Today Elijah and I decided we would try something we have not done during our whole trip, be tourists. We started our day off with going on a 11a tour of the Skocjan Caves, with several hundred of our closest tourist friends. At the entrance they split us up into six groups of 40 so we would be able to hear the guide as we went through the cave. We did not really know what to expect. The cave turned out to be amazing! It has a river inside of it, complete with several waterfalls and lots of whitewater. There were lots of cave formations too, but the river along with the sheer size of the place is what left an impression. The closes thing I can think of to what it reminded me of is the goblin lairs in the Lord of the Ring movies. There was even a bridge 50 meters above the raging river in it. We were not allowed to take pictures or video while on the tour, so we will just have to enjoy the memory (we did find some pics online to share what the cave looks like though).
Our next stop was Predjama Castle. This was a very uncomfortable, cold, damp, castle that provided a place of safety during the middle ages. The owners did not care so much about how uncomfortable it was, because they were safe in it’s walls. The castle was built on top of a cave in the side of a mountain. I was pretty impressive how they blended the architecture with the natural cave like atmosphere. They even had little troughs all over the castle collecting the water running down the walls to use. We did a walking through with an headset in our language to learn all about the castle. It was interesting learning about life there and how it eventually ended when an enemy laid siege for over a year and was not able to penetrate the defenses. What the enemy finally did was bribe one of the servants, who gave them the one weakness in the fortress to defeat it.
Eljiah’s Take – We got to the cave. There were so many people! We got lead down to the entrance and got split up per language group. We went down second with the English group. It was sooo pretty. Then we hiked for a bit and crossed a very pretty bridge. At the end we got out and took an elevator thing that was really cool to the top. Then we got in our car and went to a castle. The castle was really cool to be in. After the castle we got in the car and drove to the hotel.