. Maybe it’s my age and I just prefer the quiet pleasures now. Maybe on a different route, or the next morning, rested, I’d have gone up. All of that might be true at once. What I know for certain is that when I look at the summit photos the other women share, I don’t feel a flicker of regret. And that, for me, is the only reliable test of whether a decision was yours or someone else’s fear talking. Look back later. Check for the regret. If it isn’t there, you chose well.

There’s one more thing I came home turning over. It’s my job, for 16 years, to record every detail of every trip. On this one I did the opposite. I took fewer notes, fewer photos, and let myself just be there. It’s made writing this harder. I’m chasing down restaurant names I should have jotted down. But it was the right trade, and learning to trust that I can still make something worth reading without gripping every detail is its own quiet lesson.

I love hiking. I love being in the wild. And I love what happens to strangers who go through something hard together at altitude, how fast that turns into a friendship you’ll carry for life even if you never see each other again. What stitches people together is what they survive together. A few hours of real fear at altitude does more than years of comfortable dinners ever could. The women on that mountain are part of me now. That’s the real souvenir.

If you’re thinking of climbing Mt Triglav, and especially if you are not experienced, you will want to go with a guide, Have a look at the following options: 2-Day Guided Climb – Small Group, IFMGA Guide (Get Your Guide), Climb Mount Triglav in 2 Days | IFMGA Guide | From Bled (Viator) and Via Ferratas In Triglav National Park And Julian Alps (Viator)

Come stand at the bottom of a mountain with me

I’m leading three trips with Your Limitless Adventures next, and none of them will ask you to do anything like Triglav, which I promise is by design.

Morocco in October, the Sahara and Fes and a night in a desert camp. Thailand next February, where I once lived, elephants and the Monk’s Trail and the islands. Vietnam in March, a cruise through Bai Tu Long Bay and the hills of Pu Luong. Small groups of women, capped at 14, a photographer the whole way, and the kind of days that leave you with stories instead of stuff.

Here’s what I can promise you. If you decide, halfway up something hard, that you’ve gone far enough for today, there’ll be a group of women at the bottom who cheer that decision as loudly as they’d cheer the climb. That turned out to be the whole point.

Same same but different, every trip. I’d love to be there at the bottom, yelling your name. (P.S. My trips will not have Mt Triglav style hikes!)

You can read my full review of what a Your Limitless Adventures group trip is like and why I loved it!

More Slovenia

• Best places to visit in Slovenia
• The Soča Valley, my favorite part of the whole trip
• Lake Bohinj, and why I’d send you there before Bled
• Lake Bled: the island, the castle, the cake and the 5am hike
• Vintgar Gorge: everything you need to know
• 2 days in Ljubljana -and the bike ride that will bring it to life.
• Adventure activities in Slovenia: how to choose your speed, from canyon jumps to a gentle city ride
• Goriška Brda: the day the Slovenia trip finally let me exhale

That was the afternoon after a morning of jumping off canyon walls and rappelling down a 50-meter waterfall on a rope. By lunch I was floating in water the color of a tropical beach, cold to the bone, in the shadow of the Julian Alps, happier than I’d been in a long time.

That’s the thing about Slovenia. You can throw yourself down a waterfall before breakfast and be lying in a hammock by dinner. It’s a small country, and it packs serious adrenaline and slow, scenic days into the same week. Often the same valley.

I came home from 10 days here wanting more of this kind of travel. The kind where you feel a place in your body instead of just photographing it.

So here’s the adventure menu, sorted by what each one actually asks of you. Some of it put me right at the edge of my comfort zone. Some I’d hand to my most nervous friend without a second thought. I’ll tell you which is which and where to read the full story on each.

One thing to sort out before you plan. If adventure is your reason for coming, base yourself in the Soča Valley around Bovec. It’s the adventure capital of the country and most of the wild stuff on this list happens there. You’ll want a car.

Canyoning

This was the one that scared me.

You spend the morning working down a gorge by whatever means the rock gives you. You slide down natural chutes and jump off ledges into the pools below. Near the end you rappel down a waterfall with the water washing over your face. We did the Fratarica route with Soča Adventure, our guide Sam moving us through fast so the fear didn’t have time to sit. On one jump I had to clear a rocky ledge below, and I hesitated at the top the way you do when the drop looks twice as high as it is. Sam just said, firmly, “Be confident.” He could say it because he’d already decided I could do it. Three, two, one, and I was in the water.

What stayed with me wasn’t my own jump. It was watching two of the women who’d started the day sliding down the rocks instead of leaping, breathe deep, lean on Sam, and take the jump anyway. Then the whole group turning around to cheer the next one off the ledge. I’ve thought about that a lot since. → This is what a Your Limitless Adventures women’s trip actually looks like

There are two routes, and the choice matters. Sušec is the family-friendly one, jumps of 1 to 3 meters and a 12-meter rappel to finish. Fratarica is the adrenaline version, 6-meter jumps and a 50-meter waterfall descent at the end. Some of our group did the gentler route and had every bit as much fun, especially the surprise drop the guide dropped them into at the bottom.

You wear a thick wetsuit because the water sits around 10°C, and they give you boots. Guides film the whole thing on GoPros, so leave your own camera behind and use your hands for the rock. Click here for rates and availability.

The full story, the spider-crawl I got stuck on and the 30-minute hike in, is in the Soča post. → The Soča Valley, my favorite part of the whole trip

White-water rafting and kayaking

If canyoning is the deep end, this is the one I’d send almost anyone on.

We ran the kayaks and the rafts back-to-back one morning, 15 of us on the emerald water with Mount Triglav standing behind us, the mountain we’d hiked two days before. The rafting rapids on the Soča sit around Grade 2 to 3, enough to tip you out if you hit a rock wrong, gentle enough that tipping out is mostly just funny. On the kayaking section (smaller rapids), I did great right up until the last and biggest rapid, clipped a rock, and went in. Plenty of us did. Nobody got hurt, and falling out of a raft when you can’t get hurt is half the fun.

Our guides were Camilla and Guillermo, both from Chile. Guillermo had the calm voice you want when you’re about to hit fast water. Camilla was loud and fierce and, I think, the only woman guiding on the river that day. There’s an optional 7-meter jump off a rock called Manhattan partway down. I skipped it. I’d hiked Triglav two days earlier and was saving my nerve for the canyoning. You may also want to book through Get Your Guide (they sometimes have discounts and free cancellation) Soca River kayaking and Soca River whitewater rafting.

I’ve rafted the Nile, which throws you out for sport. The Soča won’t do that to you. It’s the most beautiful river I’ve ever paddled, which slots it as my second favorite rafting experience in the world. → Read the full Soča Valley guide

Ziplining

This one’s on my list for next time, so I’ll be straight that I watched rather than flew.

Two of the women looked at it on our free day and came back sold, and the research made me wish I’d gone. There are two setups near Bovec. The Krnica Valley zipline is a 3-kilometer descent across five steel cables strung 200 meters above the ground, with the Bovec basin and the two-thousand-meter peaks laid out under you. The Učja Canyon park is the largest zipline in Europe, 4.5 kilometers across ten cables over a protected gorge.

If you’ve got a free afternoon in the valley and a head for heights, do the thing I didn’t. Then come back and tell me what it was like.

Wild swimming and cold plunging

I detest winter. I’ll complain about a cold morning for hours. And I’ve become completely addicted to sitting in freezing water.

