Postojnska Jama and Predjamski Grad

Sunday 5th June

Today we have been proper tourists!  We began by going along to the campsite restaurant for breakfast - continental style for €4 each.  Pretty good with bread, rolls, butter, cream cheese, jam, honey and nutella.  A shame my hot chocolate was only luke-warm though.  Still, we didn't have to wash up and we soon got out in the van to the nearby Postojnska jama - the Postojna Caves.  These are the longest subterranean system in the country with over 12 miles of chambers and tunnels.  They were formed by the seeping waters of the Pivka river which carved out several levels of underground galleries over a period of roughly 3 million years.  They've been open for visitors for 200 years, but now it's made easy with a 90-minute guided tour, starting with a mile-long train ride into the heart of the caves (a bit like a roller coaster ride speeding around stalactites), then an hour of walking through a series of caves with amazing rock formations in various shades of orange to white and grey.

 

Some looked like a nativity scene

 The Diamond is a huge white stalagmite, looking a bit like an ice cream cone.

 Then the little train whizzed us back through the tunnels to the surface again.  A brilliant tour.

After a bit of lunch at the van, we drove uphill about 10k to Predjamski grad - Predjama Castle.
 
It sits halfway up a hillside built into a huge cave.  The original part of the castle is C13 but most of it was added in the C16.  It's had various owners over the centuries, but the most (in)famous was Erasmus Lueger.  A bit of info from our Eyewitness Travel guidebook:  Erasmus Lueger became the owner of Predjama Castle in 1478.  He fell foul of the authorities after killing one of the Emperor's kinsmen, and used the castle as a base from which to mount raids on the surrounding territory.  In 1484, Baron Ravbar of Trieste laid siege to the castle for more than a year in an attempt to starve Erasmus into submission.  The defenders brought in food through a secret tunnel, taunting Ravbar's men by tossing fresh cherries at them from the castle walls.  Erasmus was ultimately killed by a cannonball, which hit the castle privy just when he happened to be squatting inside!!  The privy is the little bit of castle sticking out on the left.

This was an audio-guided tour, so we could look around at our own pace.  The front part of the building had some large sparsely furnished rooms but we learnt that comfort in the castle was nowhere near as important as safety from the enemies.  The back part is all built into the cave and includes a torture room(!)  It involved going up and down lots of stone staircases over 5 stories and the views of the valley and hills beyond were breathtaking.  We learnt that back then there wouldn't have been any trees - the hills were kept open so that the enemies had no place to hide.  Another brilliant visit.



We are getting used to hearing all sorts of languages being spoken as we travel around - even Chinese at the caves, but when we walked back down the hill to the car park at the castle, it was interesting to see that in a line of 6 vehicles, they were Slovenian, Italian, German, French, Austrian - and us!