The Soča runs about 10°C all summer, and near our accommodation there’s a stretch by the Great Soča Gorge where local families and kids line the rocks and jump in. One afternoon four of us swam there after a morning hike, without swimsuits, because we’d come straight from the trail and didn’t have them. One of the women hesitated. Getting changed meant driving back to the hotel and losing the moment, and underneath that was the older, quieter worry about what people would think. Christina just said, “Jump in with your clothes on. We’re doing it.” And she did and had a wonderful time. I jumped in after her, mostly because she’d made it look easy, and the four of us swam around fully dressed in water the color of the Andaman Sea.

The lakes give you the same reward at different temperatures. Bohinj is cool and bracing, the one I actually dove into. Lake Bled is warmer than a glacial lake has any right to be, because thermal springs feed it on one side and it holds 23 to 26°C through July and August. Nobody in our group swam it, but we trailed our hands over the side of the boat crossing to the island and the whole boat was surprised by how warm it was. → Lake Bohinj, and why I’d send you there before Bled

New to newsletter readers: if you like the sound of this kind of travel, my newsletter, is where I send the stories and updates that don’t make it onto the blog.

Stand-up paddleboarding

The softest water activity on the list, and the site of the most peaceful hour of my whole trip.

On Lake Bohinj I led the women through a short meditation out on the boards, in a quiet bay away from the little wooden boats. The water was dead still. I guided them into it for five or ten minutes and expected everyone to sit up when they were ready. They lay out there so long I eventually had to call time, because I’m fairly sure a few of them had fallen asleep on the water.

We paddled with Super Duper SUP, who deliver boards to three points around the lake, minimum two hours. Bohinj is the place I’d choose for it, calm and uncrowded. If you’re in the capital and want a gentler version, people paddleboard right through the middle of Ljubljana on the river. I watched them go past from a bar chair with an Aperol spritz in my hand and put it straight on my list.

→ The full Lake Bohinj guide, including the hike to Savica Waterfall!

Biking, three ways

You can bike Slovenia at any speed you like, and I did three very different versions of it.

The gentle one, Ljubljana on two wheels. I found a bike tour on Airbnb Experiences led by a local guide called Klemen before I even left home. Three hours, about $41, bikes provided, only two other people on mine. He fed us the country’s history in pieces as we rode, from the pink church on Prešeren Square to the beehives in the botanical gardens to a rooftop bar in a 1933 skyscraper. It’s the softest thing on this list, sightseeing with a breeze on your face, and the best way I know to get the shape of a city in an afternoon. → My full 2 days in Ljubljana, built around this bike tour

The scenic one, lake to lake. There’s a 28-kilometer cycling route between Bled and Bohinj, mostly separated from traffic, running alongside the Sava Bohinjka river. You can ride it one way and catch the bus back. They carry the bikes. It’s flat, it’s beautiful, and it links the two lakes without a car.

The one with the vineyards, Goriška Brda. Our half-day e-bike tour through the wine country was one of my favorite days of the whole trip. We rode about 17 miles with the San Martín agency, guide Petra stopping us for the views, including the lookout tower at Mejnik above the village of Gonjače. E-bikes because the region is properly hilly, and lunch at a biodynamic winery in the middle of it. One of our group came off her bike on a narrow stretch when a car tailgated us too close. She was fine, shaken and grazed, back on for the ride to lunch. The roads here are narrow and shared with cars, so take them slowly.

→ Best places to visit in Slovenia, and my review of Goriška Brda and how it finally let me exhale

Gorge walking at Vintgar

This one’s a walk suspended over water, and one of the most photographed spots in the country for good reason.

The Vintgar Gorge is a 1.6-kilometer boardwalk pinned to the rock wall, the green Radovna river rushing underneath you the whole way, ending at the Šum waterfall. It takes about 45 minutes. Here’s the catch that trips people up: it’s one-way. You can’t walk back through, so the walk out is longer than most people plan for.

One more thing worth knowing before you go. Since 2026 there are timed-entry tickets with daily caps, and in July and August the slots sell out days ahead, so book about 48 hours out. There’s a shuttle bus from Bled if you don’t want to drive.

→ Vintgar Gorge: everything you need to know before you book

Hiking, from a gentle waterfall walk to the mountain that broke me

Hiking in Slovenia runs the full range, and you can pick your level down to the meter.

At the easy end, the walk to the Kozjak waterfall in the Soča Valley is flat, short, and strung with suspension bridges over that emerald water of the Soca River. The path to the Savica waterfall above Lake Bohinj is a set of roughly 550 steps, about a mile, 20 minutes up, to a 78-meter fall that splits into an A shape against the rock. And you can skip the climbing altogether at Vogel, where a cable car lifts you to 1,535 meters in under five minutes and hands you the view without the work. The flat loops around both lakes, 6 kilometers at Bled and 11 at Bohinj, are the gentlest way to spend a morning on foot.

At the other end there’s Mount Triglav, the highest peak in the country, and the reason I came home turning something over about myself. I’m giving Triglav its own piece. What happened up there was the afternoon I stood at the bottom of a via ferrata and said no. And ended up on a far greater adventure!

→ TRIGLAV: the day I said no on Mount Triglav.

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So, which one’s for you?

If you’re nervous and want to feel active without the fear, take Klemen’s Ljubljana bike tour, walk the Vintgar boardwalk, and do the family-friendly canyoning route. You’ll come home with stories and no bruises.

If you came for the adrenaline, the Fratarica canyon, the rafting, and a zipline over the Učja gorge will give you your money’s worth.

And if you’re somewhere in the middle, which is where most of us live, the beauty of Slovenia is that you don’t have to choose just one. I did the whole spread in 10 days and the gentlest afternoon, six women asleep on paddleboards, sits right alongside the scariest.

How I did this trip to Slovenia

I went to Slovenia with Your Limitless Adventures, a women’s adventure travel company run by my friend Christina McEvoy. I’ve since become a trip leader with them (along with Drea above), and I’m leading three:

• Morocco, October 2026
• Thailand, February 2027
• Vietnam, March 2027

→ Here’s the honest story of what one of these trips is actually like

More Slovenia

• Best places to visit in Slovenia
• The Soča Valley, my favorite part of the whole trip
• Lake Bohinj, and why I’d send you there before Bled
• Lake Bled: the island, the castle, the cake and the 5am hike
• Vintgar Gorge: everything you need to know
• 2 days in Ljubljana
• TRIGLAV: the day I said no on Mount Triglav. Coming soon.

Which of these would you actually do, and which would you talk yourself out of? Tell me in the comments. I want to know if I’m the only one who’ll happily jump off a canyon wall but needs a nudge to get into cold water with my clothes on.

Cancelled flight out of Raleigh, then a delayed one, then an overnight reroute through London that ate the extra day I’d deliberately built into the front of the trip. My airport shuttle broke down on the way in, and we sat waiting for a replacement. I finally reached the hotel mid-afternoon with two days of travel on me and one thought in my head, which was coffee.

So, I walked. Two blocks down to the river. And I stood there thinking, oh no. I’m going to love Ljubljana and I’ve got no time.

I ended up with one evening at the start of my Slovenia trip and one full day and evening at the end. That’s what this post is built on, plus the things I ran out of time for and would put straight into a second day. If you’re planning one or two days in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia in Central Europe, this is the shape I’d give it.

What Ljubljana is actually like

The Ljubljana River runs right through the middle and it’s narrower than you expect. Still, quiet, green, with trees leaning over it and boats going up and down and cobblestone walls on either side. Restaurants have seating on little platforms down at water level. I watched paddleboarders go past while I was drinking an Aperol Spritz.

Both banks are pedestrian and the streets on either side of it form part of the historic district. Cobblestones, market stalls, rainbow-colored buildings, church steeples, and above all of it the castle sitting on its hill. It’s small enough to walk end to end and big enough to keep turning up something.

I’d call it laid-back and social. Everybody’s outside, everybody’s eating, and the whole place gets better after dark rather than winding down.

One thing worth knowing before you plan: Ljubljana is not particularly touristy. I never once felt like I was queuing behind a tour group. In July.

Day 1: The Bike Tour

I love seeing a city on foot or on a bike, and I’d found a bike tour on Airbnb Experiences led by a local before I even left home. I’d never used Airbnb Experiences. I was impressed. The listings are small, local and specific in a way the big tour platforms usually aren’t.

I was supposed to do this on my first day. I had to cancel because of the flights, and Klemen refunded me without me having to ask. When the last day of the trip came free, I booked it again.

The details: 3 hours, about $41, bikes provided. Small group, and there were only 2 other people on mine. We met at the pink church on Prešeren Square, which is the landmark everyone in Ljubljana gives directions from. It’s the Franciscan Church of the Annunciation, and yes, it really is pink.

Klemen started us at a scale model of the city and pointed out how the whole thing fits together, where the castle sits, which bit came first. Then the history: Austro-Hungarian Empire, then Yugoslavia, then independence in 1991. He kept feeding it to us in pieces as we rode, which is a much better way to take in a country’s history than standing in one spot listening to it.

What we stopped at

The bronze door of the Cathedral of St Nicholas. It was made in 1996 for Pope John Paul II’s visit and it tells Slovenia’s story down its whole length. At the bottom there’s a face of the artist (his signature move), and it’s rubbed gold and shiny because everybody who walks past rubs its nose for luck. Rub it with your left hand.

A water fountain hidden in Locksmith Alley. Down a side street in the middle of the downtown, so tucked away I’d have walked past the entrance a hundred times. Klemen challenged us to figure out how to get the water to come out of the hand. In case you can’t, turn it.

The Monument to Edvard Kocbek in Park Tivoli. Kocbek was a Slovenian writer and he’s sitting on a park bench, life-size. On the armrest opposite him is a tiny second version of himself. Klemen said it’s his conscience, sitting across from him. I stood looking at that for a while. Slovenians put a lot of thought into their public art.

Dragon Bridge. I found it a bit boring, if I’m being straight with you. Four copper dragons on a bridge, everyone stops for the photo. What I liked was the story underneath it. The legend goes that Jason, of Jason and the Argonauts, sailed up the Ljubljanica with the Golden Fleece, found a dragon living in the marshes, and killed it. The dragon became the city’s emblem and it’s now on the flag, the coat of arms and about half the souvenirs in town. The bridge itself went up in 1901 as part of rebuilding the city after the 1895 earthquake, and the original plans had winged lions on it. They swapped them for dragons.

The botanical gardens, and the beehives. This is where I fell for the country properly. Klemen stopped us at a couple of hives and started talking about beekeeping, which in Slovenia is not a hobby so much as a national characteristic. About 1 in every 200 Slovenians keeps bees. Ljubljana alone has around 300 beekeepers and more than 4,500 hives inside the city limits. The city was named European Green Capital in 2016, roughly 75% of it is green space, and close to 60% of the whole country is forest, which puts Slovenia third in Europe behind Sweden and Finland.

I biked away from that stop liking Slovenia about 30% more than I had 10 minutes earlier.

Križanke. A cultural center with an outdoor amphitheater that was being set up for a concert, so we could only look through the glass doors. It looked like a wonderful place to see something. The Ljubljana Festival was running while we were there.

You get a very quick sense of how much this city is built around its culture. One of the other 2 people on my tour was a pianist, a professor at a university in Kansas City, in Ljubljana on his way home from teaching in Italy. He’d come specifically to hear one of the world’s best pianists play the following night. That’s who else is on a Tuesday afternoon bike tour here.

The rooftop

Klemen took us up Nebotičnik, which means “skyscraper” and which was, when it opened in 1933, the tallest building in the Balkans and the 9th tallest in Europe. It’s 70 meters. The rooftop cafe bar at the top gives you a full 360, the colored buildings, the castle, and the Julian Alps stacked up behind everything.

He’d arranged Slovenian cake for the group. I’m gluten free so I couldn’t have it, and without me saying much about it he went and got me a flat white instead. Small thing. It’s the kind of small thing that tells you what a guide is like.

We sat up there for 20 minutes and talked. Before leaving Klemen took us to check out the cool spiral staircase in the building. Don’t miss it!

Metelkova, and the moment

Then we rode to AKC Metelkova mesto, and this was my favorite part of the day.

It’s a block of run-down buildings covered wall to ceiling in murals, sculptures made of scrap, and work by local artists who come in and keep adding to it. There are small studios inside that you can wander through when they’re open. One rule Klemen gave us: don’t photograph the artists. It isn’t appreciated. Photograph the walls all you like.

The buildings were an Austro-Hungarian army barracks, finished in 1911, used by the Yugoslav army until 1991. The city decided to demolish them in 1993, and a network of artists and activists squatted the site instead. It’s been a self-governing autonomous zone ever since, seven buildings and 12,500 square meters of it. There’s a skate park. There were kids hanging about on it while we were there.

From roughly midnight until 8am it turns into the nightlife district, bands playing in the street and in the buildings. Way past my bedtime. If dancing until 8am is your thing, this is where it happens.

We finished at Center Rog, an old bicycle factory now converted into a makerspace with 9 workshops, project studios, a library branch, a cafe and a park out the front. Then back to the riverfront to drop the bikes, with Klemen giving us his dinner recommendations on the way.

He was quirky and funny and completely in love with his city. That’s the whole thing you’re paying for. Book your bike your here.

Worth knowing: Klemen also runs a walking tour that includes a river cruise, 2 hours, about $34. He came straight off it onto our bike tour. Do both. They cover different ground and between them you’d have the city and the water in a single day for under $80.

Day 1 evening: the riverfront

Go down to the river at night and just walk.

Every table is full. Nobody has a phone out. People are eating and talking and laughing and it builds as the evening goes rather than thinning out.

Cross the river and go down one of the smaller cobblestone side streets. I did that on my last night looking for a gelato place I’d found on a map, and what opened up was row after row of alfresco dining, hidden squares with restaurants and bars in them, no cars. It reminded me of Rome. That’s where I’d eat if I had my time again. I picked a restaurant on the main riverfront instead, went for Indian because I wanted to see how Slovenia handled a different cuisine, and it was a miss.

A few of us went for gelato and ended up standing in the square talking to strangers for the best part of an hour. It started because we asked a group of men where they’d gotten theirs. Some were locals, one was from Turkey. They gave us advice about our Mount Triglav hike, told us stories about Slovenia, and we stood there in the warm dark with our gelato like we’d all known each other for years.

That happens more easily when you’re traveling. I’ve noticed it happens far less often at home in the States, though Raleigh is getting better at it.

→ This is what a Your Limitless Adventures women’s trip looks like from the inside

Day 2: the castle, the cruise and the market

This is the day I had planned and then lost to a cancelled flight out of Raleigh. I’d researched it before I left, I heard about most of it from the women on my trip who did get to it, and Klemen filled in the rest. So, I’m giving it to you the way I’d have run it, with the sources named as I go.

Start at the market (produce and artisan)

The fruit and vegetable market runs along the river under Plečnik’s colonnade and it’s a morning thing. I only ever saw it shut, because I arrived too late on my first afternoon and the coffee trailer I’d come for was the last thing still trading. Go early, eat there, then walk.

We walked along on last morning in Slovenia, and the market was bustling. There was also a row of local artisan stores lining the riverfront. It’s the place you want to be if you like gift / souvenir shopping or just want to peer into the local arts culture.

The part I loved most was the beehive panels. Slovenians paint the front board of the hive, and it’s a folk art that exists nowhere else in the world.

The oldest surviving one is dated 1758 and the tradition ran hardest through the 1800s. Around 3,000 panels are still around, carrying more than 600 different motifs between them. Some are biblical. Plenty are scenes out of folk tales, and a good number are straight village satire, which is where they get funny.

They’re historical records as much as decoration. Somebody’s beliefs and somebody’s joke about the neighbors, painted onto the front of a beehive and still readable 200 years later. If you want to see a proper collection of them, the Museum of Apiculture is in Radovljica, about 10 minutes from Lake Bled.

Ljubljana Castle, mid-morning

Walk up through the old town or take the funicular from the base, right by where our group ate on the first night. The funicular is around €6 return and takes about a minute. The castle opens daily from 9am, until 8pm in summer, and the funicular runs later than that. There’s a restaurant at the top that people kept telling me about.

Here’s my one piece of first-hand advice on the castle. It’s a warning. My bike tour finished at 6 and I had dinner at 7:30. I looked up at the hill, decided 90 minutes wasn’t enough, and went and had a mediocre meal instead. It was enough. Take the funicular, give it an hour, come down for dinner. I’m still annoyed with myself. Especially after seeing that image above (Sourced Yay Images) Sunset is the time to be up there!

Book your Castle Entry Ticket with Optional Funicular Ride

Ljubljana Walking Tour & River Cruse

Klemen’s walking tour with the river cruise, afternoon. 2 hours, about $34. It goes into the sites and the history at a pace the bike tour rides past, and the cruise is the answer to the thing I sat wishing for every time I looked at that river. Book it alongside the bike tour and you’ve covered the city properly for under $80.

Here are a few other Ljubljana River cruise options: An electric boat tour, a Boat & Craft Beer Tasting Tour, and a Wine Tasting Boat Cruise

Explore the river district slowly

Then the river, slowly. Cross to the far bank, get lost in the side streets, and have dinner in one of the hidden squares rather than on the main riverfront. More on that below, including the mistake I made.

One to write down for next time

People paddleboard on the Ljubljana. I watched them go past from a bar chair with an Aperol spritz in my hand and put it straight on the list. If I get back here, I’m on that river. You may even want to squeeze it into your two-day Ljubljana itinerary. Just be sure to report back to me what it was like. Here is a stand-up paddleboarding tour of Ljubljana River.

Swap an hour for a Thai massage, if your legs are ruined

After 8 days of hiking, canyoning, paddleboarding and e-biking, our bodies were wrecked. I found a Thai massage place, Bee Thai Massage, and booked myself, Sena and Mel in. €45 for the hour, and one of the best massages I’ve had in years.

Thai massage is my favorite kind. Firm, deep, lots of stretching and rolling. Lying there getting my legs pulled around, I worked out why I’ve never liked a Swedish massage. Thai was my first ever massage, decades ago, so that’s the baseline I set. A Swedish massage feels to me like somebody politely declining to touch me.

I’ve come home wondering why I haven’t been chasing this down in Raleigh. And I cannot wait to get to Thailand next year, where I plan to have one every single day.

If you’ve only got two days and you’re choosing, go up the castle. If you’ve come to Ljubljana off the back of a week of hiking, book the massage.

Day trips, if you’d rather get out of the city

Slovenia is small, so Ljubljana works well as a base. Postojna Cave and Predjama Castle are the classic pairing and 2 of the women on my trip did them as an afternoon while I was on the bike tour. They came back full of it.

Lake Bled and Lake Bohinj are also doable in a day. One of the men on my bike tour was heading out to do exactly that the next morning because he had 24 hours to spare, though I’d give those lakes far longer if you can. This tour also includes Savica Waterfall, which I recommend. You may also want to combine Lake Bled with Vintgar Gorge, which I loved!

Where to eat and drink in Ljubljana

Coffee in Ljubljana

Tri Marije is a coffee trailer down by the fruit and vegetable market and it was the first thing I did in Slovenia. I could tell from the care the barista was taking that the flat white was going to be good, and it was. He also tried to teach me to say thank you in Slovenian. Took me a few goes before he said “much better,” and I used hvala for the rest of the trip because of him.

Afrika v Ledini is a couple of streets back from the river. Chris and I sat there for an hour while the others were having their massages, and the flat white was very good. Time it with a massage if you’re doing both.

Stow Specialty Coffee Roasters was another I had noted down but did not get a chance to experience. They are known for high-quality beans and sustainable practices! They have several locations but one is right near the pink church!

Gluten free in Ljubljana

Zrno do zrna is a small organic supermarket with a case of gluten free pastries, savory and sweet. I had an apple strudel on my first afternoon and went back on my last day for a pesto pastry that was a twisted knot. Slovenia in general was excellent for gluten free. Menus flag allergens with a numbering system that’s consistent across restaurants, so I mostly didn’t have to ask, and every piece of gluten free bread I ate in 10 days was good. That does not happen to me in America.

Gelato in Ljublijana

Gelateria Romantika is down a back street, a tiny shopfront between the alfresco restaurants, decorated in pink. Artisan flavors like sour cherry, banana sorbet, bourbon and vanilla pumpkin. I had pistachio and hazelnut chocolate, and it might have been the best gelato of the trip. Under €4 for a big cup, and they do gluten free cones.

Cacao is the one on the riverfront everyone knows, with a big terrace and a queue out the door. Huge servings, very good, priced like the popular place it is.

Dinner Restaurants in Ljubljana

There are so many restaurants in the river district and the many streets that meander through the historic area near it. Research beforehand or just wander and choose one that looks good! Here are a couple of suggestions:

Restavracija Vodnikov Hram is where our group of 15 ate on the first night. It sits at the base of the funicular under a clock that works like the astronomical clock in Prague, little characters coming out to dance on the hour. In Prague there are 300 people watching that. Here there was nobody, and we sat and ate and watched it on our own. Lots of Slovenian dishes with local ingredients, most of which I couldn’t eat, so I had the salmon on the waiter’s recommendation, and it was excellent.

Klemen’s 2 picks, which I’d take next time. Baščaršija on Trubarjeva for Slovenian barbecue, which he said is where locals go and is well priced. And Restavracija Breg on the riverfront, more elevated, Michelin recommended, and when I looked at the prices afterwards they were very reasonable. I wish I’d gone.

Where to stay in Ljubljana

I stayed in two places, one at each end of the trip. Both of these hotels in Ljubljana are good. Heritage is the one I’d book again.

City Hotel

City Hotel was our group hotel on the first night. Modern and comfortable. The rooms are small, which matters very little in a city where you’re barely inside them. Great location, easy walk to the old town, 2 blocks back from the river.

There’s an outdoor terrace where we all met each other for the first time, which you can drink on while watching the street below. The breakfast buffet was outstanding, hot and cold, pastries, oats, yogurt, and more gluten free options than I’m used to getting anywhere. Check prices and reviews on Expedia

Hotel Heritage

Hotel Heritage is where I booked myself for the last night, on Sena’s recommendation after she’d done the research. Boutique, more character, more design, steps from the river in the pedestrian zone. Stylish room, very comfortable, excellent shower.

We had a 4:30am airport run so we missed the breakfast that other women on the trip had raved about, and the hotel packed us breakfast to go instead. They made me a gluten free sandwich, and the bread was so good I’m still wondering if they bake it themselves. Check rates and reviews on Expedia. That’s where I booked from!

Here are some Airbnb options, plus you can check out the list below for more hotels in Ljubljana.

Practical things worth knowing

• From the airport. About 30 minutes by taxi or shuttle, and roughly €15 per person if you share. There’s also a bus. Christina organized our shuttle through the hotel, which was easy.
• How long to visit Ljubljana for. 2 days is workable and 3 is better. The city is small and you’ll see it quickly, and then you’ll want the other kind of time, the sitting in a coffee shop watching people kind, which is how you actually work out what a place is like.
• Walkability. Very. You can walk to the parks and gardens I biked to. Bike rentals are everywhere if you’d rather ride.
• Base yourself here. Slovenia is small enough that you can stay put in Ljubljana and day-trip out rather than changing hotels every two nights. See the day trips above.
• Best time of day. Night. It comes alive after dark and that’s when you should be wandering.
• Getting around Slovenia. Check rental rates and availability through Discover Cars (who we personally use for best rates)

The bit I keep coming back to

Cycling through that art district is the moment that stuck.

Up to then I’d had a beautiful riverfront, good coffee, an alfresco dinner. Lovely, and I could have got a version of that in a dozen European cities. Metelkova gave me the other side. Urban and rough at the edges, with an underground music and theater scene that takes over the streets at midnight. Then the view from the top of a 1933 skyscraper, then a park full of beehives.

That’s a lot of personality for a capital city of fewer than 300,000 people. And all of it moving at a pace that never once felt hurried. I got the shape of Ljubljana in a day. I want the depth of it. I’ll be back for that.

Would I add days on either side of a group trip again?

Always. Especially somewhere I’ve never been.

I’m already doing it. I’m arriving earlier to Fez for my Morocco trip, and I’m adding days in Bangkok before Thailand even though I’ve lived there and know it well, purely to wander and eat and get a Thai massage every day.

Ljubljana taught me that lesson the expensive way, by taking the day back off me before I arrived.

How I did this trip to Slovenia

I went to Slovenia with Your Limitless Adventures, a women’s adventure travel company run by my friend Christina McEvoy. I’ve since become a trip leader with them, and I’m leading 3:

• Morocco, October 2026
• Thailand, February 2027
• Vietnam, March 2027

→ What a Your Limitless Adventures trip is actually like

More Slovenia

• Best places to visit in Slovenia
• The Soča Valley, my favorite part of the whole trip
• Lake Bohinj, and why I’d send you there before Bled
• Lake Bled: the island, the castle, the cake and the 5am hike
• Vintgar Gorge: everything you need to know
• What are the best adventures to have in Slovenia?
• Mount Triglav, Slovenia: the summit I skipped and the three hours that taught me more.
• Visiting Goriška Brda, Slovenia’s wine country (just like Tuscany)

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Did you go up to the castle? Tell me what I missed. I’m still annoyed about it. Boo Hoo to cancelled flights. BTW, Airhelp is a service I only just learned about that can help you get reimbursed for cancelled flights. And make sure you have travel insurance – it covered the costs I incurred because of my delays!

It’s a beautiful walk. The boardwalks are pinned into the rock, the water underneath runs a green you’d assume had been edited, and the whole thing is over in about 45 minutes. What we hadn’t understood was that those 45 minutes were the easy half.

When we asked, locals told us they know. People get caught by this constantly.

What was meant to be a short morning turned into roughly 5 miles on foot, and we weren’t dressed for it or fed for it. The walk out goes through lovely farmland with views back toward the mountains, so it wasn’t a punishment. It was just a lot more day than we’d allowed.

I’ve since worked out exactly why it happens, and it’s simple enough that two minutes of reading will save you the whole problem.

What Vintgar Gorge actually is

The Radovna river cut the gorge, and it took its time. The rock is Triassic limestone, sitting between two hills called Hom and Boršt. During the ice age a shield of ice and moraine dammed the river into a lake and the water kept working anyway. What’s left is 1.6 km of gorge with walls rising 50 to 100 m on either side of you and slopes running up to 250 m above the water.

You walk it on boardwalks bolted into the rock face. Sometimes the river is directly under your feet through the slats. Sometimes you’re out on a bridge over the middle of it. Where the gorge pinches to its narrowest, the walkways are called the Žumer galleries, and they exist because there’s no other way a person gets through that section.

The river changes character every hundred meters. Deep still pools where you can count the stones on the bottom, then a stretch of rapids going white and loud enough that you stop trying to talk, then quiet again.

The fact I liked most: this is not a new discovery. Jakob Žumer, the mayor of nearby Gorje, and a photographer called Benedikt Lergetporer found the way through in 1891. A committee formed, money was raised, and the walkways went up over the next two summers. The gorge opened to the public on 26 August 1893. People have been walking this in bad shoes and worse hats for over 130 years.

Look up about halfway along and there’s a stone railway bridge crossing 33 m above you. 65 m of cut stone, built between 1904 and 1906 for the Bohinj Railway, the line Austria-Hungary put in so it could reach the port of Trieste without crossing Italian territory. An empire’s supply problem, solved with a viaduct over a beauty spot. The line still runs.

At the far end is the Šum waterfall, around 13 m, and it’s a rarity. Most Slovenian waterfalls come out of the rock as karst springs, the way Savica does over at Bohinj. Šum is an actual river falling off a ledge, which there are very few of in this country. And I found it quite humorous that Slap is the Slovenian word for waterfall, so this waterfall is called Slap Sum.

Vintgar Gorge is a one-way route

That’s the thing. You can’t walk back the way you came.

You enter at Podhom, walk 1.6 km of boardwalk through the gorge, and come out at the Šum waterfall at the other end. The boardwalk only runs in one direction, which is what keeps it from turning into a bottleneck of people trying to pass each other on a walkway a meter wide.

So, the exit puts you a couple of kilometers from the entrance on foot, with no way back through. Everyone we met on the trail were as confused as us. The ladies we stopped to ask in a small village on the hill confirmed that yes that path going through farmland was correct, and most people stop to ask. And then the shuttle bus driver laughed and said, “very confusing. I did it once and now I just drive the shuttle”

Your two ways back

There are two marked return paths from the Šum exit, and picking one before you set off is the entire fix.

• The Path of the River of Trees. About 2.7 km, roughly 1.5 hours. Shorter, more shaded, and the one to take if you’re tired, warm, or with kids.
• The Path of King Triglav. About 4.1 km, roughly 2 hours. Longer, historically themed, and the more interesting walk of the two if you have the legs for it.

Basically, when you reach the end of the gorge trail, there is a little hut where you return your helmets (and grab an ice cream if you want). Facing the hut, there is a path on the right leading up – that is what we took. It is the Path of King Triglav. Moving to the left of the hut is a bridge, and that way is where you will find the Path of the River of Trees.

For families with children, there is the Children’s Vintgar – a playful adventure with a passport, which takes place along the route of the King of Triglav and turns the visit into an exploratory experience for the youngest.

I’ve only just figured out writing this post that we took the Path of the Triglav. Nothing felt clearly marked at the time, so we followed what looked like the way and kept going and going and going. You will not have that problem now as you’ll know in advance. And I have shared the map above to help you.

The trail first takes you through the forest, past pastures and views of One exciting thing i that the trail is one of the most easily accessible trails on the outskirts of the Triglav National Park.

We emerged out of the forest to the church of St Catherine, which gives you panoramic views over the valley, the Julian Alps and out to and the idyllic villages of Gorenje.. From there, the path was open on the edge of the hill where we had views of the countryside, including herds of sheep and cattle, and views back over to Lake Bled and Bled Castle. You can actually walk from there back into Bled center which would not have taken us all that much more than what we walked, according to a map we saw out the front of the church.

Both of the trails bring you back to the visitor center where you started. Shuttles will be waiting to take you back to the parking lot where your car is, or where you will get the bus back to Bled.

Decide which trail you’re taking while you’re still at the entrance to the gorge. Look at the map, look at your group, and be honest about how far everyone actually wants to walk after 45 minutes of stairs and boardwalk.

Book your tickets before you go, because they sell out

Vintgar moved to timed entry tickets in 2026, and the number of people let in each day is capped.

This is not a queue-up-and-pay situation any more. We wanted to go on a particular day and the slots were gone, so we swapped our whole itinerary around it and went to Savica Waterfall instead. That worked out fine, but it was luck rather than planning.

Book at least 48 hours ahead in July and August. Slots go days in advance in summer. You can book online through the official site, at the central Vintgar parking, or at the Bled bus station. There is also a guided tour available every afternoon. (from 1 June to 20 September at 16:00, and at 15:00 on the remaining dates) Don’t forget the audio guide if desired.

The gorge is open roughly April to November, from early morning to early evening, with hours shifting through the season. As of 2026, tickets are €15.00 for adults and €5.00 for kids under 15. Book your tickets here. If you arrive without a ticket or miss your appointment, you must wait for a free seat. You can only purchase tickets at the VINTGAR LIP Central Car Park (P1), before entering the VINTGAR Shuttle.

You will have to wear hardhats on the trail through the gorge. We’re guessing to protect against falling rocks. You return them at the other end of the gorge trail; you do not have to wear them on the return hike back to the shuttle.

How long to actually allow

Give it half a day.

The gorge itself is about 45 minutes. Then add 1.5 to 2 hours for whichever return path you take, plus getting there and back from Bled. That’s 3 hours minimum on the ground and comfortably more if you stop for photos, which you will.

The Vintgar Gorge is best visited in the early morning or late afternoon hours, not only because of the beautiful light, but to avoid crowds.

What to bring

Water and something to eat. That’s the whole list, and it’s the one we got wrong.

Also, proper shoes. The boardwalk is fine in anything, but the return paths are real trails through farmland and forest.

Getting there from Lake Bled

The VINTGAR e-bus takes 15 minutes from the Bled Central Bus Station (next to the Bled Rose Hotel) to the VINTGAR LIP Central Car Park. There you change to the VINTGAR Shuttle, which takes about 7 minutes to the VINTGAR Entry Centre. It’s a separate ticket from your gorge entry, so budget for both. We caught the shuttle from Bled Center as it was so easy, and we did not want to risk a full parking lot.

Driving is the other option. The free VINTGAR LIP Central Parking Lot is the central HUB of the destination. From there jump on the shuttle from to the entrance (7 minutes). Motorcycles can go direct to the gorge entrance.

The other option, which I think if you have time, is to rent and ride ebikes from Bled Center passing through villages and the countryside on the way. It’s 4km and you can bypass the shuttle and go direct to gorge entrance. You can rent them here.

From the center of Bled, it is about 4 km or 50 minutes’ walk to the Vintgar Gorge. Pedestrian signs lead to the VINTGAR Entrance Centre. 

If you are visiting just for the day from Ljubljana. While its possible, I don’t recommend it, just because this area is beautiful and deserves more of your time! However, I know schedules may not always allow for it. You can either pick up a rental car (see options here). It’s about 40 miles (around an hour). Or join a day tour from Ljubljana. This full day tour from Ljublijana includes Vintgar Gorge 

If you’re basing yourself at Bled, Vintgar, Savica Waterfall and Lake Bohinj all work as day trips from one place, which is how we did it.

Where to stay and what to do at Lake Bled and Lake Bohinj, and why I’d send you there before Bled

So is it worth it

Yes. Emphatically.

I went in with low expectations, which I’m slightly embarrassed about now. Vintgar was a box on the itinerary between two lakes, and it turned into one of the most beautiful hours I had in Slovenia. When I sat down afterwards and ranked everywhere I’d been in the country, Vintgar came in third. Above both lakes.

Go. Just go having booked your ticket, chosen your way back, and packed a sandwich.

How I did this trip

I was in Slovenia for 10 days with Your Limitless Adventures, a women’s adventure travel company run by my friend Christina McEvoy. I’ve since become a trip leader with them, and I’m leading three:

• Morocco, October 2026
• Thailand, February 2027
• Vietnam, March 2027

What a Your Limitless Adventures trip is actually like →

More Slovenia

• Best places to visit in Slovenia
• Lake Bled: What to do and where to stay
• Lake Bohinj and Savica Waterfall
• The Soča Valley
• 2 Days in Ljubljana: The bike tour, Art District, and river front
• Best adventures to have in Slovenia
• TRIGLAV: The day I said no on Mount Triglav
• Visiting Goriška Brda, Slovenia’s answer to Tuscany)

Did Vintgar catch you out on the way back too? Tell me in the comments, because I’d like to know it wasn’t just us.

A local band, singing in Slovenian, playing to a crowd on the grass with the water going dark behind them. People were up dancing. Friends, couples, a few kids running around the edges. Not one person I could see was filming it.

I stood there for a while. I didn’t understand a word, and it made no difference at all, because it was the same scene I’ve watched a hundred times in Australia and in North Carolina. People finishing a workday and deciding to enjoy themselves.

Lake Bled gave me the iconic photograph. It also gave me that. I visited Bled in July for 2 nights on a 10-day women’s adventure trip through Slovenia and Lake Bled was our base. Two nights is tight. Some of what we did I’d repeat exactly. Some of it I’d give twice the time.

Where Lake Bled is and what it’s like

Bled sits in northwestern Slovenia at the edge of the Julian Alps, about 35 km from Ljubljana airport. That’s a 30-to-40-minute drive, or roughly half an hour on the bus, which makes it the easiest first stop in the country. We came in from Ljubljana on day 1.

A glacier carved the lake out. There’s an island in the middle of it with a church on top, the only natural island in Slovenia, and the castle sits on a cliff above the northern shore. The whole arrangement looks staged, and it isn’t.

Halfway across to the island I had a hand trailing over the side of the boat, and the water was warm. Properly warm, the kind you’d get into without any negotiating with yourself first. Several of us noticed at the same time and spent a minute being surprised about it together.

Bled is glacial in origin, but thermal springs come up through the lakebed on the northeastern side and take the chill out of it. Through July and August, it holds somewhere between 23 and 26°C. Bohinj, 30 minutes away, runs cooler. Still swimmable, and more refreshing than punishing, but you feel the difference.

It’s a small lake. You can walk the whole way around it in under two hours. My first impression from our hotel grounds was a cobbled square, an old church, and water sitting there being an unreasonable color. And for the most famous place in the country, I never found it overwhelming.

Taking a Pletna boat to Bled Island

Taking a traditional pletna boat to the island is probably the thing you came to Lake Bled for, so do it first and do it early.

We walked around a stretch of the lake to the dock from our accommodation, stopping to take photos along the way, our favorite being the view back to our hotel and connected church and the heart sculpture. It was our first day, we barely knew each other yet, and there’s something about walking side by side that makes strangers talk faster than sitting across a table does.

Now to enjoying Lake Bled’s top attraction – the pletna boat ride to Bled Island. The pletna is a flat-bottomed wooden boat rowed standing up by one man with two long oars, and the design goes back to the 1590s. The craftsmanship of the boat and the physical effort of the pletnar make this a a unique cultural encounter and worth doing. It reminded me of the gondolas in Venice; except we were crossing open water with the Julian Alps behind us instead of drifting down a canal.

The crossing to Bled Island takes about 30 minutes. Your oarsman waits while you’re on the island and brings you back. So, plan your time on the island well, as you don’t want to get left there and have to swim back! Apparently, people do swim over to the island, so you have options.

For the pletna boats, you cannot book in advance. Payment is strictly cash-in-hand directly to your rower. In 2026, the standard round-trip ticket price is €20 for adults and €10 for children. Pletnas leave from

• Mlino Pier: Closest point to the island (10–15-minute row time)
• Kazina (Bled Center): Located near the Park Hotel (longest and most scenic route 30 mins) Where we left from!
• Velika Zaka: (near the rowing center on the western side of the lake)

Go early. I’ll say it again because it’s the single most useful thing in this post. For one of Slovenia’s biggest attractions I never found Bled crowded, but the island fills up as the day goes on and the boats queue. It is best to beat the midday rush – that is when a lot of the tour buses from Ljubljana arrive.

What’s actually on Bled Island

Bled island is small, and there isn’t a lot on it. That’s fine and part of its unique charm. It’s a lovely, quiet place to sit for about 40 minutes. Just know what you’re getting so you can plan the rest of your day around it.

We landed on the back side of the church and went up the narrow small staircase there, but we came down the famous staircase – some boats are dropped off at the bottom of this baroque stone staircase instead. Built in 1655, there are 99 steps, made of breccia, a local rock. Tradition says a groom should carry his bride up all 99 before the wedding, which explains the couples you’ll see attempting it in formal wear.

At the top is the Church of the Assumption, 17th century baroque, standing where a Slavic pagan temple stood before it. A couple of the women in our group went inside and climbed the bell tower. The church is beautiful.

The bell up there is a wishing bell, and it’s been in place since 1534. The story goes that a widow called Poliksena, who lived at Bled Castle, had it cast in memory of her husband. Ring it and make a wish (be prepared to wait). Couples who ring it are supposed to get a long and happy marriage out of the deal.

There’s a café. Some of the women tried potica, the walnut cake this region is known for, traditionally baked in a potičnica, a hand-shaped pot meant to look like Christ’s crown. Reviews at our table were mixed, but they all enjoyed it more than the Slovenia cake they had in Ljubljana the night before. My flat white was fine. Not one I’d cross a lake for, though I’d already crossed a lake for it.

Sitting in that café with the windows open onto the water was the best part of the island for me. We grabbed a gelato from the stand on the way out and walked down the stairs and around the small trail around the back to the boat. (Psst. Slovenia is next door to Italy so expect a lot of gelato. How terrible!!) Leave some time for photos, especially on the shoreline looking back over Bled Castle.

Mala Osojnica at Sunrise

I contemplated sleeping through this early morning hike to a view of Lake Bled.

I was still wrecked from the flight over and I lay there at 5am doing the arithmetic every jetlagged traveler does, working out exactly how much sleep I’d get if I stayed put. What got me up was my roommate Ali bouncing out of bed like the day owed her something, and a couple of the other women enthusiastic for it. I’m so glad they did.

The Mala Osojnica trail is about a mile and it’s steep. Properly steep, the kind where you stop talking about halfway up. It is also the best way I know to wake up. I didn’t need coffee afterwards, which for me is close to a miracle.

The view at the top is the one you’ve seen. The whole lake, the island sitting in the middle of it with the church spire up, the castle on its cliff, all of it going soft and pink in the first light.

Things I wish I’d known:

• There’s a higher viewpoint further up. The trail isn’t well marked and we missed it entirely, and only found out from a hiking couple when we were already heading down. Look at the map before you go.
• We arrived just after sunrise rather than before it, so we got the colors and the soft light without seeing the sun actually come up. We knew we’d miss it as a summer sunrise was early and it was at least a 40 min journey to the top.
• For photographs, late afternoon is probably better. In the morning the light is behind the lake rather than on it.
• And parking at the trailhead is expensive. Walking around from town is the alternative if you’ve got the time in your morning, which at 5am we didn’t.

That hour is the reason I’d tell anyone to do Bled with people rather than alone. I’d have slept in. Somebody else got me up a mountain, and it turned into my favorite morning of the trip.

→ This is what a Your Limitless Adventures women’s trip actually looks like and best adventures to have in Slovenia.

Bled Castle

Bled castle sits on a cliff above the lake and it’s the other half of every photograph of this place. It’s the oldest castle in Slovenia (11th Century) and a real part of Bled’s history. I loved seeing Bled Castle from almost everywhere we went in the region. It was the perfect landmark, especially on our walk home from Vintgar Gorge when we got disorientated by the confusing return trail. More on that soon!

There’s a steep 10-minute climb up to it from the Old Parish House, and I’d take that path over driving. It’s pretty the whole way and the views open up as you go.

Now my honest experience. We had 5 minutes. We ran up, took a photo, and ran back down, and we weren’t even on the good side. The view of the island with the church on it is from the far side, and we didn’t have time to walk around it. We also didn’t pay to go inside, because paying an entry fee to spend two minutes in a castle made no sense on that particular morning.

That’s a verdict on our schedule rather than on the castle. If you’ve got an hour or two, go in and learn the history properly, walk the full way around the walls, and get the angle we missed. If you’ve got 5 minutes, do what we did and don’t pay.

To discover inside the castle grounds:

• a museum provides insights into medieval life and the significance of the castle in Slovenian history
• a beautifully preserved Gothic chapel built in the 16th century, adorned with frescoes
• breathtaking panoramic views of the lake, the island, and the surrounding Julian Alps
• restaurant that offers Slovenian dishes with a modern twist, along with a wine cellar that visitors can explore

The Bled cream cake, and whether you’ll actually like it

Kremšnita, or Bled cream cake is a famous Slovenian dessert. You’ll see it in every window in town, and it’s a genuine local institution rather than a tourist invention. A pastry chef at the Park Hotel created the modern version in 1953, and they’ve been cutting it into the same 7 by 7-centimeter square ever since. Puff pastry, vanilla custard, cream, more pastry.

The women I was with grabbed a piece from the little café at our hotel and ate it walking to Vintgar Gorge. The verdict around the group was about a 7 out of 10.

I’m gluten free so I scooped out a bit of the cream filling, which is a sad way to eat a famous cake but it’s the way I eat most famous cakes. It reminded me of a vanilla slice back home in Australia, except a vanilla slice is sweeter and better.

Here’s the useful part. If you’re American and used to American desserts, you may find it a little bland. It’s a much gentler thing than what you’re expecting. Try it anyway, because it’s part of being here, and adjust your expectations rather than your plans. I’m not a sweet tooth person at all (I grew up on vegemite), and even I found it a little too unsweet.

Walking around the lake

The full loop around Lake Bled is 6 km, about 3.7 miles, and it’s flat. Most people take 1.5 to 2 hours at a pace that lets them stop. That’s a surprising distance to me as it felt so much bigger. I know because a local Raleigh lake I walk around is close to the same size and feels much smaller.

We ran out of time and I regret it. If you have a spare morning, this is what I’d do with it. It’s the way to see the island from every angle and to find the quieter side of the water away from town.

Vintgar Gorge

You will, without a doubt, want to visit Vintgar Gorge while in Lake Bled. It’s one of my favorite places in Slovenia, and something I was not really expecting to be much more than a short easy hike.

Firstly, it was stunning, with its high, narrow canyon walls, and transparent green river making its way through, sometimes slowly, and sometimes more mostly through rapids over the rocks or spilling over as small waterfalls and even at the end with the larger Sum Waterfall,

t also involved a much longer hike than we anticipated getting out of the gorge, which I have written all about in my guide to Vintgar Gorge and everything you need to know before you visit. Plus more photos that are going to inspire you to book the ticket now.

Where to eat at Lake Bled

Pizzeria Rustika

Pizzeria Rustika, around the corner from where we stayed. Book it, and time it. We had a reservation and sadly, because of our large group couldn’t sit on the outside patio, which is where you want to be. We ate downstairs inside instead, in a smaller room that was fine for a group our size. When we drove past later that afternoon there was a long line out the door, and there had been nothing like that at lunchtime.

The woodfired pizza is the reason to come. Several of the women said it was the best they’d had, and a couple said better than Italy, which caused an argument. There are toppings you don’t see much, like peach and mozzarella. The most popular for our group was the signature rustika. I had the Rikli Solata – mozzarella salad with grilled chicken instead and it was excellent.

We came back here after our Triglav hike to collect our stored bags and grabbed pizza and salad to eat in the van on the way to the Soča Valley.

Old Cellar Bled

Old Cellar Bled, the Lake View one for dinner. Check which one you’re booking, because there are two. The original has been in the old part of town since 2009. The lakeside one on Cesta Svobode only opened in 2025, and that’s the one you want.

A view over the lake with the island in front of you and the castle standing watch above it, and we timed it for sunset. Watching that sky go pink and purple over the water while we all sat at one long table was one of my favorite hours in Bled.

The menu runs traditional Slovenian done in a modern way with local ingredients, and the wine list is properly Slovenian. They brought me gluten free bread for the olive oil without being asked twice, which I appreciated more than it probably sounds. I took the waiter’s recommendation and had pork cheek in prosciutto. Very good.

This restaurant also had a rather large, contemporary inside dining room, that was just as busy as the patio. If you can (reserve in advance) definitely sit outside, those views are unbeatable.

Restavracija Sova

Restavracija Sova, down on the lake shore. We were in a small room at the back, though there’s a covered outdoor area with lake views that looks like the place to sit. I had local trout, grilled, with the chef’s potato salad, and it might have been my favorite meal in Slovenia. We split a crème brûlée for dessert. The table next to me had the chocolate brownie with raspberries and vanilla ice cream and I have thought about it since.

Where to stay at Lake Bled

We stayed at The Old Parish House Hotel sitting under Castle Hill next to the church of St Martin, and it’s the best accommodation decision available in Bled.

It’s one of the oldest buildings in the town. The rooms are simple in the way an old parish house should be, natural materials and nothing shouting at you. There are 10 double rooms, so it never feels like a hotel. Breakfast is homemade and you can take it in the garden: cheeses, cured meats, pastries, fruit, and a chia pudding I’d eat again. Good coffee, which I do not take for granted.

The staff made the difference. When we left at an unspeakable hour for the Mount Triglav hike they packed us breakfast to take. That included a gluten free sandwich for me, which I appreciated, especially given how delicious the bread was. The other ladies had some banana cake treats as well.

While here you can pop into the Church of St Martin, it’s quite beautiful inside and there are views of the lake from up here. It’s very easy to walk down the stairs and along the lake to the pletna jetty, the lake trail, the town and restaurants.

There’s a small café attached that does coffee, honey desserts and homemade ice cream in summer, and where the cream cake situation described above took place. Free private parking, which matters in Bled.

The practical case for it: Bled, Bohinj, Savica Waterfall and Vintgar Gorge are all easy day trips from here. One base, four destinations, no repacking. Anyone can book it. It isn’t a private house or a group-only thing, which surprised me when I found out.

Click here for rates and availability for the Old Parish House, here are some Airbnb rental options, and check the widget below for other Lake Bled accommodation options.

Tour Options in Lake Bled

Here are some tour options I found that you may like. I would add it to my itinerary if I returned to Lake Bled or had longer.

• Paddle a transparent kayak with a local guide, enjoy castle and island views, and capture unforgettable moments on calm alpine water. We did clear kayaks at Moreton Island in Australia and loved them.
• Bled eBike Tour: Pedal through scenic villages and around Lake Bled on comfortable electric bikes. A great way to experience Bled beyond the lake. The surrounding villages looked beautiful from our vantage point walking back from Vintgar Gorge.
• Lake Bled: Award-Winning SUP Tour to the Island & Castle – good one if you want to skip any pletna crowds, enjoy a swim and immerse yourself more on the lake.
• Day trip from Ljubljana: Lake Bled and Bohinj with Savica waterfall: If you are short on time, this full day tour may be an option, although we recommend spending more time in both places. A fellow tour participant of my bike tour in Ljubljana was doing a full day tour like this as he was short on time in Slovenia.
• This full day tour from Ljublijana includes Vintgar Gorge instead of Savica. If you had to choose, I would suggest, Vintgar Gorge – it made my list of top places in Slovenia.

Bled or Bohinj

Short version: Bled for the town, Bohinj for the nature. Bled has the restaurants, the evening buzz, the island and the castle. Bohinj has the quiet, the paddleboarding and the national park.

Bled wins on one thing I didn’t expect. Those thermal springs make it the warmer of the two by a clear margin. I jumped into Bohinj and it was cool and bracing and I was ready to get out again before long. At Bled I had my hand in the water off the side of a boat and would happily have stayed in for an hour. If a long afternoon in the water is your idea of a good day, Bled is your lake.

I still liked Bohinj more and I’d send you there first. You don’t have to choose, because they’re 30 minutes apart and one base covers both.

→The full case for Lake Bohinj, and why I picked the quiet one

Practical things worth knowing

• How long to give it. 3 days for Bled and Bohinj together, 4 if you want swimming time and a slow morning walking the lake. We had 2 nights at Bled and it was tight.
• Swimming. June through August, when the water stays above 20°C and peaks around 26. Pack a swimsuit even for a short stay.
• Crowds. For somewhere this famous, I never found Bled overwhelming, even in July. The island is the exception. Go in the morning.
• Parking. Not an issue for us, because we stayed on the lake and walked everywhere. It could be an issue if you stay in Bled. The Mala Osojnica trailhead lot is the expensive one. Leave your car at one of the cheaper park-and-ride lots in Lesce or Zirovnica and take a quick local shuttle or taxi in. Make sure you check if it’s paid parking, we didn’t at Bohinj and got a fine – for both our vans! If you stay in Bohinj and visit Bend for the day, consider riding the bus.
• Getting to Bohinj. 30 minutes by car on a scenic road, or a bus that takes roughly the same, tickets €3 to €14.  Check rental cars and availability here. You could rent an ebike, and/or cycle there and catch the bus back (or vice versa). They can transport bikes! Here is a package that includes ebike rental and bus) There may be traffic getting in and out the one road and roads here are narrow (in most of Slovenia) Check rentals here.
• Vintgar Gorge. 20 minutes away and worth a half day. Book ahead, because timed tickets sell out. Ours did, and we had to rearrange the whole itinerary around it.

Post coming soon→ Vintgar Gorge, and why getting back out takes longer than you think

How I did this trip

I went with Your Limitless Adventures, a women’s adventure travel company run by my friend Christina McEvoy. I’ve since become a trip leader with them and I’m leading three:

• Morocco, October 2026
• Thailand, February 2027
• Vietnam, March 2027

What a Your Limitless Adventures trip is actually like →

More Slovenia

• Best places to visit in Slovenia
• Lake Bohinj: what to do and why I preferred it to Bled.
• Vintgar Gorge – what to know and why to go
• The Soča Valley – what to do and the most beautiful river I’ve seen
• How to spend 1-2 days in Ljubljana
• Don’t miss these epic adventures in Slovenia
• What is it like to hike Mount Triglav
• Don’t miss Goriška Brda, Slovenia’s wine country

Have you been to Lake Bled, and did you get up for the sunrise? Tell me in the comments. I want to know if anyone found the higher viewpoint.